" He was everything I looked for in men nowadays. But back then, I was an immature mistake, not him for loving me, which I completely falsified." The message wasn't meant for him. Not this one.
I meant to send this to my friend Geetika, as she was going through a break-up. So, to make her feel at ease and describe what my version of the story says about love. I shared this piece of my life, where when someone loves you deeply and you can’t echo those feelings, there’s a quiet ache to it. Not just for them, but for you too.
You admire how they see the best in you, how they hold onto your smallest details as if they’re chapters in a book—but you know your heart doesn’t beat for them in the way theirs does for you. But at a time, it is also a thing where you're immature to understand what mature love feels like. And, when you do, it fades away somewhere in the dark, and the only thing which is left is Regret.
But the universe loves irony. And maybe it loved him, too.
Or, maybe my fate wants me to feel it again, but different this time.
It landed in his inbox at 2:08 AM—the hour of most truth and least logic.
And you know what, he replied. After everything which landed on a bad note, he still did.
And, by the time I saw that my message landed in the wrong inbox, I was shocked to receive his message.
He once told me that even if you don't love me now, I'll still love you, desire you, it's either you or no one. At that time, I took it very casually. Didn't know he was that serious,
he wrote.
“I never stopped hoping you’d see it.
I didn’t need you to love me back. I just needed you to know.”
He was my senior. rudraa. Quiet, observant, endlessly patient. If I were a storm, he was the sky that held me.
He admired me for 2 straight years from behind the curtains.
And I? I loved being adored, without understanding what adoration meant.
I played writer with feelings I didn’t yet know how to respect. And when he got courage, and said he loved me, I froze. Not because I didn’t like him—but because I couldn’t recognise love dressed that calmly. He loves me in white. He used to say that white suits me.
But we parted badly. I said things I now rewrite in red ink. He disappeared, respectfully and completely.
But here he was again, because of one misplaced message.
I felt apologetic. I also didn’t know why?. For the love someone poured into your silence? For loving someone who doesn't understand you?
Maybe.... just maybe I loved him back, but not in the way for me to understand. And my immaturity played a vital role in this.
So instead, I wrote another message. This time, intentionally.
"You loved me when I hadn't learned it yet.
by the time i came to know,
you turned the pain into your quiet strength".
He read it, but didn't reply. I also didn't want him to. The blue tick appeared, and that was enough, more than enough for me.
Weeks passed. Geetika felt better. I got busy with one of my important articles with my editor. But one night, while wearing white—the colour he once said matched my aura—I stood near the mirror and whispered aloud:
“He was everything I mistook for ordinary.”
And in my newest draft, in a chapter I’m still scared to publish, I describe a boy who loved softly, deeply, truly.
No one knows his name.
But he was once mine.
And maybe, even now, in some quiet parallel, he still is.
Somewhere, in a city where seasons are loving, maybe he wonders—not desperately, but softly—if she ever learned what love looked like when it wasn’t loud.
He wouldn’t reach out again.
I know that.
That’s not who Rudraa is. He’s the kind of man who lets people go when they ask him to. But never forgets why they asked. He respects the boundaries like a soldier.
There’s a strange kind of healing in writing the person you once misunderstood. You stop painting them as your lesson, and start honouring them as a love that deserved better.
I think about reaching out. Sometimes. I still do after so many years.
Not to rekindle. Just to say, I see it now. Can we???
But I never do. Because some love stories deserve to live only in memory,
untouched by the clumsiness of real-time.
Instead, I write. I write him into silence. Into pauses. Into the stillness between paragraphs.
Because now I understand—love isn’t just who you end up with.
It’s who reshaped you when you weren’t even looking.
And Rudraa…
He did that.
Without ever asking me to.
In the end, I wish that there is another universe where there is a possibility of us being together.
Please let it happen, from me initiating it first.
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