"Congratulations Sara! I'm so happy and excited for you!"
"Congratulations Sara!"
"Congratulations!". Everyone congratulated Sara in unison as she announced her marriage.
"Hey, congratulations. I never saw that coming but I'm so happy for you!". As i wished in a jolly voice, my phone starts to burst up with notifications as I glanced at my cellphone. Tapping on the "close video button", I picked up my phone.
"Hey, dude! Hope you are fine"
"Damn, dude! I never saw that coming"
Few of the messages read, as i smiled at my phone.
"Haha, it's absolutely fine. Either way were not a thing. You guys made a huge fuss out of nothing". As i replied back, a feeling of sadness ran through my body.
"This is too damn hard". Removing my headphones, I closed my eyes as my head sank on the keyboard of my laptop.
This was bound to happen someday but I never expected it to be so bad. And the worst part of this is the small part of my head and heart, who want me to unmute the stupid microphone and shout my conscious out!.
"Andy, you there? Hey Andy!". Putting my headphones back, I replied "Yep, I'm here".
"Turn your camera back on, it's not a scrum or manager's call".
Yep, I'm an engineer. A person who works 9-5 on a desk, with my MacBook being the only thing that "I'll do with my fingers" in a long, long time.
Putting a smile on my face, "Sorry, something came around. So what's the plan bride?". As the call dragged on for around 1:30 hours, i figured out how to many words can be made from the word "qwerty". Closing up my laptop, I stood up from desk, lit up a cigarette and started to thing about the past.
16 months!! . That's how long it took me to confront and confess my feelings to Sara. It never was anything, we were just friends and I misunderstood her for someone who had feelings for me. Few chit chats, some long calls, a brief history of her ex boyfriend, few tears and a short bitching session of our manager. That's what took me to muster up something for Sara.
From lenghty, technical scrum calls to hefty fun sessions, we were always a team. The gossips in the zoom breakout rooms, the chitter chatter on the teams chat during our evening cadence, the late night sessions of technical debugging. We were inseparable and yet here we are. Life moves fast. It moves at a speed of light while my feelings move at a speed of snail.
As the cold wind blew across my face, the smoke of my cigarette drifted away from me, in the same way as my life was drifting away from Sara's. I read somewhere, that on an average you meet 5 ppl in a day. Out of those 5, only 1 or 2 people you see again. Multiply this with a month and the smaller ratio will show you my importance in Sara's life.
I was not the smartest, humorous, sarcastic or handsome one. I belonged the category of people who scroll Instagram till mid night, try half heartedly to go to gym, decrease 2 kgs and gain 5kgs and get swiped left on tinder by most. Yet I try to be the one who never quits, who try to care about people's feelings, who try to fight rejection and who buy tinnnder premium even after getting no matches.
Finishing my smoke, I went to my desk again and opened my laptop just to see a, "Thanks a ton Andy. It means a lot to me and hope to see you in my wedding ❤️❤️".
Reacting a 😊, I closed the stupid application and opened my coding platform to resolve few of the bugs that were under my name.
Life is complicated and confusing. Sometimes the paths that seem straight turn out to be extremely crooked. Everything that shimmers, isn't necessarily gold. Similarly evey friendship can't turn into a relationship. It's hard to accept but that's the ocean through which every boat shall sail. Something a "Hi" can just mean a "Hi", even after few years.
Friendships, breakups, patchups are all part of life. Don't be sad if someone doesn't accept you or rejects you. Be happy, knowing the fact that your significance in someone's life might be zero but atleast you exist in a universe, so magestic that it contains a gem like the one you love/like or want.
