12th October 2022
Dear Diary,
No, it’s not your owner this time, but her boyfriend and also the one on whom the whole book is written. I had realised that she hadn’t mentioned my name anywhere. So let me do that for her. I’m Adrian, the guy whom she met 11 years ago. It’s been so long and we’ve changed so much, our relationship had changed. Your owner is now my girlfriend from 3 years. We celebrated our 3rd year anniversary today, I took her to amusement park, her favourite hotel, we watched her favourite movie and did everything she loved to do. And seeing her smile and being happy, I was content. Illeana got tired from all the roaming today and slept on our bed earlier than usual. Did I mention how adorable she looks while sleeping?
I thank God every day for letting us meet again after years. It was a fateful encounter. We came across each other during a college exhibition held at California. She was representing her college while I was representing mine. All that time she had been living in my own city which I wasn’t aware of. Luckily I got enrollment in a university of California due to which we could meet through an exhibition even when we were from different colleges.
The first time I saw her there, my heart began racing faster than usual. She was all in a formal attire, with her college name tag near her chest. Her hair was open and reached till her waist. She had some make up on which made her look attractive. She looked nothing like the short heighted, chubby cheeked Illeana who was always seen in braids, with whom I fell in love. How could I not? She was so adorable.
Usually she was the type of girl who remained unnoticed by most of the crowd because she didn’t interact much and always stayed hidden. But since I struck my eyes on her, I could never look anywhere else. She always talk about how attractive my hazel brown eyes are. Has she ever seen her ocean blue ones?
Our small but cute interactions made me more drawn to her. But the driving force behind my love was when I saw her defending me, standing up for me. I was amazed by her bravery, she did something no one dared to do. That was the moment I thought that this was the girl I loved.
I initiated our friendship, we became friends, close ones at that. I shared everything happening in my life, she did too. I had become so comfortable with her, that was her magic.
Everything was going great between us, until we entered senior high school. Our sections got changed and I remained busy in my basketball practices. Basketball was something which would always come first for me. Illeana was a close second though. I made new friends and was happy in their company, I didn’t know Illeana was being jealous about it until I read this diary. I did try my best to take out time for her though, to assure her that she was important to me too.
But I guess our fate didn’t want that. I was having problems in my family. My mom was found cheating on my dad years after their marriage! They were having continuous fights day and night. I was frustrated by it and tried to ignore it by indulging more in practices. And remaining time, I hung out with my new friends at clubs to forget everything momentarily. Conciously and Unconsciously, I had started giving her less to no time.
Finally she complained about it to me. She was right in her point. It was I who was wrong. I was already frustrated by the situation at home and her complaints made no help. I told her to understand me, that I had a busy schedule. In reality I just didn’t want to worry her with my family problems.
Slowly the fights at home increased and it was becoming intolerable at a point. I was so frustrated from the incident that without realising, I was developing anger issues. I didn’t know about it until my aunt who was psychiatrist, told me about it and suggested that I needed an anger management therapy. I became angry at every little thing, I hated that but I couldn’t control myself.
I was afraid I’d hurt her with my words and anger if I interacted with her. I was afraid of hurting the person I loved and who was the only one standing beside me. So I started ignoring her, giving her cold treatment. It was killing me from inside but it was better for her to stay away from me now. I thought that’ll stop her from pestering me but it didn’t.
She was desperate to hold onto our friendship. I felt terrible every time she made efforts to initiate a conversation while I ignored it. When I realised she wasn’t going to be backing down, I brought Eva to the picture. I pretended to be close to her in hope that Illeana would stop now. Eva was a good friend of mine and knew about my condition so she agreed to help.
But Illeana didn’t stop even after that. She joined the coaching classes which I had joined earlier just so that she could meet me and talk with me. My girl is too stubborn, isn’t she?
But that time my family was on the verge of breaking apart. I was going through a lot, along with my anger issues so when she tried to interact with me, I replied with harsh words. The only thing I feared for, for my anger issues that I’d hurt her by words, the fear came true. I regretted it, a lot, I still do it till now. Had I controlled myself back then, situation wouldn’t have turned out like that. But my family was breaking apart, I wasn’t in my stable state then. But that isn’t an excuse for my harsh words. I was indeed wrong, I admit.
The day after, my parents had divorced. Neither my mom nor dad was ready to take my custody. I was left alone by both of them in an empty house with cash for livelihood. I was all alone. Mom and dad had left and I lost her too after saying those damn harsh words.
