Life Is A Puzzle

SUMMARY:

   Submerge into a girl’s thoughts and feelings as she wanders her evening through a forest with a long lost unexpected encounter on the way…

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Everything changed since the day she decided to put her thoughts in order. She necessarily had to put a stop to whatever was hurting her because she simply couldn’t go on any longer like that. She had to trust and believe in what her heart told her to do. Thus, what was also important was the fact that she still possessed that strong attitude which has helped her stand up all along even after that day.

Why that day and not another one? Because she had eventually thought that a different day might just have led to another road, to another ray of light or darkness that would be accidentally crossed upon and craved into her life, either for a good or a bad destiny in all.

Too many things were happening at once. Her future was at stake, made a complex dusty cloud haunting all over her. Too many questions and doubts engulfed her every day. How could they finally be put into place, she wondered? They were irresolvable mysteries without bounds. Puzzling skies with no meanings, all brought together inside a chilling breeze. There were endless roads to take and endless paths to decide upon, all irrelevant yet confusing for her poor innocent mind and soul.

Who was she? She thought. What was she supposed to do here in this world? She was only a girl, was she not?

He was standing right behind her. Not literally inches behind her, but just some meters away besides that typical lonely tree, merely watching her. She had felt it, sensed it, and glimpsed it through her cell phone’s reflection for some minutes now. She couldn’t help but feel so vulnerable and so watched upon. She felt out of place, confused and weird. She didn’t know how to react or what to do about it. He was just standing against the tree with a tremendously fixed gaze on her, as if waiting for the unexpected to happen at any moment.

She was not determined to move from her sitting place.

Why were strong, deep sensations of pain suddenly beginning to spread through every inch and nerve of her body? Sensations that were turning her world from a bright blue to grey in an eye blink, coming and mixing unconsciously and unintentionally against her soul. Why did feelings change so unexpectedly? Was her soul really destined to be chosen to suffer like this?

She didn’t mind. She had felt those sensations repeat themselves for so many times that she had finally reached a peak where she eventually had learned how to feel accustomed and not really think about them much. Like, what use was there to it? It was obvious that she wasn’t good enough for anyone. How could she possibly even be wanted at all? She never felt special at all. Moreover, she felt like out of this world. What had she done to overall get those feelings in life?

Life has its ups and downs, there was no doubt about it nor could she be any more certain about it. She was confused and lost in a hard puzzle. A repeated maze that was driving her insane, yet she was still determined to find out if she was really worth anything at all.

He had been gone. It’s actually been about 6 months since she had last felt his beautiful soul and his gorgeous presence face her from afar. Everything seemed like in the good old times. Everything except her heart. Her broken heart.

Who would have guessed that life would have turned out to be that way for her? He had desired and coveted for her attention and heart, provoked an incandescent flame to burn all the way into it. She was hesitant at first to fall for him, but time had eventually managed to convince her that he was flawless for her. All seemed perfect like if she were living in a gorgeous second reality, if there was such a thing of course, for the only thing she did for sure was always love him with all her mighty powerful heart.

Yet, he had to wreck it all up. Replace her with another random girl, forget her, and leave her like a nonexistent person, more like a ghost. Hold hands with that girl while walking together through parks. Flirt with her. Give his best manners, attitudes, and personality to her. Give his best smile, eyes, and expression to her. Give her just about anything, overall, without remembering that someone else was longing for his heart and living in a fantasy world inflicted to her by him. Weeks went by, yet nothing special happened between him and the random girl at all. She moved out of town and he just left her alone for good, without the least minimum guarantee of ever seeing her again. Moreover, there were now rumors that she had gotten herself another boy to flirt with.

Several months passed, only arriving until the day where he returned to that same spot. Today he was standing on that spot behind her where he had met her for the first time long ago. For whatever mysterious reason it was, he hadn’t forgotten about her.

Was he aware of what he had done to her? She couldn’t be half assured of that even in a hundred years’ time. Was he intending to do something now about it? She did not know. The only thing she knew for sure was that he was still carefully watching her from afar.

