I was born in an ordinary hospital on a usual day with a conventional set of people surrounding me. My parents were happy to see me but I think deep down they wanted me to be a girl. I had no choice in the matter so I pushed that thought into a crass bin where it wouldn’t be bothered with ever again.
I grew up playing video games and it was fun. It was a lot of fun. So much fun that I didn’t even realize where a few years of my life went by. Ahh, those were the days, I swear! Then suddenly I hit the age where your mind automatically goes from treating kissing as gross to sex being something you start searching for online. I swear I don’t know why that happens and I truly hated it when it did.
For lo and behold, I fell in love with a girl. Note the fact that it was I who fell in love. The girl had no idea and I had no guts to tell her so it remained a blissfully one-sided affair and I never felt better just by looking at someone. For two years, I was silently in love. But since it wouldn’t be called life if it isn’t a mixture of ups and downs, it all soon fell apart when I accidentally saw her kissing another dude from another class. I always knew what shattering meant as a word but it was then I realized what it felt like.
I know the title says that the story goes nowhere and this seems to be going somewhere but trust me, it isn’t.
So I grew up and made a friend. She was my best friend in college, the best work colleague, and the closest confidante I had. We spent four years working in a thankless job bitching about everyone but still somehow I remember those days fondly. It was all because of her. We even made out once and the kiss was passionate, then decided what fools we were and laughed it off. She asked me one day, “Where does this all lead?” I didn’t know what she meant at the time. Us? Our jobs? Lives?
This was where I was taught the meaning of growing up.
It was the third saddest day of my life seeing her get married to her best friend who would soon take my place. We did promise each other that our bond will stay strong but maybe her husband found our pleasantries far too intruding and just like that, our years of togetherness was now a thing of the past.
Friendships are overrated anyway so I got married. To this amazing young woman. I was overjoyed. I had only a few meetings with her before and it felt like something substantial. I thought the rest of the journey we could spend together exploring more about ourselves. She was brave, fierce and bold. Those were the qualities I loved about her in the first place. All was good.
But this wouldn’t be life if it wasn’t a rollercoaster. After a few years of loving togetherness, I found her to be a bit too bold and a bit too fierce. I wasn’t able to be myself. She wanted things to be a certain way and I had no other option but to agree or start a fight. God, I was tired of fighting so goddamn much that I let her do whatever she wanted. I was exhausted, unhappy and most of all I was indifferent. Indifference is the opposite of love. I knew then that I was done. I decided to call it off. It was the second saddest day of my life!
I know the title says that the story goes nowhere and this seems to be going somewhere but trust me, it isn’t.
After the divorce, I had a few blacks left within my gray hair. I was in my forties, with a slim dad bod, no liabilities, and a shitload of money. So I bought a ticket to Thailand and I went to town. After numerous flings, many experiments, and an awful case of chlamydia later, I found myself lying on a beach with a massive headache and an epiphany.
I recalled my best friend and what she has asked. Where does this all lead?
I had no idea. I was as clueless to that question then as I was twenty years later. She was happily married to her husband for twenty years and here I was living my best life but thinking about her. Strange but I guess that is just how life is.
My sixties rolled in and I was white-haired, fairly fit with a knack of having quality whiskey. I had led my life without many expectations and I was always very happy with how I lead my life. It was true that I made many mistakes and had a few regrets but I was yet to find one soul who didn’t.
I was sitting on a bar of a cruise ship and there comes a lady that sits next to me. We started speaking and she was very familiar. I couldn’t quite place it when I later realized, my best friend had found me after all these years. She told me her story too odd to be true. She had divorced her husband three years after her marriage, married another, and loved him for twenty goddamn years until he passed away from heart failure. She was heartbroken and wanted to wash her pain away so she took a trip and found me.
We rushed to my cabin and it was probably the best sex I ever had or it may have been my age speaking. Who the hell knows? But I thoroughly enjoyed it. I enjoyed it so much in fact that I asked her to move in with me. I told her honestly that I was never going to marry her and maybe I was senile but I really wanted my best friend back in my life. She had nothing better to do since the love of her life was absent so she agreed.
I know the title says that the story goes nowhere and this seems to be going somewhere but trust me, it isn’t.
The last few years of my life were perhaps the most blissful. I had my best friend next to me who I loved as much as I possibly could love someone. She was in love with me too but I knew her one big love was already taken. I didn’t mind. I was just happy she chose to stay with me for the rest of her life. It was more bliss than I could have ever asked for. I had the best whiskeys, the best kisses, the best vacations and the best hospital bed there was.
She held my hand and looked lovingly into my eyes. I imagined the lucky son of a gun who she would have held hands with before. I could stare into her brown eyes for eternity but a few hours was all I had left. She whispered into my ear, “So finally, where did it all lead?”
I smiled. It led me to a pretty average life by all standards. It led me to believe in a lot of things that I then had to unlearn. It led me to a love I thought I deserved but I didn’t. It led me nowhere and everywhere. But most importantly, it led me to you.
That realization made my last day the saddest of my life. It took me long enough to answer that question and I was strangely content which I know doesn’t make sense but neither did I at that ripe old age.
I closed my eyes and counted my breaths. She kissed me one last time on my lips and I was teleported to when I was twenty-five and when I first kissed her. That was probably my last memory.
I died in an ordinary hospital on a usual day with my best friend by my side.
This story started in a hospital and ended in the hospital. I was born, I lived and I died. For some, that forms the crux of the title. For others, the title was just a ruse.
This story went nowhere. But that didn’t stop it from being a story worth telling.