I Left My First Love at the Altar of Tradition

We were sixteen the first time I saw Naomi, seated at the back of our church’s youth meeting, where hymns rose like incense to a God who would never understand us. She was the quiet one, hands folded in reverence, lips murmuring scripture with the devotion of a believer. I was the restless one, eyes wandering, questioning, wondering. And yet, when our gazes met across the sanctuary, something ancient and unspoken wove between us, a tether neither of us dared acknowledge.

We belonged to a Naga Angami community, where tradition was scripture, and scripture was law. The weight of lineage, duty, and whispers behind bamboo walls, pressed upon us like monsoon clouds heavy with unstilled rain. Love was meant to be a sacred covenant between man and woman, ordained and sanctioned by faith and clan. What we felt, though unholy in their eyes, was no less sacred to us.

It began in the margins of our days—furtive glances in the school courtyard, the accidental brush of hands beneath wooden desks, words inked in trembling script on the torn edges of hymnbook pages. In the shelter of twilight, we walked beyond the village, past terraced fields and quiet streams, speaking in hushed voices about futures we could never have. We were sweethearts in the most fragile, secretive way—like a wildflower growing between stones, beautiful but doomed.

Faith demanded sacrifice. Our love was an altar upon which we laid our longing, night after night until the burden of guilt became too much to bear. We prayed for deliverance, for absolution, for a cure. And when none came, we ended it. Naomi wept silently when I turned away, her pain swallowed by the wind, while I carried the sharp edges of her absence like a hidden blade.

Years passed. I left the village for college, while Naomi remained, becoming the woman our people expected her to be—dutiful, disciplined, the kind of daughter who made elders nod in approval. But she also became something else—a painter, an artist whose hands told stories the elders refused to hear. Her work, bold and aching, was displayed in city galleries, though our village never spoke of it. We convinced ourselves we had moved on, that we had been right to choose duty over desire. And yet, when fate wove our paths together once more at a village gathering ten years later, I knew time had only buried, not erased, what we once were.

The first moment our eyes met again, the air thickened, the years unraveled. At first, we hesitated, circling each other like moths unsure whether to flee or burn. Then, the inevitable—stolen moments, quiet confessions in the shadowed corners of our world. My time away had taught me that there were places where love like ours was not a sin. I told Naomi of them, of a life beyond the hills and rivers that had cradled us. I asked her to come with me.

But how does one run from the very marrow of their existence? From the weight of clan, of ancestors, of a faith that had shaped us before we could speak? We loved, but we also feared. And so we fought—bitterly, violently, with words that cut deeper than knives. I told her she was afraid, and that she would always choose obedience over happiness. She told me I was selfish, that not all prisons have walls, that some are built from love, from belonging.

One night, after a fight that left us both shattered, we chose the only path we could bear. “Let’s be friends,” I whispered, though we both knew it was a lie. Friendship would never fit in the hollow space love once occupied. But it was the only way to survive.

Our last night together, we sat by the river where we had once spoken of eternity. The silence between us was vast. Then, Naomi broke it. “Do you which part of you attracts me the most?” she asked.

I turned to her, my breath catching. “I don’t know.”

She smiled faintly. “It’s a secret.”

A few months went by, and I was engaged to a kind man who has no hidden secrets as I do. The news spread quickly, congratulatory voices blending into a hum I could not escape. Naomi said nothing. She only painted, her work growing more sorrowful, more haunting.

The night before my wedding, a package arrived at my door. It was wrapped neatly in plain brown paper as if the sender had taken great care with it. My fingers trembled as I opened it. Inside lay a vintage clock, its golden hands frozen in time. Beneath it, a note, scrawled in Naomi’s familiar handwriting:

Those eyes.

Tears streamed down my face as I read it, silent sobs wracking my body.

Some loves are never meant to be. But that does not mean they are not real, that they do not endure. They live in the spaces between seconds, in the echo of unsaid words, in the weight of a gaze that lingers just a moment too long. And though the world may forget, though time may pass, I will always remember. They will always be a part of me; they give me stories to write and songs to sing.

*The name of the character and the tribe’s name have been changed for discretion.

This post is written by one of the winners of the writing contest on Love And Desire In All Forms in collaboration with Youth Ki Awaaz.