Lonely Till I Met You

Introduction

Isabelle always was ahead of the class. Although her friends, who didn't know her well, thought that she was not competitive, she was actually competing silently with others. When she was a child, there was a boy in her class who was smart and liked to compare marks. Luckily, Isabelle was smart and was always better than him. Not long after, she went into a class where there were people better than her. She could not stand it, and worked hard everyday to get better than them. It was this desire to be better that drove her on.

However, Isabelle was very lonely. She used to have good friends, but found herself drifting apart from, them. There was no one to hear her cries at night, no one to shout together in joy when she was happy. She found herself drifting more to the other sex, whom she found easier to understand. This loneliness actually helped her to become more insightful. She understood how to see from different perspectives. She knew what the other person was thinking. By the time she was 12, she already understood that there was no right and wrong.

One night, Isabelle lay in bed, sleepless. She tossed and turned. Then she thought about her entire life. She thought of how she had always been the backup she was always the one standing in the shadows, watching others grow. When they fell, she let them feel pain, let others pick them up. She gave them space and love, felt like she would always be a guardian angel, but never have one of her own. When they played group games, she was always at the back. No one from the opposing team noticed her, yet she was crucial when everyone else was covered.

She thought about how she had matured. By the age of 8, she was so sad, sometimes, when her parents left the house. She wondered if, possibly, she was adopted. She longed for an older brother to take care of her and keep her under his wing. Maybe she couldn't have an older brother, but she had never even felt the warmth of maternal love. Her mother always seemed to not care about her, but loved her younger sister more.

Isabelle wondered what it felt like to have a carefree, happy, life. She had worried about money when she was 10, saving up and rarely buying anything. She always shared the food if others wanted it and held back, not showing how much she longed to eat it. Maybe this was why, why she was so lonely. All her friends were girls. She thought they were tomboys, but maybe they weren't. They were always so confident about anything. They thought she was tough, both emotionally and physically. But, in reality, it was the scars that made her that way. She was afraid of doing anything wrong, anything that her friends would laugh at her for.

She learnt quickly that everything was not, and never had been, black or white. Everything was just grey, different shades of grey. This was what changed her life forever.