Chapter 1

For some, the start might be a violent race of emotions. For some others, it might be a capturing gaze, and yet for others, it might be an electrifying touch, a drunken night in a party, a random prank call, or a letter, text message or email that came from nowhere. For a very small number of people, however, it's unexpected as rain in autumn. Whether fortunately or unfortunately, I fall into that category.

The problem with my friends was that they were all boring. Well, perhaps not quite boring, but not my type either. I'd sit by them, we'd talk for ten minutes, and then we'd be out of words to say. Then, we'd continue sitting in that expectant pose, our beer glasses poised before our lips, but never tilting. I could almost hear both of us think: "what should I say?"

It was a really strange circumstance. Many things happened in our lives. Many things happened in our friends' lives, our relatives and their relatives, their relatives and their relatives' relatives; but in that moment, in that moment of being without a word to say, of our minds coming to a grinding halt, there seemed to be nothing to say. No matter how much we drank – there used to be a wall, an invisible wall, between my friends and me, and believe me when I say, I don't know who constructed that wall, who put it up in the first place. The problem with invisible walls is that you don't see them being erected. You don't see workmen attacking its surface, moulding it, shaping it. But you sure as hell feel the pain when your head bangs against it. That's how I felt. That's what I felt. Pain. The pain of being out. The pain of never fitting, never fading in, always sticking out like a sore thumb, or like the middle finger that has flown up in a gesture of irritation or dismissal. I never belonged. I always watched from outside, as though there were borders between me and others, as though they regarded me with pity. As though, given the choice, they would want to be far, far away from me. Maybe it was that I was an orphan. Maybe it was just that I didn't laugh as much and told dirty jokes as much. Maybe it was that I hated parties, even though I had a very valid reason: the more fingers there were, the more the sore thumb stood out. That is what I was. The sore thumb. The bystander. The watcher. The outsider.

Perhaps, that was what I should have been. Perhaps, that's what I must have been. Perhaps, perhaps I should have never wished for a change. But then again, as I think of those moments, those brief moments, those glimpses of victory, those days of comfort and happiness, and those deep eyes, eyes the colour of which I can't even attempt to describe, I come to the realisation that, somewhere in those twists and turns, somewhere along that winding road the beginning and end of which I didn't know, I made the right decision. And I stuck by it. And in a way, I succeeded; I got what I wanted, even though it was not how I imagined it to be.