HER.

i still remember the first time i saw her. her hair was red, and she was dressed in a light brown spider-man t-shirt, denim shorts with red chuck taylors. i was 17. I was about to start my first semester at school, and i had a pre-course briefing to attend. my friend was late, the heat was unforgiving and i was slightly annoyed.

she walked past me towards the gate, and our eyes met briefly. intrigued beyond belief, all i could think of was who the hell still wore high top chucks? 

deep in curious thought, my friend had finally arrived, and we walked towards the same gate.

there she was, the girl in the red high tops, seemingly lost and looking for directions. we were lost too, with the school being an endless maze of extended wings, with staircases leading up and down. my friend approached her, asking if she was going to attend the same briefing as we were.

she glanced over towards me and back to my friend, and they had a brief exchange of words. he came back to me and said that she roughly knows the way, so we could just follow her.

a few flight of stairs and a couple of turns later, we arrived at the building. she entered first, held the door just enough for my friend to catch it and we went in. i took an empty seat beside my friend, and scanned the room. it was half empty. she sat on the far corner of the room.

a lecturer came in, presented slides to us, but my attention was focused on her. i couldn't put my finger on it but there was just something about her.

two weeks into the course, my friend got to know her from a camp which i did not attend. one evening where i was staying back in school to finish up some work, my friend asked me to join his table. i took a seat and she was there, sitting opposite me. he introduced the both of us, and we slowly began to share jokes as a table.

i enjoyed the conversation we had, though i did not have much interaction with her. she had another friend with her and for the next week or so the four of us continued doing work together.

soon we started to follow each other on social media platforms, and one evening she sent me a message on twitter. she asked about a game i had on my laptop and if i could send it to her. i said sure, i'll pass it to you the next day. our conversation continued and eventually we exchanged numbers.

no, this isn't some john green shit where we hit off well and have a tumulus turn of events and end up realising we are made for each other. no, this isn't a love story. 

we talked for about three months and i liked her. i asked her out and she said yes. i was overjoyed. we ate dinner at the soup spoon, or rather, i ate and she watched me eat saying she wasn't hungry. we watched a movie. equilibrium, the movie was called. it wasn't a particularly spectacular date. it was normal. 

i fell for her. her deep red hair, her brown eyes, her red chucks which i found so ridiculous at the start. i never held her hand nor did i touch her. all i did was annoy her with my constant need for reassurance and affection for the next month or so.

naturally she became annoyed and stopped replying me. a week later she broke up with me. i couldn't deal with it. i lashed out by spending hours at the gym after seeing her flirting with a course mate who was fit and good looking. 

it doesn't seem like much but i really fell for her. it affected me so greatly that i couldn't cope and overcompensated with every other aspect of myself that i felt was lacking.

i was a skinny bastard but soon i began to put on a good build and gained confidence in myself. people started noticing me and i began to get over her.

she found a new guy, and they seemed good together. i put myself back together and things were chill. we started talking again and regained our friendship. 

soon we would move into our second year and she was in my class. soon we began to stay back in school to finish up work. of course, her boyfriend and our mutual friends would be there, rushing submissions with us. i was in a happy place, having good friends around. 

as the year went by we became close friends, and the few of us would take public transport back together as it was along the way. her boyfriend gradually became absent, and it was down to the four of us. we formed a close knit group, working, eating, smoking, laughing together. she had her boyfriend and i had a few dates here and there. 

soon the four of us became best of friends, her and i especially. we shared the same taste in music, we talked the same, joked the same.

but something was off. one day she told me that she broke up with him, and i asked her why. she said that he didn't really care about her anymore and they were fighting too frequently. being her best friend i said okay, and throughout post break up i was there for her in a capacity of a friend.

we moved on to our internship phase, and the four of us would meet almost every evening after a long day at work, for dinner and drinks to unwind, talk cock. i couldn't ask for a better group of friends, i was in a good place.

before our internship she started dating this guy. he was a friend of mine as well, and things were cool. he would join us occasionally. they didn't work out. two weeks into our internship they stopped seeing each other. 

halfway through our internship, our friends didn't meet us as frequently as usual, but she and i continued with the food hunts. we became even closer, to a point where we would know what we were gonna say before we even said it.

towards the end of our internship she told me she likes me. and so did i. so yeah, we got together and i asked if she would like to go out with me. we started dating again and god, it felt so right. 

have you ever felt this feeling, this feeling you can't explain that's deep inside of you, bursting every blood vessel, vein and artery in your body with emotion? all i could feel was happiness and i shit you not, pure joy. it was truly a rush i have never had before, it took over my entire body. 

it felt like i was perpetually high on drugs 24/7, and all i had in my mind was her. i couldn't concentrate at work, i couldn't wait for 6pm every day to squeeze with the peak hour crowd, travel halfway down the island just to meet her. when i see her my heart would beat so quickly i thought it would stop, when i see her i feel numb all over my body, when i see her blood rushes to my brain so quickly i felt like i was going to faint. 

when i held her hand for the first time i held it so tightly my knuckles turned white. when i hugged her my body felt as if it were about to melt into my clothing. when i kissed her i felt like time just stopped in that instance and that everything was waiting for us.

everything about her was perfect.

when she laughs so hard her empty pre molar shows. when she takes a drag on her cigarette her lips curl in like disturbed mimosa. the way she shifts the side of her cheek to the front of her teeth to bite the walls of her cheek when she looks at her phone. 

the long walk we took to her condo when i send her home, the hug so tight she would give me before she enters the gate. the future we always talked about, where we would eventually want to go, where we would be. i have never felt so complete in my life.

i was 19. and i knew. she was the one.

but like i said, this isn't some john green movie screen bullshit. things don't work that way.

she left. i cried. so fucking much. do you know what it's like to wake up, with your pillow still soggy from the tears from last night? yeah. that was me. 

she left. i was lost. a fucking wreck. i had no clue on what to do next. have you ever felt an immense tightness in your chest that suffocates the air from you, leaving you gasping and choking? no you don't. i do. every single damn day. and i'm not even exaggerating. panic attacks from my childhood revisited me, almost every night. i read the last farewell text she sent me over a thousand times. scrutinising every word, every comma, every fullstop. yet i still could not make any sense of why.

why she left, why she chose to leave when she said that she loved me first. that sentence i would never forget.

we never really talked after that. she said we'd still be friends.

i was 20. i thought i got over her. i picked myself up, and my conscript letter came. time to serve the nation. i did rather well, so many things happening everyday. i didn't think of her any more. i slowly began to move on. i started smiling, laughing. made good friends, went on dates. hey, i thought to myself. i think i've fixed myself.

good things must come to an end, good things always do. i picked myself up, created respectable achievements for myself. she went on to live her life, working, doing what she loves. 

but i realise that it comes in waves. and you don't see it till it hits you. when you least expect it. it just comes. maybe i lied to myself when i said i moved on. truth is, i'm still stuck.

stuck with that bittersweet memorabilia. the girl who left. 

i'm 21 now. i still squeeze with the peak hour crowd at 6pm, travel halfway down the island, only to go home. and all i have is a memory of a better time.

Sent by Anonymous J