One day, life brings someone your way. When they arrive, you are charmed by their brilliance. It is the first thing you notice about them because of how easily they engineer your first conversation. You tell your friends how this person beat you at your game and recount the entire experience with a glee even you do not recognize. You start to make space for them as they become one of your nearest and dearest. You have reservations about the institution of marriage but with this person, you admit in silence that the institution began to take on a certain appeal.
On their recommendation, you take a personality test despite not being a big believer in the science. You realise that you’re INFJ and you’re animated to talk about the many ways your personalities intersect. Then came the famous “36 Questions” that promise love to those who complete its queries. With excitement, you spend hours sharing perspectives on these questions. You don’t fall in love afterwards, but you swear to have fallen somewhere close.
Like most, you associate people with songs you discovered around the time you met them. In this case, it was Seven Lifes by Beautiful Nubia. This song was not an ode to romance, but it did not matter. It did not have to be. This was our song. But one they would never know we had.
You were sure that you did not want a friendship because you understood long ago the folly in asking for friendship from one you did not see as a friend. This time, your strategy was honest and simple. For lack of a better phrase, you called what you had a “placeholder — for the beautiful things you were sure would come”.
One day, you share your thoughts on the origin of the world and root most of your stance in evolution. They disagree, for good reason. Their worldview centres around a supreme being creating all of the world in six days. You do not disagree with them, but you do not share their conviction on the matter, and they take note. Seeing what was at stake, you promise to be better; to shed this dead weight. Unfortunately, that meant giving a part of yourself away. You would try, but it would not last.
In time, your opinions would become a little too radical. You would begin to shrink yourself to fit into a box you had struggled too hard to break out of. You start to walk on eggshells around topics of spirituality and its ramifications. You are sad about this development, but that had not stopped the beautiful thing you both were designing— or so you thought. In a few months, when you think hard about the first signs of crack in your design, you would glean from hindsight that the conversation about creation, in many ways, represented the beginning of the end.
You move to a new country and stay in touch. But over time, you would notice the balance of affection starting to tilt in one direction. It would take a few more months to bite the bullet, with the tacit promise to stay cordial. This was not the outcome you were expecting but you convinced yourself it had to be done. You do not feel better. You have not felt better since. Perhaps because lodged in the corner of your mind was the idea that if you could refine those views on life and its far-reaching implications, you’ll go right back to where you left. And perhaps, in a few years, raise kids that’d get into Brampton Manor before heading to Oxford on full-ride scholarships. You are convinced of the genetic privileges you both possess to make this happen. You are smart. You know they are smarter.
One day, they inform you over a phone call that they’re getting married in a few months. You are instantly conflicted but do not show it. You are happy that they’ve found someone that ticks their boxes in the ways that matter. At least you hope that’s the case. But layered just beneath those feelings of happiness was a certain wistfulness for all the things that could have been. And despair over the good times that never came.
You share this news with those closest to you and they offer words of succour. By way of empathy, they relate their own experiences at the hands of forgotten lovers. After these calls, you return home to your feelings and get drunk on Nubia’s Seven Lifes in order to relive this tale and write about aspects of the story you can bring yourself to articulate.
On the one hand, you appreciate that this will take some time to sink in. On the other hand, you are somewhat grateful for the finality this development represents.
The song stops. You feel better.
You are Dobby. You are free.
Originally published on Medium