Faltering Hopes...

“Click”….. The phone line went dead. She put the receiver back into its cradle. Sitting on her chair she closed her eyes, trying desperately to control the tears that had formed in her eyes and were threatening to pour out. She couldn’t cry. She was strong, and strong girls don’t cry. Her hands were on her knees and a faraway look in the eyes which had been twinkling just a few moments back.

She felt a complete and utter sense of loss. But how could it be described as a loss, something that was never really her’s. Her dreams had been shattered, her hopes dead. What all she had imagined and what had actually happened! She closed her eyes again wanting desperately to melt into the floor and just vanish away. But it wasn’t possible, she knew. Though she tried to be discreet, a lot of people around her were aware of her feelings for him. The same teasing which she once secretly enjoyed was something she was dreading to face. Her friends, she could talk to, but what about the others who would be oblivious to this turn of events and continue to tease her? She did not have the strength to see all the pitiful faces; those sympathetic smiles. She wanted to disappear, just be a nobody. Her life was empty if he could not share it with her. The incident a few minutes back had completely clogged her mind, made her numb, incapable of forming any rational thought.

Wanting to distract herself, she decided to meet up with her friends. All through the evening, the conversation replayed itself in her mind, bringing a fresh flow of tears in her eyes. Those tears, which she knew she must control. It was hard, but not impossible. She couldn’t burden others with her own problems. They had their own. She had to keep all the thoughts, the feelings and pain inside her. She had to have the guts to face the world. But mostly she had to accept what had happened before she could tell it, even to her best friends.

The thoughts, those hurtful moments, she recorded them in her diary. But his wonderful face; soft, chocolate brown eyes and his cute grin kept presenting itself in front of her and she had to live with it. As a hard as she tried, she couldn’t get rid of those eyes of his which kept popping in her mind and making her want to shout. Her head started swooning; and when she closed her eyes to stop from spinning, she recalled the phone conversation which they had had. “No. I just don’t feel the same way” was the sentence that was torturing her. She had just told him her most important secret, had opened up her heart to him, had called, wishing and wishing deeply for him to accept her. She had even weaved a beautiful dreamland just for the two of them. But her dreamland got crushed under the force of just one word, “No.” her heart ached when she heard it. “What’s the reason?” she asked him, trying desperately for the last time to make him realize how much he meant to her. But he broke her heart anyway.

They had a lot of common friends and she was bound to run into him sooner or later. The thought that once brought happiness was something she wanted to avoid now. She didn’t want to see him again, because she knew that her heart would pine for his love again- something that she would have to contend living without. He was never going to be hers anymore. Maybe his heart belonged to someone else already!

She kept thinking of the times when they had been together and how she mistook his friendliness to be his love for her. Did her own feelings blind her so much that she could not see the reality as it was? “Didn’t his eyes twinkle just for me? Was that smile not really special?” she felt, as she closed the diary into which she had just filled in this new entry. It was late night when she crept upstairs and entered her bed. Now in the darkness of the room and the comfort of being alone, her heart opened again, wider than ever, and she didn’t try to stop the tears from finally pouring out...