The Other One- Story One!

And he said “you are special”.

Little did she know that it is going to change her life forever.

5 years later, those words haunt her. Was that a mockery or pre-calculated answer. An easy escape from the torturous questions being thrown by her. She wanted to know if she mattered to him. He said those magical words she wanted to listen. She was expecting a humble yes, but he said something beyond her expectation. He said something extraordinary, something different. It had its own charm on her because it was opposite of what she had always felt about her.

She was the black sheep, the ugly duckling, behan ji, the nerdy friend of the protagonist of the story. Well there was just one problem, there are no protagonists in real life, so technically she was no one; no one that anyone would be interested in knowing. Yet he told her that she was special. He said what he had to, to get to her, to get in her pants and to get away from the inquisitive eyes. What he did not know was, that he was getting into her mind. A place that had no exit.

She let him into her mind and made the biggest mistake of her life. It incepted the idea of love, unconditional, undemanding but destructive love. The core of her heart was infected by the idea of loving him. Believing, that it is the purest, passionate emotion of love. If this isn’t love then nothing else can be defined as love. First time in her life she felt special. She could be what she had always wanted to be. She could smile, feel beautiful and feel confident about her. He wasn’t around much, yet her entire day, days after days were filled with his thoughts. She was in love for both of them. She was playing both parts, buying gifts for herself, pampering herself, thinking that’s what he would do, if he could do. She was living every moment with him, yet without him.

She wasn’t ready when it happened but then she realized that she had been preparing herself for this moment for the past two years. She knew it at some level already. Small things that she had been ignoring all this while, was slowly knocking at her subconscious. He had become a reflection of her consciousness, he was “the one”. She believed it like she believed her next breath. He was the one… she was the one. His special one!

And then it all came crashing on to her.. Her subconscious and conscious shattered. He was cheating all this while. He was cheating for past two years. He wasn’t cheating on her, he was cheating with her. He was married, had a daughter and she wasn’t the one. She was the other one.

Suddenly she was standing on the other side. She was the other woman, probably one among many other women. She felt foolish, she felt disgusted, she felt violated and she had no one else to blame but herself.

She trusted that feeling in her heart, she believed it to be love. As her subconscious was trapped on a "penrose stairs", she was walking, trying to climb up, get out of here, yet she could reach no where. He had infected her mind, deeply and irreversibly.  “If this wasn’t love, nothing can be”. Funny thing about belief is, you cant really undo it. So her whole being slowly turned to someone so different that if the two personalities of hers would have met at some point, they would have come across as a total stranger to each other. She lived under a shadow, an emotionless, worthless woman who had nothing to believe in. He went on with his life. She tried, and yet inside her heart what she once believed kept growing like a cancer. “If that wasn’t love, nothing can be”.

5 years later, she does not even remember his face, his smell, his words, his touch but she remembers what it felt like to be cheated, cheated on and cheated with. She craves to feel what it felt like before, to be loved, to belong, to feel special again but all she can feel is the fear of never coming out of this. Never being able to let go, get over this as his devious creepy laugh is still piercing what’s left of her heart.  His laughter echoes in her mind and reminds her every day “if that wasn’t love, nothing can ever be”. She looks in the mirror and sees those lost eyes. She wasn’t special, she was just available. She wasn’t the one, she was “The other one”!!