She wants to go...

I wait there. In the little KFC in the little town where we first met 5 years ago.

A nondescript eatery in a nondescript town. But it didn’t matter. This is where our love first blossomed. And sadly this is where it will end. 

She’s late. Busy with another friend. The bitterness in me sees this as typical of how she treated our relationship, a quasi joke. Three years after she threw everything away via a text. Three years after I told her I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. Three years after she vanished from my life. Three years after I chose not to fight her family.

How many people have found love over the years, over the centuries in fact, I wonder as I wait. The beauty didn’t matter, the buildings, the constructs, the surroundings didn’t matter. Love was the connection between two souls. The yearning, the caring, the wanting to be, know and have every part of the other in your life, the completion of yourself, of both of you. Unless it is only one way…

She arrives. I stand to greet her. Three years, it’s awkward. Three years after we parted ways. My heart was crushed. She said she loved me long before I told her the same, yet she moved on swiftly with someone else. And now here she is.

She can’t stay long she says. I ask to rearrange when we’ll have more time. She says she would rather finish everything today. 

She just wants to go. 

She moved on three years ago. She’s only here at my insistence.  

To be honest there’s not much to discuss. Just three years of anger on my side. 

I start to have a go at her. How could she end things via a text. How could she use the one thing that she knew about me from day one. All the things I wanted to tell her but didn’t in fear that her family may use them against me. My parents. My baby sister. My dying grandfather. 

But she didn’t need to know any of that. One text. One excuse of the obvious. A grown woman who apparently didn’t know the race card would be played and dictated by her family, and allowed them to do so regardless. 

How could she be so evil? How could she be so wretched?

Except she wasn’t. 

After a few minutes of letting out my anger, looking at her beautiful face drop, sad, contrite and apologetic I realised I couldn’t be angry at her. How can you be angry at someone you love with all your heart? She looks down. As beautiful as the first day I saw her and knew that she would one day be my wife.

That first day when we met at a dinner and talked for a few seconds. I had fallen for her. She could barely remember us meeting. Not much different to today. My life today at crossroads, weighed down by the anchor of hurt and longing, my love for her perennial, barely able to look at another girl for three years. On the contrary, she had moved on with someone else within a year, trying for a family. Happy, dancing. Still meeting with all her friends, male and female. 

Except me. Dumped, deleted, blocked. Discarded like yesterday’s trash. 

But I couldn’t have a go at her for more than a few minutes. I still don’t know why she did what she did, how she could end things so callously and never once even ask how I was. But looking at her, perhaps blinded by my love, my rage subsides and I am convinced she doesn’t have a bad bone in her body. 

She has no malice, no evil. As beautiful as she is on the outside, she’s just the girl next door on the inside. No pride, no arrogance. Just the sweetest girl, most caring girl I have ever met. She may not have cared for me or how I was after discarding of me, but that doesn’t change her nature or my love for her. 

This would be the one day of my life that I would spend with someone truly knowing I loved them. 

Even when we were together, my love for her was never this strong. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, you only realise how much you loved someone when you lose them. That has certainly been the case with me, whilst conversely a fading memory for her.

Meeting her today would end things, give me a closure, allow me move on with my life. Meeting her would allow me to let her know how wrong she was and how angry I was. Maybe she’d argue back. Maybe that’s all I was needing from her – to show her true colours in person. To see in the flesh how bad a person she really was and see her response to what she did.

I see her true colours, but its none of the above. She’s just a simple, beautiful girl. She says she doesn’t know why she did what she did, why she ended things via a text, why she was happy to meet, talk and meet all her other male friends but not one thought about me. Is she telling the truth, I don’t know. It doesn't make sense her story, or lack of. But I know she is not evil nor malicious. I can see it in her face. There's fault on my side too. She never complained when we were together, she's too soft to complain. I could have given her more time, more attention. I think back to when she was at a garage trying to fix her car alone, I should have gone with her. I was stressed with medical school at the time, but we could have gone to the library together, met more often, had coffee, lunch. Simple things. I could have loved her more...

I tell her there’s one last trip for us, somewhere I wanted to take her many years ago, before she disappeared abruptly.