Outside her thoughts and feelings, thunders rumbled. They echoed through her brain like lightning bolts through a catastrophic tropical storm. How powerful they sounded amidst the grayish twilight while all the people were probably undercover at their homes. Everyone except, of course, his mere presence and her exposed soul to his unknown feelings and purposes. They were alone, so close yet so far apart from each other. Was everything a reality or just a made up illusion?

Amidst the thunders’ roar were the hidden blurs of the feelings she had had for him, carved imminently all over her heart, getting ready to explode with strain in any moment now. She listened, just listened to the greatest occasional booms and watched the never-ending beams flash by. How crazy, yet amazing they echoed through her rumbled heart.

Against her own heart wills, feelings, and everything in general, she decided to stand up, turn around, and start walking towards the opposite direction of where his presence against the memorable tree spot lay. Not even giving the slightest importance to his slowly fading presence and silhouette behind her. She didn’t care about what possible faces or reactions he might be making that moment. She just had to go, for her own good.

Honestly, who did he think he was?

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After she had walked for about 10 minutes alongside some dense trees, she had arrived to a clearing surrounded by a huge lake with some rocks on its shallow area. At least she was some meters away from him, she thought. This would allow her to quietly sit down on top of some rocks and write on her diary about her thoughts with mere tranquility and peace. She loved to write because it produced a magical sense of freedom in her.

She walked and went to sit down on the nearest rock she found. The sky above her was a menacing grey and the breeze engulfed every inch of her body like a soaking sweater. She then tapped her pockets to feel her diary. Immediately a catastrophic feeling engulfed and clouded her head. She didn’t feel any diary on her pockets. She stood up panicked and started to move her head in all directions to search where it had possibly fallen to the ground.

Nothing was found.

It was on her diary where her most precious thoughts and feelings lay written. Where she could overall shout into the middle of nowhere and at the same time feel listened and understood to. What a pity! Every single day where she had had happy moments with him, she had written them there. It was there where they always remained untouched and unchanged, ready to be read and lived again whenever her heart ultimately desired.

She was not determined to go back to where she had previously sat, but she concluded that her diary was worth it. She simply wouldn’t allow herself to lose what last happy and precious moments remained encapsulated there from her heart. Suddenly, she heard footsteps of someone or something emerging from the trees behind her. Her skin turned icy cold. She held her breath and waited. Whatever it was, its footsteps were stepping on the fallen trees’ leaves on the ground and was slowly approaching her. After some seconds, it had stopped moving. She shivered. She had not thought that there probably would still be wolves hunting on the last autumn days just before the soon arriving winter and this afternoon’s upcoming storm. What a fool!

Yet, with a single valiant move, she had decided to half turn her head around to finally get a glimpse of what was happening from behind her. As she turned, the wind blew straight into her face and her hair flew freely behind her ears.

It was no wolf. It was him.

He was standing some 10 meters away from her just below one tree with a straight confident posture with an arm grabbing a branch above him. His hair was all messy, yet his body was tall and strong like always. He looked like a model. He was staring at her with a mesmerizing look in his eyes. She stared back at him. How she had missed those days when happiness was the only thing to freely fill her up! When stares and smiles where the only conquerors of her mood and soul!

She was staring at him with a hesitant look before she noticed and gasped out in horror at what he was actually holding with his left hand. It was her diary. Her precious, unique diary! Her brain had finally remembered that she had eventually forgotten it on the bench where she had sat just half an hour ago. To make things worse, she had been stupid enough to leave her diary unlocked, so surely he had already given it a read by now for mere curiosity. What a shame she was beginning to feel right now!

It was a tense moment for her. She decided to turn her head away to face the ground while she tried to totally cover up her face with her bangs. She didn’t want to be seen by him anymore. As she watched the ground, she observed how some ants were carrying small pieces of rocks and were following a trail back to an anthill. It was captivating to see how they worked together to reach their ultimate objective, for they only possessed one throughout the rest of their tiny lives.

