" The Stranger I Like "

ANURAAG

They said love born from screens and messages is nothing but a fleeting illusion — a mirage that wastes time and drains the heart. They said I was spinning my world around someone who barely knows me, someone who can’t be near when the nights grow heavy, someone who wouldn’t notice if I vanished from his life. Maybe they’re right, in a way. But what they could never see was how a heart can tether itself to moments that feel like nothing to others but become entire galaxies to the one who holds them. I never claimed his love, I simply guarded mine like a secret constellation drawn only in my sky.

 He doesn’t know what he means to me, and maybe he never will. But there’s a kind of devotion in admiring someone from afar, in saving snapshots of his face like museum pieces, even if they vanish in one blink, one time mode. Just for those seconds, I let my eyes drink in the gentle chaos of him — the under-eye crescents speaking of sleepless battlegrounds, the dimpled corners that caught shadows like rainwater in a forgotten cup, and those eyes, pretty enough like tired universes, dimmed at the edges but still burning with purpose. How cruelly beautiful, to look at a storm and see poetry. He sends pictures not for me, I know, but if they reach my inbox, isn’t it a crime not to believe they’re a little mine? I giggle at my own foolishness, the kind that makes a girl feel like she’s thirteen again, blushing at pixels and pretending they wink. They say online love isn’t real unless it’s mutual, but then again — wasn’t I always a fan of distant suns? Some adore K-pop stars, others write letters to actors. Me? I adore him. A star not famous on stage, but on hospital floors, the kind that saves lives with hands gloved in exhaustion, still managing to flash a victory pose between wars. And how he unknowingly became my remedy not in prescriptions, though he's a medico, so I joke that one day he’ll write one just for my silly heart but in existing. In reminding me that someone like him breathes in this same world. When life pulls me into its dull greys and I feel the weight pressing on my lungs, I scroll and see his updates bleeding patients, chaos, loss and I whisper thank God that my pain is nowhere close to his, suddenly, my sadness feels privileged. 

He never said he cared, but never made me feel like I was nothing either. Every message I left him — he read. Every little love-wrapped confession — he noticed though forgot the one I sent as a PDF once (I understand that was too long to read). Not with noise, but in presence. And that’s what made me stay. I don’t need him to hold me. I only wish to be a pause in his storm, a name he one day remembers when silence feels loud.

 Medico life isn’t gentle — I can see it in his eyes that have memorized the color of fatigue and the shape of pressure. He lives a world far from mine — where every breath is a battle, where gloved hands fight invisible wars and the weight of fragile lives presses heavy on tired shoulders. The world sees only his brief escapes, the laughter snatched between shifts, the moments when the mask slips and he’s just a boy who needs to breathe. He posts the fun and he deserves every slice of joy he can steal. Who are we to question how people survive their wars? Medicos are often misunderstood by the fun they experience but I see the undercurrents, the nights where the stars fade into exhaustion, where dreams are traded for reality’s harsh grip, where the silent screams behind steady eyes carry more weight than any words. It’s a life painted with sacrifice in every shade, a journey carved from endless hours and aching hope. And still, somehow, he carries a light that reaches even me across the distance.

 Sometimes I imagine hugging him, not to possess, but to let him lean. But I know — I’m just a girl orbiting her star. Loving him the way people love sunsets — from afar, fully, never expecting it to turn around. And yet, I’ll keep watching, keep hoping. Because even if our paths never cross, I’m lucky I existed in the same timeline as someone who unknowingly taught me how to love without demand, without return  just love, like wildflowers that bloom where no one looks.