The ceiling light flickered every now and then while I tossed and turned on the bed.
Even in the middle of October, the heat kept drenching my back.
It wasn't a medical emergency, but rather an illusion conjured by the mind. The skittish and cowardly instinct of mine to evade the mental turmoil I had been thrust into.
At times, the most profound emotions are overlooked. Though every person in the world wears a different semblance, has blood coursing through their veins, and was created by the same Lord.
Yet, we fail to fully comprehend one another. No matter how relentlessly we try, there will always remain parts of another person that are beyond our understanding.
We are all fashioned from the same elements, yet created so vastly different. Each bearing their own thoughts, convictions, and sense of self.
That's what makes things difficult. I couldn't possibly place myself in his shoes or fathom the burden he had carried all those years.
Returning feelings out of mere guilt was undoubtedly something we would both avoid.
Though I was beyond happy, my emotions, in comparison, felt almost insignificant beside the extensive of his.
It wasn't that I refused to reciprocate them, but rather that I would prefer to nurture and cultivate them before finally offering them in return.
There were many stages to this night.
Right after his confession:
First: confusion.
Second: doubt.
Third, and last but not least: panic.
Not the kind that made me want to flee from him, but the kind that arose when I realized the magnitude of what I was about to decide.
His confession had not frightened me.
But the instead the reason was...
How was I supposed to respond to something that had taken him years to build, when I had only just begun to understand what I felt?
I turned onto my side, staring blankly at the wall as his words continued to reverberate within my mind.
My heart belongs to you, utterly and completely.
I had heard confessions before, spoken words of affection, witnessed people fall in love as though it were the simplest thing in the world.
But this was different.
Haider had not merely fallen for me.
He had carried me.
Through years of patience, through uncertainty, through every moment where he could have surrendered his feelings and yet chose to preserve them instead.
And now they were passed to me.
I had asked myself countless times what it meant to understand someone.
Perhaps it meant more than knowing their habits, their temper, or the things they liked.
Maybe it meant standing before the weight of their heart and realizing that you could either cherish it or break it.
And that was what frightened me most and that I would mishandle it.
I have started to grow feelings for him over the course of our marraige however how much emotions would be equivalent to name it love?
How do one come to understand that the affections they have for someone is love?
What made Haider so sure of it?
But somewhere beneath all that uncertainty, there was another truth I couldn't ignore.
I didn't want him to stop loving me and that realization startled me.
I buried my face into the pillow, as though hiding from the thought itself could make it disappear.
Somehow, my antics resembled the corny squeal of a middle-schooler after finding out their crush likes them back. It was embarrassing and concerning at the same time, considering my age.
I have grown older in body and mind, yet my heart still remained the restless heart of a teenager. I mean, I should've seen this coming.
After all, what did I even expect from a marriage? Surely, it wasn't to just become roommates with my husband and call it a day.
It would be much weirder to not have this consideration and these options when placed into an union.
Possibly I had been too occupied with the seriousness of marriage to consider what came after it.
A husband was not simply someone who shared a home with me. He was someone whose presence would gradually become woven into the ordinary fragments of my life- the mornings, the meals, the silences, the conversations that stretched into the night.
And now I had someone who had already imagined all of that long before I had.
How was I supposed to sleep after hearing something like that?
Every time I closed my eyes, his face returned to me. The crimson flush, the trembling of his lips, the way his voice faltered whenever his emotions threatened to overwhelm him.
I had never seen Haider like that.
He was adorable.
The man who always seemed so composed had stood before me and placed his heart in my hands, gambling the odds even though the chances of rejection was still present.
And somehow, despite all my confusion, one thought remained stubbornly present.
I wanted to cherish it.