Do You Believe In Love At First Sight?

Words with Eyes- A True Story

Little did I know on October 23, 2013 that my most unique relationship would be kindled by just a glance. On that rather hot October afternoon, a friend from my past at cheer practice confronted me, oh so randomly. I saw her in my peripherals approaching me with a dominant sort of confidence. Scared that she was going to try and start another fight like the one that ended our friendship in the first place, I turned and held a defensive posture. Knowing us two, this could get bloody. She stands about an arm lengths away from me, possibly knowing what might happen next if she manages to jab the right buttons. She flashes this toothy smile and asks me how I've been and almost simultaneously blurts out, "You should come to church with with me tonight! It's a lot of fun, and the people are really loving and just fun to be around!" Wanting to muster out something just so she will leave, my vocal cords decided to crash. The little men I always imagined as a kid that operated your body's nervous and control system decided to take a break, and when they did, my vocal cords contracted a virus like a computer would and my voice in that moment just didn't work. I can feel my steamy blood rushing to my face. My palms started secrete sweat. My heart is thumping harder and harder, probably trying to tell my brain to just say something! My vision is is just a haze and my eyes are unable to focus on her obtrusive profile. Just a few months ago we were so mad at each other. Now here she comes, just prancing up to me like nothing's wrong between us and now she wants me to go to church with her? How can I cuss her out in front of God and everybody for inviting me to come to church? Clever, M. Clever. All that the little workers in my vocal cords could manage to provide me with was ," Uhh, mmmm, uhh, ohh?" She followed my intellectual response with, "Just one time?" Before I let the crude vocal virus invade my body again, I just told her, "Yeah. I'll think about it."

After getting into my car, I take of my disgustingly sweaty and foul tee shirt, and throw it into the backseat. It's hot, I'm irritated and the burning leather from my seat is quickly turning my skin red. I keep flashing back to that conversation M and I had just 30 minutes earlier. I tried to reason with myself not to go. I told tell myself, "You're tired, you have homework, you should really make yourself a good dinner tonight, you deserve this night to relax. Going to church means you have to be social with people and have to put on pants. Just stay at home, Seren." But after thinking in the soothing warm shower when I got home, where most of my "genius" ideas take place, I ended up changing my mind. I didn't know where the random curiosity of going to church happened at the time, now I know it was God. "What's the worst that could happen?", I subconsciously asked myself. "You only have to go one night and it's only for an hour. You don't know these people and they don't know you, so they don't expect anything out of you, so, you don't have to return if you don't want to!"

I walked into the warehouse section of the church later that Wednesday night. It smelt like my grandpa's rusty workshop with a hint of mustiness. It also smelt of new lumber, so I was confused as to where each aroma was coming from in the brand new building. Great. A brand new building and they already have a mold problem. I knew I shouldn't have come. Being the pessimist I hate to admit that I am, I eventually slipped to the back of the enormous building and found the girl I used to have a burning grudge against until about 2 hours ago. When you don't know anybody, you manage to latch on to that one person you do know. Kind of like kids at an adult party. God forbid, you were mad at your mom for dragging you to this party, but now that you get there and you don't know anybody, you latch onto her like a leech. M. introduced me to 3 girls in her little clique. Two were just about as shy as me. I guess they had the vocal cord virus too. The other was just snotty and didn't like the fact a new girl was showing up, because that meant competition for her. Competition for what, you might ask? I still don't know. She tried to hide her jealous side with a bubbly valley girl side, but little did she know that it was just aggravating. Her jealously radiated off of her like a sunburn on an albino and she was just so green from jealousy. She looked like a Christmas tree. She kept asking me about all my life stories, then she would rebuttal with an even cooler story or experience. All that I could see when I looked at her was Jessica from the Twilight saga. Besides her being quite obviously spiteful towards me, she was just humorous to listen to. It's always fun to laugh at an idiot. My mind started wandering from the conversation and my eyes soon followed. I watched all the people around us. How they acted, the way they laughed, how they just seemed so happy. "Why can't I have this?", I thought. My eyes flickered to a group of boys, and there in perfect view in front of me was the leader of that group. He had this primitive, alpha male type of aurora that anybody could pick up on. The way his friends looked at him was like the way a pack of wolves look at their leader. When he spoke, everyone listened to what he had to say. Their eyes almost glittered in awe of this guy who was standing in front of them. I'm not exactly sure, but I think he knew I was staring. The beaming heat of my stare was surely, and awkwardly, emitting some sort of heat to where he returned the glance back to see what unfamiliar flesh was gawking at him. The tremendous room we were once standing in suddenly shifted to a comfortable, more humbled size room. The hot air seemed to cool down to that perfect under-the-blanket temperature that one likes to sleep under at night. My anxious body went into a state of numbness. And not only could I not move, I didn't want to. I could only see him. What it felt like to look at him was like a horse who had blinkers on. It seemed all my attention was beaming onto him and I had the sensation of traveling through space at the speed of light, with no general direction, yet at the same time I was so still I defied physics. His gravity pulled me in and yet there I was standing still. Don't they say love is the greatest of all things? Does that include the laws of physics? Who cares..The searing screech of my name drew my attention away eventually, and that short-lived, happy medium feeling came to a crashing hault.