She says no. She wants to go again. She has to go home she says.

Even after I tell her of all the hurt. Even after she acknowledges she was in the wrong and apologised, she still wants to go.  After three years, one hour is more than enough for her. I insist. Being the soft person she is, she agrees. 

Outside I tell her she has actually put on a little weight. She laughs and says she knows. How many girls would respond like that. 

She wants to go in her car, not mine. She really doesn’t want to be around me. I insist she goes in mine. After three years of being treated like crap, I am entitled at least one day to insist on what I want.

It won't end at KFC.

We arrive at the mini mountain an hour later, just after sunset. A few random cars and people who were here earlier leave as we arrive. It's just us. The weather is now dark and cold, I offer her my cardigan. The one she gave me years ago. She refuses. I insist and eventually she takes it. 

She doesn’t know where we are as we head uphill, stomping in the muddy grass, half a football pitch's width, walled in by tall, leafless trees on either side, swaying in the dark, winter wind. We could be heading deep into the woods for all she knows. I tell her I’m actually a murderer and will chop her up into bits. She's not the bravest girl and she knows I'm angry with her, but she also knows I would never hurt her. She smiles. The most beautiful smile. The happy, effervescent energy that I fell in love with many years ago. We climb up the muddy, soggy hill. She moans her socks are getting wet in the mud as we walk. This time I smile. My first and last of the day. 

As we climb up to the zenith of the hill, and descend over the peak, the city lights appear. She sees the view and her jaw drops. Overlooking the cold but luminous city. Maybe it was good we had gotten lost and missed the sunset.  The bright city lights coming on, lighting up the blue-black sky, was something to behold. 

We sit on the bench, looking over the city. She stands up, complains the bench is cold and wet. I can feel it too, but I don’t care. I insist she sits and she does eventually. Cold, shivering. Like that first day next to the lake. 

I’ve been here before, in the middle of the night, on my own. The view is beautiful. But this time I am struck down by the split feeling of love, happiness and hurt as she is next to me. 

From a young age, I always thought I’d take my true love to a mountain and overlook our city. It never happened, partly because I had no clue such a place existed, and partly because I never expected, or looked to, fall in love. Tonight, half way through my life, fate would dictate that this once dream-like milestone would actually occur, albeit in the demise of our love. 

We sit on the bench.

Her eyes light up, the child like excitement illuminating her beautiful face as she takes her camera out and starts taking pictures. Why doesn't the camera capture the beauty she asks innocently. Sometimes, some scenes are only to be fully appreciated by our divinely ordained ocular gifts. 

I look at her as she looks out at the horizon with her camera. This is the first time I look at her today, our conversational eye contact earlier aside, the first time after three years.  Her doll like features, her gaping almond shaped eyes. So beautiful, so full of life, so down to earth. Just happy. We all have our grievances, and she has had a major loss herself recently. But as her eyes light up looking over the city, I realise she is something else. She is special. She is unique. She may have long forgotten me, and will most likely forget me again very soon. For her, this may be just another trip with another friend. But I will remember this, and her, forever.

I look at her as she gazes over the city. A million memories of our love flash through my mind. Tonight I have no lust for her, no longing for physical affection. Just complete love for her, for her beautiful company. She may not be a rocket scientist, she may not be a size six. She has no aims for position or power anywhere. Heck she is just the girl next door. But to me she is everything. She tells me she doesn’t argue with anyone but just cries afterwards. Three years ago I may have laughed at that, now I just want to hold and hug her every time she gets upset, just to care for her and tell her everything will be ok.

I think back at history of those who fought, lived and died for love. Once upon a time I used to laugh and scoff at those stories. Today, I am one of those stories. Unlike Cleopatra, I'm not depressed nor suicidal. I haven't let this wallow me up to the point of self destruction. I haven't let this affect my responsibilities. A martial arts fighter, an established doctor now, graduate of some of the world’s best universities. Not the worst looking apparently, the compliments strangely increasing with age. I still fight, I still work hard helping my patients, I still socialise with my friends. Whilst everyone else has left home, I serve my ailing brother and immobile mother. I still go to the refugee camps every year helping those most in need, I smile for the rest of the world, I still help everyone I can. Heck I recently scaled the tallest mountain in the world, possibly in the best shape of my life. 

