To be loved by someone

Chapter 3

As you left the city, your mind began to wander.

You were already twenty-two and still never had a boyfriend. You grew up within a peaceful, loving family and you had grown up into a really good girl. Some even compared you to an untainted snow, well-mannered and pure, but most mocked you, calling her, Miss goody-two-shoes or little Miss Priss.

As you were growing up, you had gotten used to other people mocking you but your grandparents always encouraged and advised you to not let the water around you enter her ship, otherwise, you would drown. You had been raised to keep a positive mindset and you yourself decided that there was no way you would let those kinds of people drown you.

You had a reason for why you had never had a boyfriend in your twenty-two years of existence. When you were seventeen, you realized that you had developed a trauma - you were afraid of having someone fall in love with you.

You had witnessed just how much you father suffered day by day, even years after your mother died. It was unbearable for you to even watch him. Your father loved your mother so much that even after nearly two decades of her death, you still saw your dad crying at night, looking at his wife's photo. You had seen just how painful it was to lose someone you loved through your father - it was nothing but torture. You even once heard your father saying that he didn't feel alive anymore since that day her mother died. You knew that her father was only holding on because of you.

Years after your mother's death, you were diagnosed with the same illness that killed your mother. It appeared that you inherited the illness from her and since then, you had been battling with it. You were only seventeen that time and you knew that just like your mother, you only had 5 more years to live.

That was why you always rejected the boys who showed any interest in you. There were a few of them but your fear would always be triggered especially when someone confessed to you. All you could say to them was 'sorry'. Due to that, you avoided boys as much as you could. You even purposely dressed quite unfashionably in order to become less attractive.

However, as years passed by, you started to question yourself. 'Will I die just like this?'

The desires that you had been suppressing all this time were getting out of control. you had been dreaming of wanting to experience how it would feel like to love someone. You wanted to know how it would feel to have butterflies in one's stomach, and how it would feel to kiss and embrace that person you loved with all your heart, romantically. You had read many novels and you couldn't help but wish you could at least experience this so called love before you died. That was your only wish - to fall in love someone, to find someone she could fall in love with.

But you were torn. You were afraid and worried sick. You didn't want to leave someone behind to suffer when you were gone. You didn't want anyone to experience the loss and pain your father was going through until now.

For years, you had been thinking about it and you thought you had already accepted your fate but now that your due date was getting closer, the desire in your heart only kept on getting stronger. So you decided to be brave and try your best to make your wish come true with the little time you had left.

The only way you could think of to fulfill your wish was - to find a man whom you could fall in love with but would never fall in love with you. You had heard and read stories about one sided love. You heard and read that that kind of love was excruciatingly painful but... you still wanted it. If this was the only way for you to experience falling in love, you would be willing to throw yourself in it, even if it meant being hurt. You thought that you could handle the pain of loving someone who didn't love you back more, than dying without knowing what love felt like at all. Perhaps, you were thinking about the quote you once read when you were eighteen that said, 'It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all'.

You once anonymously shared your situation online and asked about what to do. Your thread garnered lots of attention and different contradicting reactions occurred.

"Since you don't want someone to fall in love with you, then why don't you go and pick a random bad guy? I mean, there are a lot of jerks and heartless idiots out there who only know how to break hearts." Was one of the advice you wanted to try. But what if that supposedly heartless someone would fall for you in the end?

You still had a year left.

You were doing fine for now. The people around you, except your family didn't even know that you were sick. But your mother was like this back then, too. You somehow knew that your health would start to worsen in the fifth year - this year. You could even foresee that you might have to start going back and forth from the hospital in the next month or two. You were aware that you didn't have much time left.

Everything that just happened right then started replaying in your mind and you couldn't believe yourself. You actually did something so outrageous like that? It was simply unbelievable. Now that you pondered about it, you couldn't fathom where you got your bravery from to approach him, much more offer yourself to a stranger as mysterious and dangerous as him. Were you really that desperate?

You were aware that what you did was pure madness but... deep in your heart, you didn't regret it and the fact that that man rejected you unexpectedly motivated you. You thought that he really was the man you had been looking for. A heartless man who didn't fall for anyone. You didn't know why but you believed him when he said he didn't do love and never would. Maybe it was because you could see the truth in his eyes. You didn't know why but you just felt that the man had an icy heart that would never, ever melt.

But was it possible for you to fall in love with such a man? you wondered. Would it possible for you to love a man who was cold so cold that he might even scare your poor heart away? You didn't know but, like Eve, you wanted to taste the forbidden fruit even though you knew it might bring you pain. Besides, didn't they say that 'love builds up' and 'love is blind'?

At this point, you thought that there was really no reason for you to even tell yourself to be careful anymore. There was no point for you to chicken out anymore because you were going to die soon and if you wanted your wish to come true, you had to do it NOW. You just knew that this was your last chance.