In his latest book, The Zahir, Paulo Coelho grants his male protagonist, whose wife has just left him, an epiphany. Yet it is probably a truth I can relate quite empathetically. It is this:

'Being with someone else and making that person feel as if they were of no importance in our life is far worse than feeling alone and miserable in the streets of Geneva.'

I have known C for a couple of months. No sex. I don't believe in one-night or multiple-night stands. It all started in a very bizarre manner. I was 'counselling' him online over someone he loved yet had disappeared after their first meeting.

He was facing his emotional tempest and we logged on everyday just to talk, maybe more to distract him away from his melancholic thoughts on my part.

There was an unspoken kind of connection and he told me no one had been able to reach out to him so poignantly or understood him so well.

I was happy, maybe because I sensed that he was happy. He was in Korea at that time. (At the time of this writing, he has just flown to Korea on a second work assignment.)

When he returned, he called me everyday. Talking to him was one of the happiest moments in my life. He was witty and candid, always said what was on his mind.

But I knew that such times would not last, simply because I was an emotional crutch to him, providing the emotional stability in some dark nights of the soul.

We went out a few times. That was it.

I did tell myself not to fall in love with him, or feel too attached to him. But we know the drill and outcome. The opposite often happens.

I found myself waiting, sometimes in dreary silence and sometimes in helpless desperation, just to hear his voice, or to see him come online, so that at least, in some unknown space and time, we might be closer together.

Then the phonecalls ceased. I missed his voice and all the funny things he would tell me. I still see him online. But even when we talk, I know we are one universe apart. Even though I love him as before, I realise my love has outlived its stay.

I guess he is never here with me.We are just sojourners in each other's lives.

If only he knows... all the prayers I’ve silently uttered for him, all the nights and days I’ve spent waiting for his calls, all the anxiety I go through whenever I hear he is down, and all the times I’ve felt like leaving the place that bears his presence,(because longing for him is such a painful dream).

And all the feelings I’ve held back from expressing in abandon, and all that should be said but left unsaid.

Maybe we should not have met, should not have communicated and should not carry on.I don’t want to pay the price for love or hatred that cuts deep into the soul anymore.

I guess it’s time to leave for a place of peaceful solitude where there can be new wings for a new beginning.

P.S. C, you probably won't read this but don't call me by my name anymore. I long to be alone now.