Aman. His name always sounded sweet in my head, but even sweeter — almost dizzyingly so — on my tongue.
I hid my desires so well that even I barely knew them; I undoubtedly stole a more-than-normal amount of glances at him during our shared AP Spanish class, shyly looking down, cracking jokes just to witness the beautiful smile I had conjured. I wanted to drown in that radiance, but still, I denied any whisper of feeling, any suggestion of a “crush.” Maybe I suppressed these desires because of their unsettling intensity — a force most would find disturbing, even abhorrent. Maybe I feared the near certainty that he could never see beauty in me as I saw it in him. Maybe I just didn’t want to face the inevitable heartbreak.
But love has a way of refusing to be ignored, of pressing itself forward, pleading insistently: “I exist, I exist, I exist.” As our friendship deepened, I — hesitantly yet fervently — left a paperback of Camus’ The Stranger on his desk as a birthday gift, took the longer route to my next class just to continue our conversation on our post-Spanish walks, begged my mom for hotspot access in the Peruvian wilderness just to update him about a squirrel I saw and, at long last, stopped our daily 8th period walk to stammer, “Have you only ever seen us as friends?”
The days that followed blurred into a fusion of bewilderment and euphoria. We both wrestled with our emotions, with the scars left by past relationships, unsure if we could find a home in each other’s hearts. However, the day I asked, he hugged me, later admitting he wanted to steady my racing heart. And though it took 10 days, consisting of unrelenting nudges of my friends to face my emotions and one longing glance from the sun begging me to stop fighting the truth, I finally confessed my desire for a relationship. I knew from the moment of our embrace. He settled in my eyes, entered my heart and awakened a dreamy life.
I fell in love that summer. In his embrace, he became the most magnificent masterpiece my eyes had ever beheld. I wondered why our society immortalizes art in paint and stone when the being before me embodied the complexity of disciplines and desires, a luminous explosion of radiance. His sparkling eyes — windows into his sharp mind and tender soul — reminded me of the power in his controlled piano melodies, his uncanny ability to identify countries from their shapes alone, his devotion to the very literary classics that filled my bookshelves, his heart aching when his friends cried and his gentle eyes towards his family.
Hand-in-hand, we wandered through parks, explored cuisines across New York City and even interrupted movies and shows with inevitable, urgent kisses. We dreamed aloud — of parenthood to kittens, of careers that loomed over us with both promise and pressure, of everything between the desire of each other and a delectable cup of hot chocolate at L.A. Burdick Chocolates.
Our summer, while euphoric and sacred, bore a looming shadow of impending distance; he was soon leaving for Chicago, and I for Baltimore. The weight of this separation sank deep into our bones, carving nights of tears and a longing that left us breathless — despite the excitement of a new beginning in college. After two endless weeks apart, I visited New York on Labor Day, and we strolled through our favorite neighborhoods, sketching out our future: New York first, then a sprawling home with four cats (Plato, Al-Khwarizmi, Schrödinger and Radishchev) and three dogs (Mochi, Yan and Chili). We would build personal libraries, an observatory for stargazing and a kitchen overflowing with plates and cups collected from every corner of the world — all in our favorite city, Istanbul.
Yet despite cherished visions of our beloved “Istanbul house,” our sadness and overwhelming displays of affection morphed into something uglier. Our love, once adorned with tenderness, began exposing its fractures. My insecurities — his overwhelming number of female friends, my unshakable fear of not being truly loved — gnawed at us and, at times, threatened his need for freedom. His struggles with expressing emotion, managing anger and communicating through academic stress frustrated me. Naturally, our hearts, beating with energy and fire, attacked each other.
Fight after fight, argument after argument, endless nights of “I didn’t mean to hurt you” met with “Do you even care?” followed by “How could you say that?” And all I could think was: Where was our sweetness that I once cherished? How can two people who love each other this much hurt each other?
I faced two potential realities: Either we were unfit — too immature, too different — to endure, or our love was too powerful — too profound, too rare — to surrender. However, every resolution tightened our connection, making me realize that the nights drenched in tears, the moments that left our hearts pacing in anguish, taught me that loving beautifully depended not on maintaining peace and perfection but on knowing how to care under conditions that seem to render loving impossible.
Despite all of our hardship with managing the distance, we still show up for each other. Love surrounds us from when we look into each other’s eyes on the steps of the MET, sharing desperate kisses before each departure to when we add ‘-ie’ to our names and embrace the once-cringe-worthy endearment of “baby.” And above all, love has made us change for each other. I confronted my deepest fear — that he would leave me. He softened his heart, unraveled his anger and remembered that I only ever want the best for him.
The connection remained.
Aman, I refuse to believe meeting you, knowing you, loving you was an accident. You’ve whispered in my ears, fingers tangled in my hair, “We’re soulmates, you know that?” You’ve traced my silhouette under the moonlight, lips against my skin, murmuring, “How can I touch something as divine as you?” A force beyond mortal will brought us together, molding us like pieces of a puzzle. I believe in your poetic eyes, in your very essence, because you are real. You are mine. I affirm this love, Aman. We are intentional lovers.
Consider this my attempt to make sense of the cosmos between us.
Myra Saeed is a freshman from Great Neck, N.Y. studying Biophysics and History. She is a News and Features Editor for The News-Letter.
