Once in a lifetime

A girl realizing how she got destroyed by love.

Once in a lifetime- that is the idea she was so hung up on. She was obsessed with the idea of being special.

It all started two years ago. She met him in the school reunion.

He looked nothing special, not distinctive in any way. You could've missed him very easily and no one would've blamed you for it. He hardly talked. That day in the reunion all he did was either stand or sit and listen to his friends gossip. That's all he would do, listen. He was so good at it. Then there was the drink. Raspberry soda it was. A red concoction of syrup, sugar and the fruit itself. It matched his shirt perfectly on the day. She still has that shirt inside her own wardrobe. Neatly folded and tucked in alongside everything else he had given her. It always smelled of him.

It was his smile that drew her in. A toothy grin that still surfaced in her mind. She came across it by accident, but to this day if you ask her she would call it fate. She sat two or three tables across from him, facing him. She was laughing at a joke herself when one look at the table across from her and something caught her attention. He wasn't talking. Leaning in, just listening. The drink was on the table. His face awash with that smile. It lit up his whole appearance. She was enchanted by the innocence and honesty of it. She fell in love with the joy it extended to his eyes.

“Who is this? Would they ever talk?” she wondered. “He would look so good beaming like that next to me,” her wishful thinking.

She didn't know him yet she was already attracted to his soul, his soulful smile atleast. No one with a once in a lifetime grin like that could ever be a dastardly person.

They did talk as luck would have it, not in that reunion but a few months later. It was him who took the first step. Seemingly, she wasn't the only one who noticed a stranger that day. It was her who confessed her love first, a year on from the day they first spoke. It wasn't only his smile that was unique she found out. His personality reverberated life and she was addicted to it. She was his and he was hers. She found a once in a lifetime sort of person.

She still remembers that first kiss. How could she ever forget? It was like his soul held hers and they fused into one. He made her feet go numb and made her conscience smile without reason. But all of this scared her. Her mom would always say too much of a good thing was harmful, her friends would always reiterate those two lines:

“You're so lucky, he is such a good person. He could've dated anyone but he's dating you.”

Those lines always made her feel bad. She knew he was perfect but that was no reason to look down on her. She wasn't that undesirable.

“But he loves me,” she would think. “He chose me and made me his,” she would console herself. “I don't need to worry about what others say.”

And he did choose her. He made her a priority. He made her feel like she was his world, or rather the center of it. She really wanted to use the words “soulmate” and “destiny”, and she wanted to believe that they were a “marriage made in heaven,” but she feared of crashing and burning. She didn't want to get engulfed in the flames. She would lie to herself, pick out faults that weren't there. He was just everything she wanted and he made her feel like she was everything she needed. No amount of moral quandary could damage that in her mind. “I am his one and only,” she convinced herself.

Then it all stopped being a dream. Everything changed because she herself changed. Somewhere along the line she always expected him to be immaculate. Quintessentially hers, always present. She always wanted to see him smile. “He has nothing to be sad about,” she would think. He was still the same person but now she wanted more. “He's stopped loving me like before,” she misconceived. She desired his presence all day and couldn't handle separation. She developed a never ending appetite for him. “He makes me happy, he knows that. I know he will not do anything to make me cry.”

She stopped tending to him. “You expect so much, God!” This soon became a repeated occurrence. He's changed she would think. He's not the same person anymore.

“You're not the person I fell in love with,” she imagined herself saying those words to him in anger. “Am I not worth it? How can you stop loving me?”

Things were not the same. He tried explaining everything to her. He tried talking to her and reassuring her of everything. She was just a different person. It was as if a parasite had infested her mind and he found no way of reasoning with it.

“You mentally drain me, we're over,” she broke it off. Six words she regrets to this day. Six words she wishes she could take back. They pierce her heart like six fast moving, invisible bullets. As if someone had just emptied a revolver on her chest. Who knew words could make you bleed?

“He loved me so much. I wasn't ready for it. I wasn't deserving,” she found herself sharing with her psychiatrist. “I will be okay one day but I will never be the same without him. I hope I get used to this change.”

“How can I help you now madam? What, according to you, will help you get better? You won't need the medicines anymore.”

“I wish I could go back to him but I won't. I broke him and he doesn't need that. I want to be my own person. I want to be the person he saw in me and that used to make him smile from ear to ear. I won't be his anymore so I want to be him. I want to be a once in a lifetime sort of person just like him.”

“I guess that's that then,” her psychiatrist said as he made his way off his chair. She stood up too, shook his hand and made her way towards the door.

“Don't forget your drink. What is it anyway,” the doctor enquired.

“Raspberry, my favourite,” and an ocean of memory crashed into her mind.