I stopped attending school, coaching classes and practices for a whole month. I wanted time to recover myself. During this time, Eva helped me a lot, I’d always be thankful to her. After a month when I attended school, Eva was the one who kept consoling me. I hugged her as she comforted me. That’s when I saw Illeana looking at us. My world stopped. I hadn’t seen her for a month when I was always thinking about her. And after a month when I see her, it’s when Eva was in my embrace. I didn’t know how she felt about it. I didn’t explain too because I was ignoring her already and what would I say? It wasn’t like she loved me (I thought she didn’t then).
I couldn’t face her at all after that, after I had hurt her. She didn’t pester me anymore too. Why would she when I had called her ‘clingy? She wasn’t clingy, she was kind hearted. But who would tell the teenager Adrian who was engulfed in anger issues?
My scores dropped in boards to the bottom. But I could least care about it. Afterall there was no one who’d scold me for it at home. But I was happy to see her name on top. She was improving in her studies and I couldn’t be happier than that.
We had stopped talking with eachother completely by now. To fill the void left by her, I tried to get more close to Eva, but it didn’t help at all. Eva was not her, nobody could ever be her match and nobody could fill her place in my heart. She would never be replaced from my heart. The school thought we were dating, and I wondered what drugs they were on.
I had made up my mind to completely ignore her until I got to know she made friends with Ben, my opponent team player. Ben was known to be a player who didn’t have great reputation with girls. So I warned her about him. Although my wordings weren’t great but my intentions were good.
“Atleast he’s better than you.”, her words affected me to the core. She was nothing wrong, I had been behaving like a jerk to her. And at the end, she didn’t listen at all.
When I got informed that Ben had taken her somewhere, my heart raced, I got a bad intuition and my intuitions were never wrong. When I entered the door and saw him strangling her, my blood boiled. How dare he lay hands on her. I knocked him to the ground and beat him up. My anger was taking over me completely, I kept punching him until his face bleeded. I would have beat him to death completely if not she’d have stopped me. My eyes which were filled with fire moments ago, immediately calmed when I locked eyes with her. I hugged her tightly, I was moments before to lose her. Never had I been so afraid in my life. If something would have happened to her, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself forever. I took her to the hospital to get her treated.
Just as I was thinking everything was going back to normal, I got a notice from sports authorities that I was suspended from the upcoming tournament and practices because I beat up opponent team’s player. I had prepared so much for it, practiced day and night and yet, it didn’t take them minutes to suspend me? They didn’t even investigate the matter.
I had lost all hopes with life. I could never get happiness. First, my parents left me, I had developed anger issues, I had hurted the only person I loved dearly and now, even my dream was getting snatched. In all those depressing events, my mind still had a small hope. That maybe, just maybe, I can still get back with Illeana. Although I was still suffering from anger issues, but I was attending therapy for it and I could control it. At first I was reluctant and afraid to speak to her about my illness, but now I had made up my mind that I’d speak to her and confess her why I was being like that. She may not forgive me easily but I was ready to persuade her.
I waited…waited until she had moved on from the incident and attended school. And when she attended the first day, she came to meet me during break. My heart was racing after I saw her, this was the time to confess her everything, my illness, reason for my rude behaviour, and my love for her.
But the first thing that came out of her mouth was to end our friendship and quit everything. My world collapsed. I couldn’t believe it was coming out of her mouth, she who was the most desperate in trying to hold us. Was she tired of it? I confirmed with her if she really wanted that and she said yes. She didn’t want to keep connections with me anymore. She wasn’t wrong, who’d want to stay after all the rude behaviour I did. She maybe hated me more than ever.
I kept quiet. I didn’t want to let go but she had already made up her mind. And forcing her to be with me…that wasn’t something I couldn’t even imagine. I agreed, if that’s what she wanted, so be it. That’s how our friendship and my heart broke without any confession nor rejection.
We didn’t talk after. The only time we did, she was at my doorstep, giving me a gift box. I was happy with the gesture but confused. And her words cleared all my confusion. She was leaving, forever… The ground slipped below my feet. I wouldn’t see her, ever again. Everything was coming to an end now. She smiled, her smile which makes my heart flutter every damn time! I atleast expected a hug but I knew we weren’t in a place to hug eachother. My house was empty as my parents left, and so now was my heart because…she was leaving too and I was nowhere in place to stop her. I could only smile sadly at her and wish her well for the future. I didn’t even have courage to say goodbye, neither did she. And that’s how we parted ways.
