MIXED FEELINGS III

“If I told you that a flower bloomed in a dark room, would you trust it?”

-Kendrick Lamar, Poetic Justice Ft. Drake

You are a 20-year old. A blogger to be precise. And a YUOEN fellow for that matter. Your life is an intriguing mix of bargaining with irate lecturers on assignment deadlines and trying to find the perfect canvas upon which you will paint the story of your life.

You have been to a few parties here and there with your particular breed of friends after attending Baraza’s goddamned SFL Friday class. A class which she would at times; to the evident disdain of students; extend the lecture by half an hour.

Most of you were actually more pressed to grab a hold of the guy who had promised a truckload of beer to those who voted for him at the student council elections; for such characters had a devil-like tendency of being as slippery as Rongai politicians after being elected. Thus, after receiving manna (liquor money) from heaven as promised, you would all get on that Friday Groovin’.

And so, the same gods who gave and took teenage loves are the very gods that had decreed that at the appointed hour; when your stomach was full of liquor and your vision hazy; you would proposition an attractive member of the fairer sex. And as was with all girls before, trying to make conversation with her was not as grand, especially without making her think you were just another guy who was driven more by his nuts than his brains.

You, probably, at the time of your drunkenness couldn’t quite point out what really struck her apart as gorgeous. But you weren’t the kind of guy just to hit on a girl by her looks. You remember telling her that she had a beautiful mind. And that nothing turned you on as much as a mind as hers.

You had heard her voice from what she wrote on her blog. A voice trying to exert her indifference to the expectations of the world. A voice yearning to be understood. A voice you could now see in her soft, brown eyes. A voice that echoed to the very depths of your heart.There was something by how she looked at you. How she subliminally communicated that she needed someone to talk to. Someone to rest her shoulder on. Someone to ease her pain away.

But even though you could feel the familiar feeling of affection creep into your emotional being. It wasn’t as before. Your perception of love had changed over time. But little did you know that the feeling was mutual. That her own will was against the entire idea. The idea that she could love again. The idea that she could even love after so much hurt. The idea that she could feel again. She had already resigned to the fact she’d be emotionally numb. Both of you hesitant to feel again. But as is with all human connections, both of you had no control.

And as DJ Snake’s ‘A Different Way’ gently played in the background, and all you could see was her subdued figure against the dim lighting, you realized that she had broken through the wall you had built around yourself, and with a fairly less amount of effort. And even in your drunkenness, you all of a sudden wanted to breathe the same air as she did. To run your hands through her strawberry smelling hair. To feel her hand against yours. To hold her tight against yourself and tell her not to think. But feel.

And as fate willed it.

She was the missing color from your palette.

The missing tinge of vibrance you needed to paint into the story of your life.