the other part..

according to most of our friends & family, how my husband & i met, is something predestined and a great love story in itself. maybe they are just a little prejudiced. we were very young, it was a little before my fifteenth b'day when a mutual friend introduced us at another friends'b'day party (sounds so cliche,but true) . he was only a year and a half older than me. so you do the math. well..at fifteen years old (or 14 if you want to be politically correct), you don't even know who you are much less about real love.but you love feeling butterflies in your stomach and get all giddy and mistake the sensation for love. been there,done that. the charming personality he possessed capable of winning anyone over was an added bonus. somehow he never really impressed me all that much.besides the initial attraction, there wasn't a whole lot to hold on to. as naive as i was then, i figured that much early. does it really matter at 15? you know the answer.
funny how early i started making up excuses for things that doesn't resonate with. looking back i can dissect it into million ways today.but i was only 15 & it wasn't like i was going to get married to him. well, little did i know! we hung out a little bit whenever i could lie and get away from my parents strict supervision radar. benefit movie screenings for school fundraisers, fairs, b'day parties and going shopping with friends were my usual sugarcoated lies. most of them worked,it gave such a rush every time. it was all fun but short lived. about 6 or 7 months into our puppy love, the overseas scholarship he'd been waiting for came through and he left the country within a matter of weeks. as heartbroken as i was, my walls were way up and pretended i was fine. so we were resorted to go out our separate ways & we both moved on. that was the end of our part one.

the part two didn't start until i was about 20 or so when i heard from him again. he'd just come back & found out where i worked and called me at work one day.sure, it took me by surprise but we had lots of mutual friends by then and one of them could have easily passed on my work number. he then showed up at work the week after. i was working at a large public venue just outside colombo. i was used to running into people i know on a daily basis , so running into him at work was not really a big deal.at least it wasn't to me. he said he came with a friend and we stuck up a brief conversation ,an awkward one to say the least. i was trying to be polite and looking for getaway excuse. what do you say to an ex boyfriend you haven't seen over 5 years? it struck me as odd, too much to be a coincidence, but i brushed it off. i had completely gotten over him and had no idea what was in store for me.

over the next weeks he picked up the pace and started calling me often. my home number hadn't changed since the last time, and sometimes he'd call me at home as well. he seemed like a completely different person from last time around. for the better, of course. we caught up on the gaps we missed out on,laughed over stuff from our past and made fun of each other. reminiscing sounded fun.we both shared the same sick sense of humor and i eased out on my self developed defenses and let him in. so i decided to give it another go when he'd finally brought up the subject. when people ask me what made it happen the second time around, i say i felt secured & safe with him. and that was the truth. may be it was the comfort of already knowing part of him. like when you know you are safe with someone, you just feel it instinctively. that gut feeling. i think as women we tend to seek security in a relationship and sometimes the actual state of being loved can easily get overlooked. it doesn't seem as important. that's the only way i know how to interpret what led me. coming from a somewhat dysfunctional family (to put it mildly), feeling secured was way more fulfilling than anything.i wanted that sense of security.it all made sense. so what if we don't agree on a few things and he can come off a little controlling or even condescending? or like when he tells me its black when i know its white. so what if we fight over stuff so much when its all done and over with, we don't even remember what we were arguing about in the first place. so what if he makes me feel a little inferior at times? my family history validates it, right? you can look & search until your eyes hurt but we all know there's no perfect relationship out there. every relationship is flawed, it's how you make it work that counts, everything's going to be okay, i kept telling myself.

to fast forward the story, he met my parents a while later & we got married when i was 23. here we are now, years later. still riding out the storms. seemingly endless at that. when someone tells me how rare to have found your life partner when you were fifteen, i give them an acknowledging smile and thank them politely. when you're married, it is expected. you've got to keep your dirt behind closed doors,under lock and all.

but what i don't tell them is that i met the only love of my life,who i rarely talk about, gave him up during the 5 year lapse between these parts of one & two. my biggest regret to date, which covers my real story - the other part. only if they knew......