“Oh no, this can’t be it. I can’t do this to myself, not again. I can’t fall in love. Not again,” I said to myself as I forced myself to sleep.

Its already 1 in the morning, and I am lying on my bed, still awake with my eyes all open.

“No, please! You know you are bad at this; don’t do this to yourself. Don’t fall in love again. How can you fall for a guy who is not even attractive?” I thought to console myself. “Okay, fine you can’t do it to yourself. You cannot hurt yourself one more time. You know you cannot handle this for another time. You are going to block his messages on Facebook. You will never call him and ignore him as much as possible. It’s merely just a crush and after some days you will laugh at yourself for falling for him,” said another part of me who did not want to see me hurt for another time. I decided to listen to her and took my phone to block his messages.

The next morning, I woke up with the decision to not talk to him again, to not fall for his adorable smile, the amazing sparkle of his eyes, his sweeter than sugar voice, and his calm and beautiful soul. “Oh my god, I am doing this again. I am thinking about him. No, stop it lady, wake up and start your life which involves nothing of him,” I said to myself as I got out of bed. It was already 8:45 am and I was late for college. I dressed, said goodbye to my mom, took earphones and walked to the college.

I am an introvert and I do not talk or share my feelings with anyone besides myself. I have only a few friends and no one is interested in knowing me. That is fine, I have learned how to live on my own. I have created my world where I am never alone because I am always there to stay beside myself, to talk to myself.

No matter how much you try to console yourself by these words, deep down you know that this is not true. No matter how much you say that you are happy alone, you wish someone was there with you for talking, sharing the part of yourself which no one has ever seen, someone to love you and someone you want to love. It happened with me too. I fell in love with a guy at my school who never loved me back. Again, I fell for another guy in my high school who said he loved me too, but he did not. Again for another guy who wanted everything but love from me. All these incidents made me weak from inside.

The word ‘Love’ became the most painful word. I saw many happy couples around me, wished there was someone with me too but that never came true because yes, no one was there who actually fell in love with me. Am I so unlovable?

Even after all these bad experiences, I was not totally pessimistic about love. I thought I would be able to love again but what I did not know was fate is against me having a perfect love story. The last guy did nothing to hurt me, it was me who fell in love with him and loved him so much without thinking about the consequences. It was me who wanted to be with him so much, without knowing he would never think of me in the same way. He did nothing, absolutely nothing. Maybe that was why I was hurt the most for loving him.

And now again I think I have fallen for a guy. If I say this to anyone, they would say, what’s wrong with falling in love? They would never understand how much it hurts to know that the person you love will never ever think about you. They do not understand the feeling of being rejected by the person they love and not just once, but as many times as it takes for a person to completely break into pieces. It is not the feeling of being alone that hurts; it is the feeling of “No one in this world ever wants me.” That hurts most.

My feelings could not be controlled and came out of my eyes on my way to college. I made sure no one saw them and wiped them away with the fake smile that I always give to prove myself happy. I reached college and headed straight towards my class. “Oh my god, he’s there. He’s there. Please god make him disappear or at least make him not to notice me there.” I cried aloud to my heart when I saw him standing on the balcony of one of the stories that I have to cross to reach my class. I climbed up the stairs and within no time, I was at the place where he was standing. I tried to run away from him before he noticed me since he was turning towards the other side. I was climbing up the stairs that led me away from him when I heard him call my name. I thought it was just my hallucination and continued walking up the stairs. However, I heard it again. I turned around and could see the same smile that I decided to ignore this morning on his beautifully designed face. The moment I saw him again, I could not help but fall in love with him, again. He was telling me about something which I think I don’t remember a word because I was so busy imagining his hands holding mine and his arms surrounding me.

I nodded my head all the time when he was speaking. I still can’t remember what he was talking about then, because all my senses stopped behaving at the very moment his lips uttered my name. I entered my class. I opened my book but could not concentrate. My mind started building dreams about a life with him where I was happy, happy for the first time. It became very difficult for me to concentrate the whole day. That was the time when I decided to be strong. I decided to make my feelings so strong that no one could ever bring me down. I realized it is not love that hurts, but it is the expectation that hurts. I remembered someone telling me “You cannot guarantee that someone you love will love you back but one thing is guaranteed that you can love someone with zero expectation. Love is something that does not come with expectations.” Those words ran through my head and then I decided that I will love him with no expectation. Therefore, thinking that holding it to myself will be a disaster, I decided to tell him. Oh my god, I am telling him tonight.

On my way back home I decided that I would text him on Facebook and confess my feelings towards him. I was so excited. I went back home, hurriedly cooked some food, ate it at the fastest way I could and went online. Oh yes, he is online.

“Hi” I texted him.

“Hi, how are you?” he replied.

“I am good and you?”

“I am good”

………….. Silence for some moments.

“Hey I wanted to say something to you?” I ended the awkward silence.

“Yeah, what is it?”

“I think I have fallen for you. I do not know when it happened but it just happened. I do not expect you to love me back. I just wanted to clear my burden” Is what I wanted to say but ended up saying:

“Can I have the new Avenger movie? I heard you have a copy of it.”

“Yeah of course. Bring your pen drive tomorrow, I will copy it from my laptop.”

“Oh, thank you.”

“You are welcome.”

Again, the silence. I was now unable to start the conversation and then I suddenly saw a blue blink on the chat box. It was him.

“But hey, was that all you were about to tell me?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I thought of something else.”

“What?”

“Nothing just ignore it.”

“What? You can tell me.”

“Okay. Don’t get me wrong but I thought you were going to say something like ‘I like you’ or ‘I love you’. Yeah I know that’s silly. I am sorry,” he said.

“Oh ha ha ha” (fake laugh). “No, I wasn’t”

“But hey.” I said again. “If I were to tell you something like that, what would you have said?”

“Hmm, I don’t know. Maybe I would have said -I am sorry but I like someone else. J”

Yes, I decided to love him without expectation. Yes, I am the one who said that it would not hurt me anymore and yes I said that I am strong enough to handle no and I will handle it no matter what it takes me to do so.

I said myself as I felt tears rolling down my cheeks that landed safely on my hands which were now shaking as I typed.

“Ha ha ha. But I did not say anything like that.” I said.