I was listening to the radio this morning and the topic was First Crush. I smiled.
I think I realized I had this huge crush on “S” when I was about 11. He was 13. And I carried that huge crush year in year out. Painfully aware that he the macho good looking fellow would not have time for plain Jane toady me.
We were related via marriage in the usual complicated ways Indians somehow always seem to be. Although reasonably far enough should something have blossomed, to be acceptable.
Anyways, I carried this on for years. And being the wallflower, I never had any other distractions. Boys never noticed me – at least not as a point of interest.
I think we got on ok, aside from his endless teasing and bullying. And then came the crunch. I was turning 19, and sitting outside on the corridor on a free period and I started a letter to “S”. I did write often to him and he’d respond sporadically as and when it pleased him with such short notes I’d still get all happy just to hear from him. (I know I sound like a dork!)
So I started a letter, which I think ended up a confession of sorts about this forever crush and I think exceeded 10 pages of A4 sheets. I posted it, and then later regretted sending off the missive. What did I hope to achieve. He’d settled back in India and I was here in Malaysia still the same plain Jane dork. Still never even in the scrap the barrel list of any of the guys in school.
I guess you could say I made the first step to tell someone who’d held my affections captive for the longest time ever that he meant so much to me. There’s always 2 ways to go with things like this. Either they reciprocate or they turn you down outright.
Agonising weeks and months went by. Needless to say the endless times I kicked myself for venturing to tell him how I felt. His reply when it finally came, made me mentally leap for joy and do a couple of back flips (I stress mentally ya!)
Seventh heaven couldn’t have felt any better. But the reality was we weren’t close to each other geographically. He was in India and me in Malaysia. Although I must say we kept up correspondences and it felt pretty nice to although not really have someone special around to share things with but there was this someone somewhere.
I’d have loved things to have worked out better. But life is not about what we want is it? When we met after many years of letter exchanging in 1994, it was obvious as in Malay we would say this journey was ‘terbuntu’ as in it was not going to go anywhere. At least not anywhere I’d have wanted it to.
Many reasons obviously. And although I did not necessarily think all or any of them mattered, but I respected what he was saying. After his visit, the contact was even more sporadic almost non-existent. I figured he’d decided to move on and hence the silence. And at the end of 1994, I wrote him another epic letter acknowledging that we’d not possibly ever be together and so I would cease to think that he was my special one. Wishing him well in his life, I never wrote to him again.
(A few months after that I accepted Jacob and his request I be his girlfriend – the first guy to have ever asked me to be anything other than one of the guys in his life. I guess the rest as they say is history.)
That letter never received any reply and in 1998 April, I got a wedding invite from “S”. I was to be engaged in May of 1998 and married in October. I was happy for him, as I was happy for myself at the time. “S” asked me to come to India to share that special occasion, which was very touching.
When I heard the topic this morning, immediately I was reminded of “S” and I realized that even with all the passing of time and leading separate and different lives, you never really ever forget the one who first stole your heart and made it skip a beat just by smiling or looking your way.
He’s a proud daddy to 2 girls and is happily settled in India. My love story didn’t work out as I’d hoped, but still I am a proud mommy to 2 girls of my own.
Do I wish things had worked out differently for “S” and I? I’d be dishonest to say I’ve never wished it to be so. But in all my experiences with life, I have learnt to accept what life had offered me the best I can. Facts cannot be ignored and hence my first crush will remain only that, a crush unrequited and nothing more.
It’s funny of much clarity a memory so old has when suddenly recalled … and I continued to smile driving to work.
~.ani remembers it's Jacob's birthday today and wonders in August will I have the present I long for~
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