Steemit Challenge s28wk3: When Hope Returns
Nina at first was avoided by Ronny. It was the presence of her that scared him not because she did something wrong but because she was reminding him that he still had a weak heart.
He vowed that he would never love again. Not after the pain he carried. Not since the nights he had spent staring on the ceiling, wondering how to keep himself together.
However, at the workplace, Nina met him every morning with the same sunrise smile, the one that was like a small sunrise. She laughed gently, she listened attentively, and she moved in a composed manner that slowed the thoughts of his.
Nevertheless, Ronny restrained himself. He was not ready to rely on anybody. Not even emotionally.
Nina one day as she sat at her cafeteria one rainy afternoon, she unexpectedly found him seated there alone, stirring cold tea without any focus.
She sat opposite him with no inquiry. She was soft, as was the wind at the beginning of spring.
“You look like someone carrying too much,” she said
Ronny wished to reject it, but the fact weighed heavily on his chest. “I’m fine,” he whispered.
Nina shook her head. "No fine one looks like he is trying not to disappear."
The words came to him like once the words of the gardener came to him in the park. He felt something vibrating inside him. It was surprising that Nina could see through the walls that he had built in months.
Later in the week he went back to the park. He was before the same tree which before appeared dead, but now was all in blossom. Pink flowers were suspended with a Lantern like light and tender flower. Ronny put a finger on one of the petals and something was making him feel warm inside.
He said, "Well, perhaps Hope can come back, too, in case this tree can come back."
The following day he entered the office more cheerfully than before. Nina came there again with sorting files. Ronny smiled when he looked up, and had not done so in a long time.
“Thank you,” he said.
“For what?” Nina asked.
"To remind me that I am after all human."
In the following weeks, they did more chatting. They told each other of childhood and fears and dreams and scars and little pleasures. Ronny got to know that Nina had a previous experience of being hurt.
She had loved somebody who abandoned them without any form of explanation. She cured herself through poetry reading and taking rain walks.
They had pain in common, and this pain was an unspoken link between them.
One morning as they were walking to the office, Nina passed by a flower shop. She was indicating a little pot with tiny green shoots.
"This one is only beginning, look!" she said.
Ronny looked at the plant and smiled. Hope always started small.
However, just when Ronny was beginning to believe that life was beginning to open up, something went wrong. Nina abruptly turned withdrawn. She avoided his eyes. She galloped through discussions. She skipped lunch breaks. Ronny was confused, frightened, half-deserted.
One day, he was packing his things one night and he saw a handwritten note on his table.
"Ronny, it is not you that I am stepping away because of you. I am walking out because I am terrified of losing myself once again. Give me time. I would, I would fine be growing but slowly, as spring."
Ronny was a long time sitting there, with the note in his hand. The message also made him calm, unlike breaking him. She did not reject him. She did not push him away. She simply needed patience.
He understood it deeply:
A healing is not a linear process. Hope increases, but it increases slowly.
It was a week later, and Nina came to him. Her eyes less brimming, her breathing less laboured.
“I’m ready to try,” she whispered.
Ronny’s chest warmed. Not with great excitement but with some quiet and unwavering hope, the hope that comes round like the season that he had been skeptical about.
They both went out of the office together and it was not that they were running away out of their past but that they were learning to live once again. And as they got to the park they both paused in front of the blossoming tree.
He was touched by Nina on the hand.
“See?” she said. “Spring always comes back.”
Nodding his head, Ronny experienced something new, and something old in him.
Hope had returned.
Not suddenly.
Not loudly.
But gently, just like spring.
I invite @josepha, @stef1 and @mikitaly to drop a very constructive comments on this post and also to participate in this contest.
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