Unrequited

Almost 30 and yet to find the love of your life? As harrowing as it may sound, that's just collectively a lot of us. Through all these growing years I have fallen in love numerous times. And each time someone broke my heart I mourned. Sometimes in balmy summer afternoons at the corner of my patio, Sometimes in a cafe sitting by the window gazing at the influx of people with genial smiles but deeper sorrows. And while it might not be the greatest idea to compare heartbreaks, unrequited love can mangle your heart in ways you couldn’t know, it could be mangled.

At 15 when I fell in love, it was more a textbook kind of love. I tried to understand why I can't stop smiling when the person looked at me. In stupid ways, I felt more determined as they ignored me while raving about others in front of my friends. So profound was my love, that I would not mind the person going out on dates with someone else. Still harboring the hope that the person would drift towards me, so as to tempt me into falling for a fate I always wanted. But this is not the movies. I surprisingly spent a larger portion of my teens still in love and every time the same person failed in a relationship, I felt joy. The kind of joy you feel as the wailing wind touches your face after a dry and scorching spell. Sadly requited love never happened. Instead, I changed cities, continents, and time-zones.

In my early twenties, I read Love in the time of Cholera. To my worse, I was even more convinced that unrequited love is not problematic. As warped as the whole idea of suffering in love with a person who would never love you back seems, it brought me peace. I would never confide my love, always scared that it would break the fabricated world I had built for myself.

In vacation in Europe, I met someone I thought would finally love me and all those years of toxic memories would be purged. Amidst the cobbled stone streets and fragrance of raspberry sorbets, as we walked I felt as if this was an eternity. But it was just an ephemera. Like that flickering flame against the wind. A world away and months later than the summer tryst, what we shared was also doomed to live and die in the dark. Unrequited Love never left me.

In the age of dating apps and easy love, heartbreaks are temporary. They move from one to the other as fast as an express train. I am more patient now. But it almost feels like the same. Now in love, I would wait together for the end times, drinking and buzzing each other's inbox, eating brunches and bursting with gratitude for all the beautiful, improbable friendships over these years that could have turned amorous. At this moment, on a hot July afternoon, I get the same beaming feeling as I choose them as my emergency contact hoping they’d choose me over all the other brilliant contenders. I almost haven’t learned in fifteen years how to do it well.

Unrequited love deserves a mention. I love the idea of it. Two things that don’t seem to go together. Salt and Sugar. Chicken and Waffles. Unlikely, yes — but delicious beyond measure.

• Yesterday, Love was such an easy game to play Now I need a place to hide away
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