But in the spare moments the light inside my heart burns low, barely flickering now, in pain for the soul-mate I found but never really knew. The sunshine in my life who I thought would forever stand by me with her support and love. She who declared her love for me long before I reciprocated. Gone in the blink of an eye at the first suggestion of seriousness. Strong, confident, ambitious me, suddenly weighed down by a broken heart for the last three years. Three years ago I was in complete control. From very early on in my adult life, I've always been in complete control. Now, after she crushed me, in the game of love, I have well and truly been brought down to my knees. Why do so many others meet and get married happily so easily? Why does life and fate make it so difficult for others?

Although I’ve always been one to live life, to know there are greater priorities, aims and goals than romance, I wonder in my attempted uber machoness whether I have suppressed my natural romantic instincts, my innate propensity for love. Many years ago as a teenager in sixth form, I fell in love. Nothing happened, I was too reserved to even speak to anyone of the opposite gender. She declared her love for me. I did not reciprocate. Until today part of me still regrets that, part of me still wonders how she is, where life has taken her. As I grew older, a dichotomous view of love vs arranged unions formed in my mind, where the former was painted out by our culture as bad and the latter was the right thing to do. Is that so true I wonder now? It’s human nature to be attracted to the opposite, to want to bond, to marry and to procreate. There's a difference between falling in love, and forcing yourself to love someone, arranged by others. The Prophet Muhammad (saw) met Khadijah as a business partner, not in an arranged setting. They married and she was his only love until she died.

My mind tracks back to a story of my grandfather’s generation many decades ago. After my first grandmother passed away, he was briefly married to another woman. She left him, because her heart was with someone else. In a bygone era, in a remote third world village, in a time of no technology,  where divorce was unheard off, she felt compelled to follow her heart. They are all dead now, all but shadows and dust, but they lived and died in love. 

Then there are the two school friends of mine in sixth form who fell in love. They wanted to marry but her parents said no and insisted she marry someone of her own caste. She succumbed to her family's demands and married someone of their choice. Many years later after having two children, she couldn't deny her love and left her husband. She went back to her high school love and they married. I couldn’t agree with that, not when there are children involved. I could do many things and I love children, but I couldn’t do justice attempting to be a father to someone else’s children. 

I wonder if I should tell her these stories. Are the recent events in her life, as tragic as they are, also a sign that something different may come out of this? That there may be in our fate, in our lives which start and finish in the blink of an eye, a possibility for us to start over again? I can’t mention this to her, that would be too insensitive and cruel.  She may have been cruel to me over the years, treating me like yesterday’s stray newspaper, but I can’t reciprocate that.

But I have to ask…

In a hundred years’ time we will all be under the ground. Nobody will know us, nobody will even utter our names. We only live once in this world. 

But isn’t it worth living, fighting and dying for love? Would she fight for what she once said would be her love forever?

She doesn’t respond. 

I have to ask, otherwise I will forever regret it. 

Is there any chance?

She gazes down. Softly, she says no.

Many years ago I loved her, what we had. Today, looking for answers and closure and an end to all of this, I find I am not just in love with her but everything about her. Her gaze, her tone, her words, her regular accent. Many people admire her prettiness I'm sure, even her soft personality. But I see the beautiful person inside. I truly love her right to her soul like no-one else does. To her very core. Everything, everything about her.

Sitting there on that cold evening, overlooking the city, the lights coming on under the dark, blue sky of the winter night, I realise today there will be no closure, no end. She sits next to me one last time, gazing out over the beautiful night sky, two solitary figures sitting on a wooden bench, overlooking an electrically fired up city. As the harsh, winter wind blows around us, it also blows between us. I realise at this moment that she was and always will be an eternal love for me.

Her words claim she still loves me and will always do so. I'm not sure I believe her. It's your actions that define you.

It doesn't matter. 

Today, tonight in fact, is the last night.

It’s a painfully beautiful night. 

For under the beautiful, cold, winter night of middle England, she sits next to me.