Regrets: Taking Off and Not Landing — part 1 (Introduction)

Relationships. They’re not always as straightforward and clear as we wish them to be. Have you ever looked back into your past and questioned the nature of your particular relationship with that specific person? No, not your ex. You probably thought that this was going to be about a love story, right? Because that’s what people associate the word ‘relationship’ with. You’re not wrong, this is about a love story. But it’s not what you think either. This is a story about my ‘what if?’. I won’t assume that everyone has one of these, because not everyone does.

We were never in a romantic relationship; we were convinced that we were just friends and we had never crossed that line.

This isn’t a traditional love story about a boy and a girl who overcame obstacles and ended up together, only to break up afterwards. No, there was no pain. Because you can’t have pain if you never even dared to cross that line. I’m not necessarily sure whether what we had was indeed love; it will always be a mystery. A ‘what if?’. This is a story about a boy and a girl who always felt that feeling, always wondered ‘what if?’ to themselves, but never had the courage to cross that line. It would only be years later that they both realise that what they felt and had at the time was love.

The romantic kind.

Every time we come across a love story, it details the exact moment that the boy and girl meet. It might not be at the very beginning of the story, but without fail, every single romance includes a ‘love-at-first-sight’ moment. But this just isn’t one of them.

This love story doesn’t begin when we first met.

In reality, the memory of him on the day we actually first met is incredibly vague and blurry. His presence on that day was so insignificant that I tend to forget that was the first time we had crossed paths. Whenever anyone asks how I know him and how we met, I instinctively reply with “at a Model United Nations Conference back in 2015”. Although that’s not necessarily accurate, it probably doesn’t matter. Because not all love stories begin at the moment the boy and girl meet. Ours is different. Ours is the kind of love story that tugs at heartstrings after many years. So, what actually happened on the day we first crossed paths?