I found Love.

29/30

Captain America is the man in my life. Our story is not like any other relationship I’ve been in. I was hosting a pub trivia night and he was the only person taking part by himself, without a team. He took his participation very seriously. Yes, it was a quiz night. At a pub. Not a national trivia championship. Of course, I noticed him. Anyone would. He was the only white dude in the audience who was cross-questioning my every question. I remember losing my temper and trying to ‘zing’ him, and even then, he didn’t lose heart. At the end of the night (he didn’t win) I felt bad for publicly humiliating him, so as a consolation prize, I went over to give him a couple of movie tickets. To that he said,

“Keep these tickets and instead, have dinner with me.”

Now, to be honest, my stomach did a flip and I did not know how to handle the situation. In most (ok, all) my previous relationships, I’ve been the one who made the first move. It didn’t upset me or make me feel small. We’re in the 21st century and I’m an independent woman. But, having said that, I have never experienced such raw interest from a man. He didn’t flinch, he wasn’t flirting; he was direct. He wanted to have dinner with me. Obviously, I denied. I hid from him for the rest of the night. Because, for me, it was too straight forward. There were no games. No playing hard to get. It was an honest, simple question. I was in unfamiliar territory. I was dating someone back then so I wouldn’t have accepted, either way. But his sincerity stayed with me. It made me want to look him up on Facebook and send him a friend request.

“Only to keep him updated on other quiz nights. He seemed interested.”, I lied to myself.

We ended up becoming friends. We were platonic, Facebook messenger friends. We would chat about music, life, and some more music. I liked talking to him. His conversations were intelligent, he pushed me to think out of the box and introduced me to new and interesting artists.

Somewhere down the line, we stopped talking. It could have been the fact that I was afraid that he started to mean something more to me. We went our separate ways and it had been a while since we had a ‘virtual’ conversation. I was recently single and trying to move on with life, when out of nowhere, I bumped into Captain America. I didn’t recognise him at first because of the lack of in-person meetings between us (I wasn’t kidding about being virtual friends), over the years of our friendship. He had also grown out his hair and changed his physique, not a Michaelangelo but still, sculpted. That’s where the alias comes from. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. It took all of one conversation for us to know where this was going.

I found love with Captain. In the past, I’d think ever so often that I was deeply and madly in love with whoever I thought I was in love with. Now that we are ‘us’, the rest feel frivolous. I sometimes fantasize of wanting to go back in time, just to knock some sense into the lovestruck fool I was and demand to have patience and save the word ‘Love’ for him. Over the last 12 years, I’ve found myself crying over some boy who broke my heart, pillows drenched with tears of heartbreak, feeling like the world had ended. But however sad or angry or hurt I felt back then, I’m glad I experienced that pain. I’m glad that all my efforts to make those relationships work failed, because if they did somehow work out, I would have missed out on being truly happy. I would have missed out on getting to know and love this wonderful human being who loves me for who I am, in all my self depreciating glory. And here’s the thing. He’s never made me feel like I was any of the things I’ve written myself to be. In his eyes, I’m amazing. And at times, I believe it. I believe that I’m capable of doing great things with my career. Capable of being the best person I can be. Capable of getting back onto that diet, only to be healthy and not to ‘just look good’. And on days that I’m an emotional mess from feeling worthless, he’s there to remind me that I’m a diamond.

My next statement might break the rules of ‘The Secret’ and attract negative energy towards our relationship, but, however gut wrenching and heartbreaking the thought may be, it’s possible that somewhere in the future we may change as people and might lose this beautiful love that we have found. I’m not saying it will happen and I really hope to God that it never does, but it’s possible. If that were to happen, I will never regret having given him my heart. It will hurt and I will want to die just so I can relieve myself from the pain, but I will know that what we shared was the real thing. For he has nurtured my foolish heart and helped it grow bigger, bearing the fruits of kindness and strength. As I write this post on the eve of my 30th, I will gladly say that he is the greatest gift life has given me. He travelled a thousand miles, to a city he never thought he would ever be in, and picked me.

Thank you for coming to that quiz, Captain. It changed my life.

-BR