First love/Last infatuation
Season two's sixth newsletter immerses you in the rush of surprise, wonder, delight, fear and despair brought about by an unexpected encounter that had the potential to change everything
Greetings dear dreamers
Welcome to the second season of The Abandoned Dreams Collective.
Meet cutes don’t happen anymore. Sometimes I wonder - did they ever? Or was it only something that the romcom industrial complex fed us, making us linger longer in coffeeshops and bookshops, spending more money than we would in a rational world? Every coupled person that I know has met their partner either through friends/family or online.
A few weeks ago I went to a coffee shop in my neighbourhood to spend the afternoon working on this newsletter. It was a hot summer day (kind of moot to mention when you live in Singapore and every other day is a hot summer day) and I was sitting outside with an iced coffee in shorts and my hair up hitting the keys on my laptop with abandon. I felt content, lost in my own world of editing, ideating, noting down turns of phrase for use later. Of course, a boy had to come and mess with my head.
He said he’d noticed me sitting in the same position hours ago when he’d cycled by this same spot and asked what I was working on. I said I’m a writer by weekend when my day job ends and he said he wrote too - his writing was about finance (yes I was rolling my eyes at the time as well).
We both worked in the same industry in different companies and had stories to share.
He asked me if I lived nearby and I named the landmark closest to my apartment building. His apartment building it turned out was a mere 3 minute walk from mine.
When he asked for my number and asked if it would be okay for him to ask me out sometime, I was only too happy to oblige.
He texted me 3 hours later and the second thing he said on text (after the hi) was that he’s only into casual dating.
End chat
Meet cutes don’t happen anymore. Except it did - a real one, to this week’s writer Sayel in this scintillating, goosebump evoking account of his.
First love/Last infatuation
Is this what being high feels like?
A sudden rush of adrenaline?
Feeling like you might die but you haven't felt more alive before?
“Once my lover, now my friend, what a cruel thing to pretend”, I am in bed listening to Fiona Apple, thinking about the week I had and the bitter sweetness brought by these 3 AM memories stains my pillow covers with hopeless tears.
I still remember how I hated the idea of going to a wedding where I didn't know anyone. Now a week wiser I would give everything away to relive it once more, to be in midst of tables covered with white linen out in the lawn under the twinkling lights, sitting among strangers but it feels like home just because you are with him.
How can a stranger have such an effect on someone but maybe we were not strangers at all, maybe in some life we had been together, no, even in that life I was there pining and anticipating while he was….well him.
Across the table I look at him, with his hair parted neatly as he talks, eating carefully so as to not stain his white kurta and I just listen in my casual denim jacket thinking, could this be real? Can it always be like this? All while knowing there is no always…at least not for us.
“Do you smoke?” I asked him. The dinner was almost over, he looked at me grinning softly ”Do I smoke?” He placed a pack of Marlboro Lights on the table” Can I have one?” I ask rather timidly, concerned with the fact that he might refuse “I only got one” he checks and then continues “ and I forgot my lighter at home”. I check my pocket to find an empty pack of Dunhill with a lighter inside it.
We ran towards the bushes after pacing around the avenue trying to find anyone who could sell us cigarettes only to fail and it was fate I suppose as my lips could never meet his, but I could breathe from the vessel of his touch.
Breathing in….
Breathing out….
Smoke wafting in the monsoon air, dancing around us, unraveling itself like a thread left loose, binding us together in its pungent smell.
The entire event looked so small from here, little silhouettes moving, shining in the dark night, going around talking to each other and all I could hear was the rustling of trees and the hushed sound of his breath. And that could have been my world because it was enough, being with him was enough.