She heard footsteps approaching. She abruptly turned her head around just in time to watch how he was now slowly approaching her where she was actually sitting. Her hair had practically messed up with the quick glance she had done and was now all over the sides of her face.

She watched his expressionless face, neither angry nor happy. On the contrary, it kind of appeared to be between a focused and a sad mood combination, if such thing existed in life. He walked with ease, eradiating confidence in himself with every step he took through the clearing’s soft green grass, while still holding the diary on his hand. After about a minute or two, he had finally reached his destination and was standing just a meter in front of her.

A thunder rumbled above them, echoing across the lake and making its waves increase movement as the breeze was turning windier as each minute went by. She stopped looking at him and instead turned her head down. He then extended and raised his left arm while holding her diary and put it in front of her, clearly expecting her to grab and retrieve it back from him. Hesitantly, she raised her right arm and took the diary from him. She immediately turned it around and searched for any mysterious scratches or marks on it. It was alright. The pen lay exactly where it belonged and the pages were quite in the same conditions as they had been before. He, by the way, still hadn’t moved an inch from where he stood before her and was still intently watching her like a statue.

She held the diary with both of her hands and opened it to quickly turn the pages through it with ease. Everything appeared normal until she had reached the last page where she had written until today. There, below her last words, lay a perfectly drawn heart and a beautifully cursive written phrase that read the words “I love you”. To make matters even more complex, a small flower stuck out from between the diary’s pages. It was an aster, a quite difficult and rare flower to find around the forests here.

She gasped and unintentionally let the diary fall to the floor. Her heart accelerated and her skin became dead cold. He, on the other hand, made a little smirk on his face and immediately bent to pick up the diary for her. When he offered it back, she quickly snatched it and stuffed it inside her right jacket’s pocket. She was expressionless, only moving her eyes in dismay while staring at his shoes in front of her. Her head had gone completely blank over this unexpected happening.

An awkward half-minute of silence passed by. The sky had turned more menacing. Thunders were now quite visible everywhere. The breeze became windier and the lake’s waves were now stronger than ever. It was time for her to get home, she was thinking. Actually, if she had been alone all that evening, she would have left a while ago, but her incandescent thoughts had made her delay a bit longer than she had imagined of. Moreover, because he was literally standing in front of her waiting for God knows what to happen at any moment, it had been just mere impossible to leave. She didn’t think he cared about the weather though, because he was wearing his black, cozy leather jacket all the time. Was he going to do anything or just stare at her while she froze in this weather?

Suddenly, he extended both his arms and reached for her hands. He took both of them in his and pulled her to him, making her stand up while he was giving three steps back. The pull was so abrupt that her legs had to take two giant leaps to catch up with him. When he had stopped, her head had moved up and ended straight up staring at his face, just inches apart from each other.

His eyes blinked and he smiled at her. His hair was majestically moving with the wind and his head was tilting a little to the right, like if he was admiring every piece of her essence. He then raised his right hand and moved a strand of her hair away from her eyes, just gently placing it behind her ear. She didn’t know what to do. This was all nonsense. Her eyes just stared at his and she watched how his gleamed with that magical glitter she had admired and seen so long ago. Yet, her face was expressionless. It all seemed surreal; moreover like in one of the many past dreams she had had about him. Just that in this case it wasn’t a dream, it was the actual reality. And even if it had been a dream, she would have had to desperately wake up from it like right now. It was all a lie.

He rubbed his chin against the top of her head and gave her a little hug. Her arms were stiff against his and she couldn’t practically move. After that, he then grabbed her hands again and held them tight while fixating his eyes on hers. This was all wrong, utterly wrong. Every cell of her body was telling her that this wasn’t good at all.

He gently put one hand on the left side of her face and held it affectionately. She then soon began to notice that his head was slowly leaning closer to hers. She was watching how his lips were getting nearer and approaching hers. She was frozen like a pole. She couldn’t and wouldn’t allow this. Not after what he had done to her heart before. How he had left it broken like a million broken shards inside a deep lake paradise, impossible for them to be retrieved and made back to the way they were ever again.

