Love is an expression that has been written and spoken about since time knows when, there have been endless stories about this particular emotion and yet I do not find anyone getting tired of this.
This forum here is a great place where I can relate this story. I have wanted to tell this story since a long time. I knew of a girl exactly my age, and like each of us went through the transition of falling in love for the first time before we reached adulthood, she too, passed through the same emotion.
Well, Ruby fell in love earlier than any of us did, this was the time especially when we scoffed at this emotion, that we found love completely weird. We would roll our eyes each time she would look in that special way at the guy she was in love with. We knew the guy well, though, he was Robert and we rarely thought of him as interesting stuff for love, etc. We were sixteen year olds who had a lot of experiences to go through and Robert was 21.
Ruby was not what Robert was looking for a girl; Robert was a guy who has been through many personal tragedies till the age 21, highly intelligent, well educated and his family had high status in society, however for us he was an object of sympathy rather than love. Ruby on the other hand, was a happy go lucky kid, who would talk incessantly, and now it would be around Robert.
I don’t know exactly what irked Robert, the fact that Ruby was not good looking or that she came from a family which would require a lot of polishing to be proud of company, she was not what his status would demand. Well, with her romantic overtures and his rebuffing we surely had a good time watching those two. For all of us who had never been in love it was funny.
With this body language and reactions, Robert made it quite clear without words that he was not even remotely interested in Ruby. Time passed and soon it was that time when each one was in love with someone or another, some of us went through heart breaks and for some love soon turned into affairs. Robert we soon found had enough material to fall in love with, there were many girls who were falling for him and he was surely enjoying all the attention.
Ruby could not have been smart, but she was not stupid and so much so that she would not notice that her affection for Robert was not being reciprocated in a way any girl would like. Being friends, I personally saw the pain in her eyes, I felt pity for her. I liked Robert and I liked Ruby too, sometimes I would wish he would not treat her so badly.
I still do not have any idea what actual definition of love was for Ruby, because though Robert went through a series of affairs with glamorous girls, yet she would try to get attention from him. Time passed, we finished our colleges, took our degrees and started our career, and Ruby too, took up a job, still hopelessly in love with Robert. We could describe Ruby’s love only as worship because it was almost 7 years and Robert had not even spoke civilly to her during all that time.
All in our group started getting married, some gave their affairs marital status and others with some new people, and meanwhile we got the news that Ruby too was engaged with someone. We met Ruby at her engagement party; she said both had fallen in love with each other. We looked at her questioningly she answered us ‘ That I still love Robert does not mean I cannot love anyone else, I love my husband as much as I love Robert, but Robert is the one I will love forever’.
Today Ruby is happily married with two children and we all still respect her not because she is married, because she had the power to love someone unconditionally. I know even Robert respects her today, from making a fool of herself at times through her teenage days; she has managed to make us respect and adore her.
I don’t think she is cheating her spouse either, knowing Ruby she would have surely told her husband that she always loved someone else before she met him. And I am sure her devotion to love, she has made her husband see the point the way she made us realize what love really is.
I learned to me more compassionate in my relationship with my spouse, it is not important that we get to possess what we love the most, what is more important that we know how to love – unconditionally.
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