A 30 Year Saga..

Every summer that I visited our grandparents was filled with fun memories. But I would always remember how I felt this weird magnetism and attraction to one of my cousins who was 2 years older than me. I could tell that he felt something between us too. From the time I was 4, I can remember instances when I felt a certain awkwardness in our interactions without knowing what caused it. He came and stayed with us for 10 days during his college summer vacation. The days were spent chatting and roaming around.. but there it was.. this weird connection I could feel in the air between us. A few letters were exchanged between us after he went back to college. Now, I am a extroverted fun loving girl who has no dearth of friends. He is brilliant, good looking and worked in a good position at a company. In terms of choice of partners we both could have found someone in our social circle. The year I turned 20 he returned from abroad to attend another cousins wedding. On my way to the same wedding I found myself thinking about him every single second of the 30 hour journey. How did he look, what will he say I was going crazy with his thoughts. More awkwardness followed when we met. While we ran some errands together we spoke about many things. I thought he had come back for good. But he mentioned that he was going back in a months time and may not come back for a few years. That was it. I lost it. I admonished him, yelled at him, I think I almost hit him. When I quietened down he just laughed and laughed. After that we flirted shamelessly. On his way back abroad he decided to come stay with us again for a few days. My stomach churned with excitement and I don't think I ate much from the entire two week period that preceeded his arrival. More awkwardness followed. We roamed the city, chatted for hours but neither of us said anything about our feelings. One could cut the tension between us with a knife but still no acknowledgement of our feelings. We drove him to the airport to see him off. I felt this intense pain in my chest as his departure was imminet but couldn't bring myself to say anything to him. I could see that he was miserable as well. As he proceeded to immigration he looked like a train wreck and I am sure I looked the same. He walked away and we started the 4 hour drive back home. I sat in the last row of the van and cried the entire way back home. Just the thought of not being able to see him was gut wrenching and there was nothing I could do about it. Was this love? When we reach home I saw a card he had told me to open only after he left. It was card of a girl carrying a huge bouquet of red roses with the words.. only the best for you. I burst out into tears again and could feel my insides fall apart. I had never known emotion so intense. What was this feeling? More crying followed and then came a phone call. It was HIM. He was in Paris and said that he wanted to jump out of the plane to come see me. He said he loved me. I cried more and couldn't bring myself to say anything. After he reached his destination, he would call regularly. Initially it was just casual chatting but slowly he opened up and we exchanged our stories of each others impressions. He proposed on a snowy cold night for him shivering in the bitter cold. I said YES and felt like I was flying. We both were thrilled beyond words. After that conversations were easy and we chatted for hours thorugh the night(for him). This went on for about a year. But then things started to fall apart. he told my aunt who lived near by to him and she dissuaded him from taking this any further. he called and said that it was important to him that our kids be born healthy and that with us being first cousins chances of genetic deformity would be higher. I remember telling him that I am okay if a child would be born with special needs. But he was not convinced. After prolonged period of self doubt and second guessing I decided to call it off if he was not that convinced about our relationship. Also, the choppy communication didn't help.  I got rid of all the memntoes he gave me and told him to do the same. About a year after we broke up I had an arranged marriage to a wonderful person. My cousin attended our wedding and looked crestfallen. We barely talked. He got married a few years later. I attended his reception and also hung out with him and his wife. Conversation was easy at this point due the added people involved. His wife and I got along well and my cousin and I would chat once in a while over the phone. However a year later his wife discovered a love letter I had written to him among other gifts I had sent him. Now, I had told my husband about my non starter relationship with my cousin and he didn't think much about it and that was that. But since my cousins wife found my letter she barred him from talking to me. I don't know what he told her when she confronted him but I heard that things were pretyy bad between them for a while. This hurt me a lot. I was the pariah now. I tried to reach out to her and explain the situation but she never took my calls. I let it go and avoided all contact with them. Now, I have three kids, one with special needs and they have one. We have met a couple of times and things were VERY awkward between my cousin and I. One time after a family function when my cousin left, I was in pain thinking about how the connection between us could still be felt by me. I could see it in his face too. I wrote to him and we exchanged a couple of general emails. The next meeting a couple of years later was equally awkward. BUt this time his wife was nice to me and even invited me home. I didn't go. Now after 14 years since I first realised I was in love with him I going to meet him at another family function. I can't stop thinking about him. When will this end. How will this end. I am happy in my marriage but have never felt the intensity of emotions I have felt for him for anyone else. Is he my true love? I don't know if I will ever get to be with him but would love to have some closure on this front. I know that he has been in treatment for depression over the past few years. Does he yearn for me too? Only time will tell.