Everyday, everynight I missed her, yearned for her, cried for her. But everything was useless, because she wasn’t here with me now. She came like a brightness in dark for me and left leaving me in dark again. But I didn’t let that become my weakness. She was my strength, not weakness. I focused on developing myself, attended every therapies to get cured of my illness which was the cause for everything. I started focusing more on studies than basketball which was absolutely difficult for me, but she was my driving force. I had only one motive in mine. To become capable, if I did then I would be able to find her, at any corner of the world and never let her go again.
I never thought that day would come after 4 years and in my own city. She was standing in front of me, in a more matured version of herself and if that didn’t skip my heart several beats, I don’t know what did…
She greeted me along with her teammates, I and my teammates did too, it was a professional gesture. As teams weren’t allowed to talk before the exhibition, so we didn’t have any more talks and went straight backstage.
It was her team’s turn and she was the spokesperson. She presented their model and described about it confidently to the judges. I was amazed by her. Once she used to be the less talkative and hidden girl in school, now she was more bold, strong and confident. The growth made me proud of her. After their team we presented our model. The results were announced and unfortunately their team came 2nd while ours was 1st. For once, I felt bad even if I won. I wanted to give the 1st prize to her considering how upset she looked and it was rare because I was always competitive about winning. Love…does change everything.
After the exhibition, I searched for her backstage and everywhere possible but she was nowhere to be found. I was afraid, had she left again? Had I lost my only chance again?
I went to the room where all our bags were kept to hurry outside and find her. This exhibition had weird rules, they provided their own bags to all the participants for bringing in things so all the participants had same bags. And all bags were piled up in one room. I picked up the one which I felt was mine and hurried outside. I searched everywhere, asked the teachers and staff but they didn’t know anything. I was frustrated and sad. I opened my bag to search my phone so that I could contact the security if he had let her out. But when I opened it, I didn’t found my belongings. I picked up someone else’s bag.
That’s when the diary slipped out of the bag. Curiously I opened the diary and went through the pages searching for any name written somewhere so that I’d know to whom it belonged and return it back. As I went through the pages, I didn’t find any name written on it, but the contents were very familiar to me. Then I realised, it was all about me. The book was written about me even when the name wasn’t specified. And that meant, it only belonged to one person…
And as predicted, she walked upto my bench, my bag with her. She became surprised seeing her diary with me. She snatched it away but it was too late, I had already read the contents and also…her feelings for me. The same feelings I had for her. I couldn’t be more happy.
That was moment. I told her everything, past and present, my illness, my parent’s divorce, reason for my change in behaviour, everything. Lastly I confessed my feelings which I had buried inside me like her. It wasn’t the perfect moment for confession but I was afraid I wouldn’t get another chance, if not today. I had already waited for years, I couldn’t wait anymore.
Misunderstandings were cleared, she accepted my confession, everything was sorted. If only we confessed earlier, if only my illness didn’t strike, if only I handled the situation better…
We wasted 6-7 years because of it and I didn’t want to waste a second more. I asked her out for a date…I initiated our relationship like I did with our friendship. She agreed. FINALLY we got TOGETHER.
We were happy being in eachother’s solace. But I still regretted my past actions, my intentions were never bad but I still did wrong with her. Although she forgave me given her kindness but I didn’t forgive myself for it. And that’s why I still read this diary often even after our 3 years of relationship. Earlier she always used to keep the diary with her wherever she went before I had met her again. But after our relationship started, she never opened it once. She didn’t want to dwell on the past which would upset her so she wanted to forget. But I didn’t. I read this diary so that I get reminded of how much hurt I had caused her in the past intentionally and unintentionally. Her raw feelings are written her which hurts me every time I read it. But it also reminds me of how better I have to treat her in the future to make up for my mistakes.
Some things in life are endless and that’s what keeps the life going. That’s the beauty of life.
Our story, which neither of us knew for, came to a happy ending at last.
Dear Diary, you were the witness of our relationship and you were the reason for our reconciliation. In the end note, I’d like to express how precious you are for both of us now. You’re the treasure of memories we’ll keep forever.
And lastly, to your owner who I don’t know would even read it or not, I’d like to say that you’re the best thing that happened in my life. You are the light to my darkness, happiness to my problems and cure to my pains. Thank you for being a part of my life, thank you for being you.
I love you, forever and always…
Love
Your Owner’s Boyfriend.
~~~The End~~~
