She liked his aftershave, and he liked her shampoo

His first handshake was firm and sincere. He exuded confidence, intelligence, ambition and an endearing sort of shyness. She was exhausted from 2 days of grueling interviews followed by a night sleeping upright at the airport, but she forgot all that the minute he came up and said hello. He made her smile, and he made her laugh. Several meaningful conversations and innocent gestures of tomfoolery later, companionship turned into love. He swept her off her feet, and she surrendered to the feeling of being accepted, the feeling of security and the feeling of not being able to resist temptation and addiction. This love that they shared and reciprocated seemed like it would endure the worst of odds. How did such a perfect love go wrong?

He won her over with affection. He was truly the most affectionate person she had ever met. However, she knew that affection was only ephemeral no matter how deep the love was. She knew that she couldn’t count on this affection forever like he claimed. He interpreted her reluctance to indulge in the affection as rejection, although she was only trying to protect herself from getting hurt. She eventually went against her better judgment and started to delve in the affection and believe that love would last forever. She was severely punished for that. The affection did fade away, and she was left with only her tears for comfort. He soon became drunk with power and money, and once he reprioritized his life, she did not fit in anymore. She could not compete with a million dollars. She saw this coming all along and tried to escape several times. He wouldn’t let her escape while she was still strong enough to recover. He just drifted further and further away into his own world until she realized that he was gone.

He claimed that he understood women. He thought she wanted a Latin Lover by her side. He thought he could dazzle her with dramatic professions of love and spectacular gifts. He gave her everything he thought women wanted. However, already smitten by his good looks and sensuous charm, she just wanted the little things. She wanted to be part of the key moments of his life. She wanted a companion to unwind with after a rough day at work. She wanted a dependable friend she could count on to lift her spirits. Above all, she wanted someone she could pamper. She wanted someone who leaned on her as much as she leaned on him. She so badly wanted to fulfill his needs, but she never figured out what they were. She wanted to feed him and take care of him, but he had family for that. She wanted to be his friend, but he had plenty of those. She was there to be his source of comfort and advice, but he didn’t need that. She was there to believe in him and encourage him to achieve his dreams, but his power-drunkenness at work took care of that. She felt crippled, because she had no way of showing him how much she cared for him.

This disparity in needs led to fights on many occasions. One day, they both stopped fighting. They stopped fighting against each other, but they also stopped fighting for each other. They could have saved this relationship if they had tried. They could have communicated better. They could have committed more. Their relationship could have weathered all those storms and more. Too bad he couldn’t afford the time and she ran out of strength.

If only he knew how much she needs him and pines for him. She would give anything for things to be back they way they were before the relationship started to crumble. She was the one who chose to end it, but he had drifted away far from her reach long before that. Alas, now he is just one more bottle of anger she will store in her heart forever with all the other bottles of anger. This bottle is particularly explosive, because of the sparks of deep, hopeless love at the bottom of all that anger.

His world keeps on spinning like nothing ever happened, but she never stops thinking about her first love that she let go of. She wonders what could have been if she were strong enough to accept love that special. For all she knows, she may just have been cut out for love that is not as special; “love” based on arcane theories of cosmic interaction; “love” that allows merciless and unfair judgment of a person based on superficial knowledge; “love” between two perfect strangers with too many expectations and hardly any understanding…