I sit much more comfortably now, in his car, on the front seat, going back home. Looking out the open window, smiling at how awkward I was just 2 hours earlier, pretending I didn't know anything about crypto just so he could keep talking.It felt like my luck was laid down in a deck of cards and somehow I had managed to pull out the right one, even just for some fleeting hours it was mine, He was mine. One hand on the steering wheel and another on the gear stick. It's a long way to home, we cruise in the fastest lane, wind rushes through my hair, blurred sights but nothing had ever been so clear. What would happen if we ended up with stitches in a hospital room, I would be there broken looking over at you, smiling that you are here too. Maybe broken bones can fix broken hearts too, or maybe I just don't want to leave yet, I want to stay here even if it gets bad. I am flying high, just to fall so my bones can get crushed but isn't that better i kept thinking till the car door slammed shut.
11 PM and I entered my house but was it ever my home? The embrace I left just moments ago felt more natural, more known, much more…home. I rushed towards my bed throwing myself at it, covering my face with pillows and sheets, afraid someone might wake me up.
Is this what being high feels like?
A sudden rush of adrenaline?
Feeling like you might die but you haven't felt more alive before no, not in any sense, no drug could produce what this was, this was more numbing than smoking pot in parking lots, more soothing than doing edibles on the beach, more scorching than your first sip of dry gin. I always thought there was something wrong with me because I never liked these feelings, thinking nothing worked on me but at last he worked. This was his high and I was on cloud nine. Walking on a pathway between reality and fantasy, thinking, imagining, dreaming, flying, burning as I got too close to his fire. Searching for him in my memories, on google. Replaying his voice, his playlists on soundcloud. Reimagining his face, his ID on instagram, I send a request, it's 2 AM. Heart pumping, blood rushing, short breaths, head spinning, it feels like death.
Mobile buzzing, 10 notifications, 0 from him.
Waiting, changing sides at every moment.
Talking, reliving, telling everyone.
Sharing, hiding, messaging friends.
Turning the mobile off, slowly blacking out, one last sound, an unexpected pop-up.
Him on screen, it’s quarter to 3.
Days pass, one after another, falling like dominoes, like me but it was just me, never him. We were destined to fall apart but never together. Looking at it now, a week later, it's all laid down in a deck of cards, but not regular ones - our deck was a deck of tarot. We were the reversed Lovers, in one sided disharmony, the Wheel of Fortune kept turning and it turned upright on me, and I was The Fool on a backward Chariot waiting for Death to consume what was left of me.
It's a Monday morning, almost a month since the wedding, the sky is turning gray, looming on the horizon is a thunderstorm. It's always special when it rains in Karachi, the spell of unbearable heat is broken for a few days. The air becomes cold, the sweet scent of rain takes over, the sound of water gushing from rain pipes muffles the noise of ongoing traffic. The city drowns everytime and resurfaces, baptized.
Breathing in this air, soaking wet, I couldn't tell my tears apart from the rain drops. Maybe there were no tears at all.
-Sayel
Abandoned on the interwebs
Abandoned on the interwebs is a new section on this newsletter where I recommend some riveting, spine tingling, evocative articles, books, essays that I’ve stumbled across when I’m left to my own devices on the internet.
I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way -Poetry and analogies and metaphors are great but sometimes you reach a state wherein they’re not enough. You want something that feels like it sees the rawness you’re feeling. We deride basicness but sometimes nothing captures an emotion or a state of being quite like speaking in a base manner, speaking literally of what comes to mind and having that be the most profound thing you could say. This letter is that.
Public Relations - Meet cutes and fanfiction are intertwined. You often don’t know where one ends and the other begins. I’ve been up and down a Harry Styles rabbit hole lately so this book (that I read years before I was even a fan) that’s loosely inspired by the Harry Styles fandom and the very fanfic idea of a world famous pop star falling in love with you. A girl can dream…
Before I leave you to dream
With the aim to continue growing this newsletter, I’ve set up a page where you can contribute monetarily: Ko-fi.com/theabandoneddreamscollective
This will support the newsletter grow through increasing reach, growing its pipeline of contributors, optimize submission management and eventually pay contributors.
I hope you consider contributing to this mission.
That’s all for this week
I look forward to seeing you again next week with a new story.
Much love and many dreams
Nirmitee
The Abandoned Dreams Collective