Raindrops were beginning to fall, incrementing their speed as each second passed by. Soon it would be pouring rain above them. She watched how his eyes were slowly shutting as he was approaching and ending just inches from her face. Finally, just when his lips were about to touch hers, she immediately came to her senses and took action by pushing him on the chest with her arms for him to get apart from her.

“No,” she firmly stated.

He had to take several steps back to prevent from falling down to her sudden impulse. He certainly had not expected this from her. She took two steps forward to him.

“What the hell was that? Why don’t you go with your other girl and try to kiss her instead? I am not your second option to come and spend time with while another girl takes time to come by and get me replaced with.”

He mid-opened his lips, took a sudden breath, and then frowned a little with a speechless face. She stared at him sternly with such a serious and impacted face. Rain was now beginning to acquire power. She didn’t mind, for she had to put her feelings clear and free once and for all in her life.

She then turned around and began to climb the rocks behind her on which she had been sitting a while ago, carefully stepping from rock to rock to get to the closest possible distance from her and the lake. He, on the other hand, apparently blinked his eyes several times to try and come back to his actual reality. Then he quickly made haste to catch up with her, just to stop and lean in the nearest rock he found before her. He didn’t seem eager to take the risk of climbing slippery rocks at the moment. He only waited and intently stared cold-heartedly at her.

On top of the rocks, she took a gulp of humid air to calm her nerves down. The rain was automatically beginning to straighten out her hair and to start making her clothes slowly shrink on herself. The lake’s waves were becoming more menacing and she could see how faraway lightning bolts were illuminating her almost solitary presence in the clearing besides the forest.

What she did afterwards was beyond incredibility. No one would have thought that she would have done such a thing in throughout her entire lifetime. It was the unimaginable, the craziest action ever. A plain last moment foolish decision.

She reached for her right pocket and pulled out her diary. She gave it a last look, holding it tightly, and then threw it with all her might to the now ferocious lake’s waves. The diary flew for a few seconds and then plummeted into the lake, forever disappearing into the lost, mesmerizing abysm. A teardrop fell from her left eye, confusing itself with the falling raindrops above her just as her heart had been confused with false mixed feelings on her.

A thunder rumbled loudly with such a force that she felt it reverberate on the rocks below her feet. She turned around with a confident face and began to take the task of carefully climbing back down the rocks. He was simply watching her; speechless and shocked with his eyes wide open. After she had reached the ground, she decided to keep walking forward and take the route back to the forest. She walked past him and wandered a few more steps before being stopped by his thick, now kind of raspy voice of his.

“Your diary had your true feelings for me there. Why did you throw it away and literally destroy it?” he asked her.

She tilted her head right in frustration and turned to face him straight from where she stood. As she began to address the answer, she took small steps to approach him with confidence.

“Because I don’t want to forever remember what once a lie was. I don’t need that notebook anymore because I don’t want to read those lies again. I keep a diary to retrieve precious true memories for myself. Personal memories, I must say. Rereading that diary would only hurt me deeper than of what I am right now.”

She then fixed her eyes on him.

“What’s the catch in rereading what once were happy memories, if they were just lies overall? Life is too short to live deceived. If I had kept that diary, my heart would just have ended like it did: ripped apart and drowned in sorrow.”

“Goodbye.”

And with that last word, she turned around and began her small journey back to the forest. She believed that what was meant to be, it would be sooner or later. Things happen in life for a reason. At least she felt relieved at last. 

Still glued to his spot, he watched how she slowly walked away from him. A tear appeared in his left eye and subtly fell to the ground. He definitely had lost her. And it was all because he had been stupid enough to go after the other girl who had just been flirting with him to spend a little time away from her apparent boyfriend’s breakup. He screwed it up. But what could he do now about it? Absolutely nothing.

What’s in the past is in the past, and now one thing couldn’t be any clearer…

Life is a puzzle.

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