Fortune in a cookie

It took four glasses of rum and coke, for me to collapse into his arms and declare my undying love for him. In my inebriated state, it was a shock for me to hear his crisp response. "Shut up", was all he said, as he proceeded to help me walk towards the room. He seemed neither angry nor surprised as he tenderly tucked me into bed while I continued rambling. The next day it was my turn to listen as he teased me and narrated some of the stuff I had said. Somehow, I wasn’t embarrassed and instead of laughing it off, I chose to admit my feelings. He acknowledged it, but said nothing.

Surprisingly, there was no awkwardness between us, and as my feelings grew stronger, I noticed that he also wasn’t exactly lacking in affection. The problem now was that I wanted to know how he felt about me.

No, let me rephrase that. I was dying to know how he felt about me. The tussle between the mind and the heart is one that the former rarely wins. Every time I broached the topic, he would avoid me. And I was relentless. In his endeavor to avoid my questions, he soon began to avoid me and before I knew it, everything had gone horribly wrong. For several months I continued to try and keep in touch with him, but to no avail.

"I’ll call you back", were the last words he said to me. As I put down the receiver, I knew by the number of times I’d heard that phrase before that it was finally time for me to walk away.

The truth is that our loves, our relationships and our desires are all in our own mind and tend to remain as temporary or permanent as we allow them to be. For me, his memory, his touch, his smile, is etched forever in my mind. My relationship with him is the most permanent thing in my life. And that’s the way I want it to stay. I have no interest in getting over him or moving on or trying to find someone else, simply because my relationship with his memory continues. Each night that I go to bed, each morning that I wake up, he is right by my side. And I am still very much in love.

Well maybe this wasn’t exactly what the fortune cookie had meant or planned it to be, but it’s prediction was certainly right.