There is this
girl. The girl in my dreams. I have never met her or spoken to her but I know
that I have seen her and she has seen me and only from a distance. Looking back
now I am sure the first time we met was long ago, when I was a kid. But who she
is exactly, I am not sure. Over the years I have seen her in other women, bits
of her in other girls. Like in the little three year old girl I met at a mutual
family friend’s house all those years ago. The little girl who cried when she
had to leave me. She threw a massive tantrum and we ended up going with her to
her house just to stop the crying. The mothers laughed and made jokes that my
three year old mind could not understand. The next time I saw her I was older,
11 to be precise; and it was the last day of primary school and I saw her in my
classmate Ada. Ada and I had spent many days together after school doing our
homework and keeping each other company until our not-so-prompt parents came to
get us from school. She was easily my best friend when it was un-cool for boys
and girls to be so. But this is not about Ada; it is about the girl, the girl I
saw in Ada when a group of us boys had badgered her into telling the identity
of the one boy she really liked in class. Names were called and each time she
said “No”. A few of the boys, confident with themselves even mentioned their
own names. She laughed and still said “No.” She looked at me at one point, I
think daring me to ask if it was me. It was at that moment I saw her again. I
never opened my mouth and the one o’clock bell rang.
Being a teenager
was more about books than dreaming so I did not see her much; just those rare
times where I would see her in my early morning dreams. Saw a bit of her at 17,
in a girl I fell in love with. Then a whole lot of her in another girl I fell
in love with at 20. Janet did not love me back for another 4 years but when she
did I hardly saw her any more, the girl in my dreams that is. I stopped
believing in her and admitted to myself that she was not real, and did not
exist.
So it was a
surprise when one day a few years later, from the corner of my eye, I saw her
looking at me. I turned to look at her properly but she was gone. This would
happen once in a while. I have tried to put a face to her but it comes to me in
snatches of articulation, very briefly like smoke fading away. I would close my
eyes and try to remember, to picture her face, her body, her form. Sometimes it
would be clear as day but as soon as I would open my eyes it would disappear. I
see her sometimes in music videos, silent soul siren with the fizzy hair or
curls; in prose, witty conversation and in silent avatars. She is there.
I am convinced
she is just a figment of my imagination or a part of my psyche that had been
manifested in this way. Perhaps I knew her in another life as a veritable part
of me. Or perhaps she is my guardian angel watching over me, a protector. Maybe
she is death herself just checking up on me until that appointed day. I may
live many many more years, I really do not expect her to be real or to emerge
from the shadows or to one day fully become a woman that I would actually meet.
But I do know that when the time comes for me to cross from this life to
another, on the day death comes for me, the girl in my dreams will be with me,
holding my hand, walking in love with me. Of this, I have no doubt.
