Friday, July 19, 2013

A Short Story About a Boy

 

About a Boy Who Is and Isn't

A short story about a boy and a girl...


One day, a boy came into a girl's life and funnily enough, it wasn't until awhile later when all was still, that she realised that he was there at all and that his presence, so quiet, had made such an impact that she had inadvertently started to refurbish her entire universe to accommodate him. It's funny...how the most unexpected thing or person presents themselves to you and suddenly everything is different, shifted...out of whack...but better.

So many of us romantics at heart grow up believing this beautiful person will come along one day, see us, believe in us enough, love us and save us. So many of us meet the person we think is THAT person. So many of us find our happiness. The girl did. For awhile at least. He walked out of the black and white, out of her imagination and landed on her doorstep. He held so many perfect things in the palm of his hand that for awhile there, she thought he held her universe too. So many of us find out later that happiness was a bit of a sham and that you had been fooling yourself into believing in it, so desperate were you to find it. 'Oh well', thought the girl.

You go through phases of course...anger, desperation, grief, sadness until one day, quite gradually, you find space between you and everything else. A own private universe. But in that space, you find peace. And that peace is where you start to find love and joy in so many other things. That happened to the girl too. Space made her suddenly realise how much of it there is out there, how much she was yet to grasp, to chase, to appreciate.

So the girl found herself meandering along her universe, appreciating space, feeling at peace, when a boy presented himself to her. He was so fundamentally different, so strange, and so ridiculous that contemplating him was out of the question. He was opposite to everything she had thought she was. An Opposite Boy.

The girl went on believing in the things she did. She thought surely by now, when she was so at peace someone else would come along. Someone who fit. Someone who was the same as the other but better. Subsequently, some who fit the bill did come along and the girl was surprised at how easily they materialised, these better boys.

The Opposite Boy however, hung around in the corners of the girl's universe. Everything he was, was opposite. Light to her dark. Big to her small. Quiet to her noise. Obtuse to her clarity. Brightness to her gloom. Ridiculousness to her sensibility. Beautiful to her ugly.
Every step she took to avoid him, he would take a step toward her.

The girl was so busy trying to figure this boy out that one day, quite involuntarily, she woke up and instead of the lost boy, or those better boys, or space, or peace, she was contemplating him. She would contemplate him when she worked. She would contemplate him when she dreamed. He confused everything that she thought made her up.

Funnily enough, he also made everything better. She started to laugh a lot more. She started to see his light in her dark. Hearing his noise in her peace made things exciting again. His ridiculousness brought humour to her sensibilities. His beauty made her want to be better.

Quite unwittingly, the girl had started to change her universe. Quite unwittingly, the Opposite Boy had saved her. Quite unwittingly, she was happy.
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These days, I am quite content being in love with a boy who lurks in the fringes of my universe but really, has no business being there. Who he is or what or where or how this will pan out...I really can't say. He is difficult to explain even to myself. Hell, he is difficult to understand as it is. Why though, the Whys I can explain. He makes me happy. The kind of happy that doesn't need anything that you think you need to make you happy. The kind of happy that makes your happiness infectious, allows you to make other people happy, to want it for everyone else. The kind of happy that makes you want to be better, stronger and consequently, I believe, makes you love in the truest sense.

And for that alone...please, let this and us (the boy and the girl) be. 

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