Wilted Flower

For my entire life, I wished and longed for love. My mother had told me that she loved me, that my husband would love me, and that my children would as well, but over the years I realized love is something much more complicated than that. Your family will not love you just because you are bound by blood. My mother cared for me, she made sure that I was raised well and married into a good family, but it wasn't the soul-clenching, heart-warming love I longed for. Even my husband would show me affection, when he held me in his arms and whispered sweet nothings in my ear when we were intimate. My children showed me respect and care, even in my last days, but I'm not sure that it was truly love. As a small girl, then later as a teenager than a woman, I craved love. I had never believed in something as abstract as fate, but I knew it was fate when I met Radha. In the films I watched growing up and as a woman as well, the hero and heroine loved each other so much that they believed they were soulmates. I never believed in soulmates either, especially after I married, but I knew that Radha was my soulmate all along. Not in a romantic sense - we were both very much attracted to men, and would fawn over them when we were younger. But Radha and I were friendship soulmates. I could feel it deep down inside of me - a mixture of protectiveness and such a deep love for Radha whenever I thought of her, and I knew that she felt the same for me. Even when we both became old and gray, our husbands and families gone, Radha and I's friendship prevailed.