One step closer

Tonight, for the first time in the past 4 years, I thought you looked beautiful. From the cab window, your skyline fit the panoramic frame well and you looked almost gorgeous. It must have been the night, the stars, the river, the bridge, and the laughter in the background. The feeling didn’t last too long, but yes, today I smiled at you.

Its like an understanding you develop with someone, who you might not particularly like, but are forced to coexist with. You learn to live around each other and make peace with your differences, and end up finding this strange sense of comfort in knowing the other is there. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you now love them, or ever will, but you can tolerate them, for the most part.

Or its like smiling at the random stranger who commutes with you every morning and gets off the same bus stop. You don’t smile at them the first morning, because you don’t know that you’ll be seeing them everyday. But as days pass, you see them, you observe them, understand their ways, and eventually reach a point when you start smiling or nodding at them every morning – a gesture, an unsaid greeting and a relationship.

I don’t know if I smiled at you because we’re finally both in a neutral zone, and have resolved our differences. Or if it was because I’ve realized you’re going to be a fellow passenger on this commute for a few more years. Either way, looks like we’re not at odds anymore.

I don’t love you. Yet.

But maybe I can make myself love you. Maybe not.

Let’s try being friends first.