An unmarried friend of mine used to extol the virtues of spinsterhood all the time, saying that she would never miss something she hadn’t experienced when told that she would miss the company of a partner in her old age. I agreed with her wholeheartedly. I remember telling my father about yet another unmarried friend and her frustration with life saying that, she is frustrated because she wants to get married and hasn’t been able to. It is not the same situation as mine.

I was happily single even when there was this guy who loved me with all his heart. I could never feel the passion within. For three long years, we tried to come to even ground. May Lord bless him, he never gave up. But I was done living a lie. There was a time when I had made up my mind to stop looking for what I desired and make do with what I was given. But the only sensible thing I did was not to deceive myself and him. I know, I broke his heart terribly but it would be better for him in the long run.

I believe that.

Soon after, I met someone I had been looking for all my life. For me, it was as if lightning struck right from the first moment I laid eyes on him. Why God decided to give me my heart’s desire at 39 in a very complicated package? I don’t know.

I sit and think sometimes what is it that makes me forgive everything he does, or condone even those of his actions that hurt me. I have always been a thinking individual who has had this quality of self – love deeply ingrained in her, then why this sudden shift where I think of someone else before me?
What makes me do that, which is new to my basic nature and tendencies? It isn’t as if this is permanent, infact the premise of our relationship is its temporary nature and yet this need in me to make life easy for him, to be a woman in the relationship.

I came across a line in a movie recently (the movie was poorly made and leaves no other imprint on the watcher). It said, “We like people because and love them despite”

Meaning (as I understood it) – We like people because of their qualities, because of the care they give us, the things they do for us, because we think alike, because we have been thrown together by fate or because we have the same concerns and circumstances in life.

But we love people despite their shortcomings, despite the fact that we are so unlike each other, despite our different upbringing & backgrounds, despite our separate outlooks on life, irrespective of our language, culture and the choices in people and things, sometimes even despite the fact that we have to tread separate paths in life and that we cannot be together per se. We love them for who they are and for what they bring to our life.

No human being should look for fulfillment in another. I believe if one is not complete on his or her own, they cannot give anything to any kind of relationship. Hence, we have our passions, our hobbies, our friends, our work and our ‘me time’. All these things make us happy and content which makes us radiant. And a radiant person attracts others. A person who is, thus self – sufficient, is not clingy because they don’t look for completion in any one relationship or job. They are who they are because of the life they have lived or the experiences they have had.

But human relationships do bring an iota of happiness, solace & contentment for us. We feel calmer in the presence of certain people, with some we feel confident, there are a few who provide us with a sense of safety, there are one or two who bring out the real us, we can be our weird selves around some, yet others can make us explore the sides of us which we never knew existed within us.

What if, we find all of this or most of it in one person?

That, sure, screws us up because that’s exactly what everyone is looking for in the world. The ultimate human quest. It is not money or the name we make or our social standing, it is the meaningful relationships that keep us going.

Now, the tragedy of someone like me, who has a wide perspective on life and a hugely open mind, is that we don’t want such relationships labelled by the conventional standards of our society. I am not saying that acceptability by the society is too cliché. I am not a rebel for rebels sake. In fact, I have been a dutiful daughter all my life, someone who has put my own happiness at bay just to keep my family name up, to live up to the recognition my father has in the society. It took an immense amount of courage for me to write about it all but it has been eating me up inside, for days. I am not someone who would go against the norms just to prove that I am different or I am above it all.

Obviously, it would be a pleasure, surpassing everything, to be accepted for whoever I am or whoever I love. But my point is, labelling a near perfect thing like the one described above, specially in complicated situations, puts unnecessary pressure on the individuals and all the magic is lost.

So, the answer to my own question, as to why God deemed it fit to introduce me to a person of that kind so late in my life, is that he wanted me to experience the life he had given me to the fullest. He wanted me to absorb this hugely giving feeling of love and compassion. He wanted life to come full circle for me before it all ended. He did not want to leave me and my soul in a dismal state before we met HIM finally.

I put my atheism in a sack, tie huge boulders to it and throw it away in the deepest of oceans finally and bow down to his presence and might.

This quarantine has made me realise the important things in life and the importance of accepting the significant parts of life. I might miss his constant presence when our time together is up. I might also miss his physical attributes – his smile, laughter, anger, irritation on my constant repetitions, his smell, touch and the like. I may be desolate and lonely at times too. I am just a human. But, even so, I would be content for having lived this limited time with him. I would want for nothing else.