I had returned to to that church twice a week from there on out. And every time I would go, I'd get the short pleasure of that comfortable feeling when Alpha Male and I would make eye contact. Don't get me wrong, this phenomenon isn't the only reason why I kept coming back, but it was a blessing from God because who'd know where I'd be without it now? I may have not shown up a second time if it wasn't for that unusual 3 second glance! A month later, the same church youth group and I left for the weekend about an hour out of town for a fall retreat. On the final night, walking back from the auditorium with my new friends to our dorms, Alpha Male cuts me off and stops me. He looks straight into my eyes and I feel like he's looking into my thoughts. Nervous that this might be true, I start thinking of responses to things he might say to me. What if he asks what my name is? Uhh, wait. I know this one... SEREN! But what if I say it all weird and it comes out Siren, then I'll look like a fool when I correct myself because what dunce forgets how to say their own name? What if what he says isn't what I think he's going to say at all? What if he points out something embarrassing about me. He's probably going to point out that Mt. Everest is now located on my forehead. "EXTRA, EXTRA!! Mt. Everest has relocated due to budget cuts. NOW LOCATED UPON THE GREAT FOREHEAD OF SEREN. NO FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY, IT MIGHT INFLAME THE MOUNTAIN!!" Maybe my shoe's untied or I have a stain on my shirt. Maybe I forgot how to breathe and he's making sure I'm okay so I won't pass out. Wait, am I conscious? Is this a dream? Am I in a soap opera? Just as I'm losing my self-confidence by the pound, my woman's intuition kicked in and I just knew he's thinking the same thing. Well, almost. After a lengthy 3 seconds, he says, "Jesus loves you." And that's it. He walked away. "That's all he had to tell me after a whole month? Dang," I thought. "I guess the vocal cord virus is going around."

A whole novel could be said about what conversations came after that, but I wouldn't want to bore you with the nitty-gritty...(: And now, here we are, a year later and we're back to square one. No, we don't make vocal conversations anymore. Nothing bad happened between Alpha Male and I. Our fate didn't play out in our favor, I guess. We still use our own language to communicate though, just as we did the first night we saw each other. Just looking at Alpha Male's eyes, I know what he is thinking. I know how he feels. Our own unwritten language between our blue eyes speaks more than words can provide. Even though we don't vocally speak with each other, we still have conversation. Our body language and our occasional glances show each other that there is no hard feelings, and that things have to be the way they are for the best, even though we both know it's not what we want. Alpha male and I created a whole new language that is special, and I appreciate that. It's the only connection we have now, but that's all we need at the moment. Maybe we'll find a cure for the vocal cord virus, and may rekindle our friendship. Maybe we'll be crippled by our own mind forever. Only time will tell. Alpha male, I will always love you. But you already know that..