Stephanie, in her late twenties,
has not changed at all. She still loves to stay in and spend her time crying
over old romantic movies while underneath her blankets and thousand pillows- consciously
sneaking each pillow into a position that would improbably asphyxiate her.
She has not changed at all. She still
wears her decade old thick-framed glasses, clad in a monotonous colored dress
and a sullen blank face. She still enjoys solving complex mathematical formulae
or read her weekends away submerged in a hundred fiction books, the only
invisible link she has with her deceased father. She still stays away from
falling in love especially the kind of love that she has herself trapped into. And
she still gets scared when she imagines herself growing old alone.
Stephanie thinks her time has
frozen when she met Dave and she wishes her time has frozen with him. Before Dave,
she knew that love is defined by boundaries. Love was a state of conditional
acceptance. She witnessed the kind of love that was strongly defined by her
parents over drunkenness, bruises and cuts, shortcomings and infidelities. She
recognizes every emotion there is: hatred, desperation, envy, anxiety, anger,
bitterness, misery, pleasure, happiness, contentment, gaiety… except love.
Then she met Dave. She often
drove him away and yet would always find Dave waiting for her outside her
apartment with a box of cold pizza and a few of his hours that felt like
forever. Dave made Stephanie felt she was beautiful despite the thick-framed
glasses, her colorless ensemble and passive face. They watched sunsets and
sunrises, each so taciturn in their own interconnected worlds. He accepted her
and she began to accept her own imperfections. Slowly, Dave stripped away her
definition of love and showed her that love in its purest form is the kind of
love that compels you to live.
But Dave only lived his last six
months with Stephanie.
