The Girl on the Train

No, it’s not a story about a childhood friend. I was a young boy when i first saw her. I was on the way to school on a train and with the puberty and the hormones world was a different place than before. and then there she was, the woman i felt attracted to. I don’t want to label it as love but there was something about her that’s compelling and it drew me to her. The exhausting journey on the train turned out to be an hour in heaven to me. My attendance went up at school and i just loved every moment i spent looking at her.

I didn’t know who she was, where she is from and where she’s going at the time. Just the fact of her existence in that hour i spent on train was everything to me. It was the most innocent a love can be. I was wearing my blue shorts and white shirt to the school and i see her wearing a saree that made her look stunning. It was pure bliss to me. For years she never even notice that i was there. She couldn’t see how starstruck i was everyday looking at her. She was in living in the real world but to me, in that instance, she was my entire world.

They say that when you grow up the love grows up with you as well. I’ve experienced it first hand with her. It was quite simple actually. A boy, a girl and a heavy load of unrequited feelings because of how afraid i was to lose this feeling. It bothered me since I’ve seen her. What if i confessed and it goes south, will i be able look at her again? What if she’s married or have feelings for someone else? What if she’s not interested? I was afraid of going back to what it was before her. The love that was unspoken kept me from boring to death on the journey and i wanted it to last, so i stayed in silence. She was one person in the world but for that moment, that moment only she was my whole world.

I was no longer a student. While i grew up everything around me changed as well. The feelings, emotions, people and everything that made me who i am. But the only thing that didn’t change was the unrequited love i had for someone i barely knew. Someone that probably saw me growing up with time, someone who probably saw my eyes watching her but definitely someone who never knew that i had feelings for her. To this day nothing has changed in life on that journey. I’ll see her often on my way to work. I’ll imagine countless ways to talk to her, I’ll dream of wild scenarios that may happen and then I’ll get off at my stop like nothing happened. There’s a saying that first love never leaves your heart and i never thought it’d be unrequited.

As long as both she and I exist in the train journey this love will stay and maybe, just maybe if i find courage to defy my bubble of dreams I may talk with her but I’m addicted to the love that’s unspoken so I’ll most likely stay in silence and cherish the memories of our journey together as separate beings.

The love that’s unspoken is the love that’s most cherished because of all the possibilities that can happen.