LET ME SAVE YOU

Yes I want to see him every day now. No he is not a saint. He is not a devil either. The good in him, the bad in him I want to know it all. I know when he is lying and the worst is that I want to believe him even then. Not because I don’t have a choice, but because I know he can do better. Yes I want to save him, from other people. More importantly, I want to save him from himself. No I am not in love with him or anything so. I am not his friend, nor his family. It’s beyond that. I am that stranger who will turn his life around. I know so.

How long have I known him? Ten days.

‘How about a drive?’

‘Sure.’ I wasn’t sure at all. But I didn’t have a lot of time for regrets. I was dying anyway. And I wanted to save him before I was dead. Irony: I couldn’t serve that to him on the reality platter and I wanted him to take anything and everything I said to him seriously. Because it wouldn’t be too long now and there’s so much to teach you in whatever time I got.

A thirty minutes drive with somebody who wouldn’t talk. It couldn’t have been anymore awkward.

‘Your wife, does she know about us?’

‘No. Why should she know everything? And especially the things she can’t handle and understand.’

‘Isn’t that a form of cheating?’

‘How so?’

‘I mean I would maybe forgive if my husband accidently slept with somebody. Maybe. But if he wants to cook for some other girl or take somebody else instead of me for long drives, I’ll know there’s nothing left for me to save in the relationship.’

‘I married her two years ago. She was obviously a decade younger. We were friends for a few weeks before I proposed to marry her. She had lost her father to a tragic car accident. She was dysphoric and I couldn’t see her like that. So I decided to propose her and I knew she would’ve wanted that herself. That was something to make a distressed girl smile right! It has been two years since her father’s demise. She is better now. She attends her job. Comes back. Tells me how her day went by. But you know what…’

‘What?’

‘She has never asked about my day at work. She doesn’t know what I suffer. She doesn’t know my sob stories. She doesn’t know things. She doesn’t want to know things. It’s this.’

‘Why are you with her?’

‘Because I took a vow to place somebody else’s happiness before mine!’

‘And how is it working for you…?’

‘I think it’s time I drove you back to your place.’

Obviously he had nothing to say. He was living a lie. Each day, thinking it’s life. And that is what I was determined to change. But only if he’d let me.