On Loving You ...

Dr.Uzma Syed

Time and time again I have tried to sketch an image of you. Today I am determined to write everything I can recall that has your signature on it. You have always been an omnipotent in my life. I have memories of you from my earliest childhood. I have respected you, loved you and feared you all at the same time. With a heavy heart I look at the man sitting next to me and I know one thing for sure and that is he is not you. I have surrendered to a life without love. I smile a very sad smile that has defeat written all over it. I have given up my search of you because common sense dictates that you do not exist. You are my soul mate. I have met you on innumerable occasions and yet I cannot make a simple sketch of the man I have loved as long as I have lived. Tears crowd my eyes as I remember the small gestures of kindness and warmth that hit a sensitive cord and I knew that it was the element my beloved was made of. I have written thousands of words hoping and praying that one day you will see my anguish and walk right out of my dreams into my life. I truly believed that the princess in the tall tower is always saved by the gallant prince who seeks and finds her. Beyond the enchanted forest, there would always be a handsome warrior who can be brave and gentle at the same time. Am I such a hopeless romantic that I failed to see the world as it should be all my life?


I always imagined you as having an endearing face, not particularly beautiful but soft features with a warm smile and kind eyes. To me a person’s eyes are the windows to his soul and I always imagined yours to be deep and honest. The kind that makes one wants to entrust the deepest secrets to. I smile at the memory of my dreams of you. I’ve always visualized you with flowing, thick hair that I can play with and a tall, graceful presence with which I tilt my head slightly upwards to converse and finally kiss. This one thought must have crossed my mind a hundred thousand times. Perhaps every time I came across anyone interested in me who did not resemble you I remembered this vision to stay as far away as possible from strangers. Strong arms that could hold me against your solid chest and hands so gentle and warm that they could soothe away every worry from my heart. Every time I wrote a love song, my friends would ask who it is for and I’d smile. When I meet you I will show you every song I wrote for you. Until that day no one would know who you are. I had faith that somewhere up there a guardian angel will guide my destiny towards you and when we meet my heart will just know. With very wet eyes I sing to myself that baby I just haven’t met you yet. But then a doubt creeps inside my heart. What if I have met you somewhere and I could not recognize you. Maybe you just passed me by and I am lost in a crowd of strangers. Love lost is a worse nightmare than never finding love at all. 

I know the sound of your voice or I like to think I know what will soothe me. You have this deep masculine voice with a musical baritone. When you laugh tiny lines draw near under your eyes &two lines creep up between your eye brows whenever you ponder. You can be sensible without being insensitive and can talk your heart out when I feel lonesome. And yet when I feel like talking you let me rant on without feeling silly. The very thought of this benevolence makes me want to find you instantly and not waste another second of my existence away from you. Someone once nicknamed me dreamily euphoric. That is the best description anyone has ever made of me. I am Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole and hoping and praying that I land with my feet firmly on the ground. I am so lost in my search of you that not a moment of my life passes without thinking of you. Every time I smile I am saddened by this loneliness that I feel without you. Every time I cry I yearn for your arms around me. How can someone be so obsessed and occupied with a vision that does not exist? There has to be a more rational explanation for this blind faith in a love that I never found. 

My love, my heaven is where you stand next to me. A place of absolute peace where I can be the little girl that I am inside my head and we chase butterflies in blooming fields. I can almost hear the echo of our laughter. I am still deluded enough to believe that I will find you. In a last ditch effort to not succumb to a life where I know I let my head override my heart, I call your name. I seek the true love that people only dream of. The one they say does not exist and yet write thousands of stories about. I crave for your companionship and devotion. I know a dream is only a dream but I also know that nothing starts without a dream. This is my dream of you and the life we can have together once we find each other. The clock is ticking and I am still lost in an enchanted forest waiting to be found by you.