HELLO STRANGER: HOW'D YOU LIKE TO BE LOVED?

Don't you think we learn something from every single person we meet? 

It's always fascinated me how we can sometimes meet a person only once in our lives and yet go away clutching a poignant lesson or truism close to our hearts. Other times, a first meeting touches us only on the surface and leaves little else. Yet more people we meet go on to become our friends. But first meetings where strangers no longer are strangers will always be fascinating to me. I pen these thoughts down sometimes, because I want to remember. 

This is something I wrote after meeting J, a successful career woman with stilettos quite unnecessary for someone as statuesque as her. She taught me something about love. 

~~

Picture credits: Scarlet Scribe

Taking a long drag of her slims, she shakes a few strands of purple-tinged hair away from her right eye, "My dear, you need someone who loves you more than you can ever love him. It's the only way to survive."

Another concerted puff.

"When I was younger I dated boys I loved so much. More than they loved me. And all that went to the shits."

She smacks her shiny gloss-stained lips lightly and cocks an eyebrow at me, waiting for a reply.

Then a pause, as I reach for my skinny iced chocolate, which by now is a watery blend of half-melted ice cubes swirling lazily in a milky mess.

I study her face. Her cheeks are smooth and resting under a pair of neatly-manicured brows, her eyelids are dusted concertedly a blue-grey. Her chin is cautiously sharp and her lips are small, but full, and pursed. If it wasn't for the light spray of tiny lines stretching from her corner of her eyes, I would not have thought her a day over 30.

But she has, if surprisingly, waltzed her way into her 40's. Waltzed with rehearsed pizzazz into 16 years of marriage, a fact she shares with a faint smirk. A tiny curl of the lip that is at once an allusion to my tiny yelp at how she looks so damned young, and most of all, a knowing smile of someone who’s done gone and done that.

“So, your husband. He loves you more than you love him?” another one of us finally ventures with a small laugh.

“Of course!” she exclaims, almost a little too quickly.

Realizing she’s betrayed the Asian modesty expected of her, she catches herself hastily and explains, “I mean, that’s how it’s worked for so long. 16 years!”

And that’s the last anyone at the table says on the matter. The lunch hour ticks by with talk of shopping, foot massages, temporary nose jobs and a golf event to be held the next day.

The absolute need to be loved more than loving, a conclusion meted out in less than five sentences. But, what then after?

Short of our chatter being made up of a hopscotch smattering of topics, I have to assume she has nothing else to say on the matter because her loving him less has probably given her more power in those 16 years, but I’m willing to bet, less happiness as well.

I’ll assume this too, because I don’t quite believe in the stuff she preaches.

I push my cup away, fingertips grazed damp by the tiny droplets trickling down the side of my now-lukewarm drink.

I’d like to love, just as much as I am loved.