Why Loving You Was Too Big Of A Secret For Me To Keep

Can you keep secrets? Well, secrets are hard to keep, but I had to train myself to keep the biggest part of my life a secret – falling in love with you.

When you’re in love, you want the whole world to know it, right? But, what if you are in love with somebody and you can’t tell anyone about it, can’t take pictures with them and upload them on social media, you can’t talk to your best friends about them, you can’t show them off to your family, and neither can you go out with them without the fear of being noticed, and the worst that can happen to someone who loves penning her thoughts and desires – you can’t even write about them?

We have all, at some point in our lives, encountered the feeling of liking someone, but secretly. Remember the early years of teenage when we had to meet our girlfriends/boyfriends secretly because we didn’t want our parents to know? We spun a web of lies and cooked up stories to just spend time with that person. Well, loving you is something like that for me, the only difference is, I’m not a teen anymore and you are not just a teenage crush anymore. You are important, you mean the world to me, but the world wouldn’t let us stay together if it knew.

Love Happens When You Least Expect It To

I still remember that beautiful evening when things changed for us. We were with our families, at a plush Italian restaurant in the burbs. My husband was busy explaining the stock market to your husband and we both got out to get a drink for ourselves and sat by the pool. We were discussing our work lives, our friendships, our recent vacations and basically everything under the sun. But, when you spoke to me about your married life, there was an eerie silence that followed. It was discomforting. I wrapped my arms around you to let you know that I could hear the echoes of your downheartedness caused by your unhappy marriage. That’s when I realized something – I felt a connection with you. Not because my married life mirrored the discontentment of your personal life, but because you and I had an emotional connection. We spent the rest of the evening surrounded by the unsettling noise of the discussions that kept our husbands gripped to the table and the food. But, amidst all that noise, we both found a comfortable silence between each other – the kind of silence that spoke more than a thousand words.

I Fell In Love With Her

Over the next few months, we grew comfortably fond of each other. We spoke to each other about our desires, our insecurities, our sorrows, and our secrets. But, I always had my mind irking me, “You’re married, and she is only a friend. Nobody will support you if you said you were in love, that too, with a woman”.

But, the heart seems to understand no other language once it immerses itself in the language of love. That’s the problem with falling in love; even when you see a dead end, you still choose to sit in the rollercoaster and speed your way till the end.

I fell in love with you, with your personality, and with your positivity towards life. I fell in love with the idea of you and me, and it was the kind of love that you hear about in the movies – crazy, stupid, love – but the only problem was, neither you nor I could get out of our current relationships and neither could we make our families and the society understand our love. We all talk about a progressive society, but I guess our families aren’t progressive enough to accept that their daughters can love again and that they can love whoever they want to.

Our love was platonic. We both felt validated, loved, cared, accepted, and comfortable with each other. We both acknowledged our love for each other. And, there’s no denying that we both felt an intimate carnal connection. But, our love was not something we could celebrate. It was not something that we could hashtag on social media. It was meant to be a skeleton in the cupboard.

Irrespective of the multiple Pride parades or the innumerable social support groups, the part of the country that I come from is still “traditional” and “orthodox”. In addition to that, things like these happen behind closed doors, in a secret affair. People choose to turn a blind eye when, in fact, it’s the most important for them to see, understand, and accept.

Secrets Have A Way Of Coming Out

We decided to love each other, the way we did, and to keep it a secret. We didn’t have to make the people au courant of our love. Because, we both didn’t need social validation, but just true companionship. Although to love someone secretly is an exciting and mysterious affair, it does take a toll on you when you have to start living the life of a criminal.

We both had started to live like criminals. We had to clear our phone records, clear our text messages, and plan every rendezvous with utmost care. Eventually, our love became more about keeping it a clandestine affair than about loving each other. Our lives became chaotic because we were constantly trying to hide our relationship rather than nurture it. That’s when I erred. And, I forgot to check my husband’s schedule when you came home that day. And, that’s when our big secret was no more a secret. In a way, I was glad that we didn’t have to pretend anymore, but unfortunately, I had to part ways with you. Because I couldn’t muster the courage to face my family’s wrath.

But, I need you to know that I always loved you, and I will continue to. I choose to love you in the most hush-hush sense, amidst the silence and the secrets. I choose to love you in my dreams and my hopes. And, I hope that one day, love like ours needn’t be a clandestine affair that meets death at the hands of the society, and its tainted version of true love that is restricted to a specific gender!

Note: The experience has been written as narrated to the author.

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Author

Anjala Farahath