Confession of a No-Lover-Since-Birth: What Could Have Been

My unlived life was the belief that I would become like the other girls–my friends, classmates, and simply the ones I came across online or talked to in shared spaces. My unlived self was probably the part of me that is underexplored and which I currently lack: romance and intimacy. When I look around, it seems everyone has a taste of thrill, warmth, depth, a safe haven and carrying pieces of stories they bring and feast on at the table.

It’s so foolish of me that I thought someday I would become the girl I read about in books and watch in movies: on a fateful day, an introverted girl meets a guy who finally seeps into her world, and they live happily ever after. I thought someday I would have the chance to be the flower that makes each passerby smile and pick it up because of its breathtaking beauty.

I thought that someday I would have similar experiences to other girls. First kisses, romantic dates, spontaneous rides around the city, first sex, and random flowers. For them, such experiences strike a tantalizing momentum, but for me, they strike an unwavering question that is always unanswered: “What does it feel like?” I have always been the girl who is left to wonder rather than to feel. I have always fantasized about feeling an irresistible attraction with a person again and being achingly desired because, in utmost honesty, their absence makes me feel invisible.

Life truly has its way of humbling me; I usually find myself crying silently in my bed as the cold midnight air settles on my feet. I have dropped tear stains on the pages of my journal with all these realizations. When the fortnight of May came, I reached the beginning of acceptance—that maybe I am not for everyone or I am just not a “catch”; that I am invisible, unnoticed, and not easily likeable. Yet, a part of me is so quietly loud that it wants evidence before I come to a heart-aching conclusion.

In honesty, I tried for a connection with all means accessible to me. However, it wasn’t reciprocated. I felt lonely–a feeling so familiar that it prickled my palms and weighed on my chest. The attempt to connect and to feel again turned into a blank space that my mind tried to fill with rationalizations so that I could move on.

But until I have the evidence that I can possibly be desired, I think I can finally say that I’ve had a taste of my unlived life and finally I could begin a new life without fixations.

Ultimately, it’s ludicrous that I also based my girlhood script on the girls in movies and books, but I cannot deny that it filled the lingering void in my soul; it made me feel things that I could have felt and enjoyed in my life. A part of me still hopes, but a part of me wants to finally let go. I tasted both seeking a connection and waiting for one, but it only ended in intense and agonizing wondering and fantasizing. Now, I am in the midst of accepting my reality while grieving what I could have been.