You & me and everything else in between

 I got up early and knew it was your big day, you were getting married. I thought I would be saying “We are getting married” but you are now marrying some one else, someone you love- that’s what everyone says. I wondered how you could move on so quick and look into your future while I was still stuck in the past thinking about the mistakes we did. I look at myself in the mirror, I see no different person I was years back. I did not cry, I did not smile as well. I was not sad and not happy as well. Losing someone is difficult especially when you don’t know why you lost them. You would have thought everything was fine and there would have not been any red flags popped up but one fine day, your whole world crumbles. I always wondered how can someone be alone and happy until I realized that being lonely is completely different from being alone. I always had me to support me in all the situations. I always believed that if someone is not as interested as you are while you explain your story then it is not worth to explain at all. From a tender age, I became what I am now. I don’t go out with friends, I don’t talk much with my dad, but it doesn’t mean that I’m unhappy with my life. I had always got what I had wanted in life and sometimes even more. My silence was always understood and there was no need for words. I always believed that words are for those who hears by ear and silence is for those who hears with heart. I always had my books to love and diaries for all my fantasies to write on.

For a person like me, how does break up dissolves in? You must have been thinking who would have loved a person like me in the first place. Yes, I was also loved. A person entered my life and proved me that I could be loved as well. I wasn’t running away from love but my way of love was far more different to what people thought love is. While I was young, I always wished that there comes a person in life to love me and hear my stories and play with the silence, walk along a lonely road at midnight while the full moon followed us, smell the leaves in the thick forest and hug the trees, watch the sky sleeping beside me and talking about the universe, looking into each other’s eyes for hours and speak all those romance without uttering a word. A person came into my life, a person I wished for, understood my feelings, believed in my thoughts and goals, set my life free only to cut short in the end.

While I was in college, some kind of a distance crept in, Dad. The moment I left the gates of home I felt the distance. It’s not that love diminished, even thought I wasn’t expressive with you; staying with you always made me comfortable. You took care of me. I always limited my world with you and showed you  very little of my world which you believed was my world but I knew my world was big. I wanted my world to myself. I always wanted to speak a lot of my feelings with you but you had your world. I knew how you felt when mom left us. I knew how you were left alone by people who you trusted. I saw you getting punished for the sin you did not commit. You never said a word and you made sure that the pain did not reach me. I saw you toil hard just to get what I wanted in life. I got everything what you thought I wanted, rather than what I wanted in life. I wanted someone to hold my hand and say me that it’s okay to cry, it’s okay to feel pain rather than protecting me from the pain. I would not blame you for that and I would not blame anyone for the person I am. Every time I sat beside you and wanted to open my heart, I felt the hesitation you had. I understand now how you must have felt all those days sitting in a dark room all to yourself with no one beside.  

 I had never thought of showing my world to anyone until you (love for my life) came into my life. It’s not that I did not have anyone to share my world with but I always felt that my world felt happy even without anyone’s presence. I limited everything to myself but you entered and changed everything. What I thought was my entire world seemed like a small stone in the mighty universe of yours. You were outspoken, everyone in the college knew you while none knew me. You were a good listener, maybe that’s why even you were able to listen to my silence but I should have known that maybe someday you even except words from me and not just silence. I should have spoken up when you and me were standing beside each other at your house. I should have held your hand and said that “We will be together” but as usual I kept silent and everything happened that happened.

At that moment, everyone could easily blame me for not speaking a word but the blame must be equally shared with all. First, you knew me better than everyone else in that room. Those 4 years in college you had understood my silence more than my words. You knew that I loved you and I couldn’t live without you but you still wanted words while you failed to listen to my silence and look into my eyes at the moment .You were the person that made me feel comfortable that I am just normal like everyone else. But then, you are complaining that there is something wrong with me and I am a stone hearted person.  Second, I would blame you - my dad. When I said that I was in love, you rejoiced; maybe that’s what you said but your eyes and words did not match. I cannot see the excitement in your eyes that you had expressed in the words. I knew that if you were happy you would first cry and hug me but when I told that I had found my love for life, you just said that you were happy that I am finally understanding my life. Maybe others in the room could easily believe that you were happy but deep down I knew that you were trying to move away while I was trying to get close to someone else. I always wanted to make you understand that, if I am moving close to someone else, it doesn’t mean that I am moving away from you - again you did not try to hear me or gave a chance for me to explain.

I was not able to speak the moment, since you understood my silence all these years than my words. I believe you understood my silence at that moment as well, but you wanted the words like everyone else. I still remember the day while you and I were crossing the road in the Guindy junction. I was standing there for almost 15 minutes trying to cross the road. There weren’t signals and there was no one to sop the incoming vehicles. You came and stood by me, we weren’t loving by them but still you understood me that I was in fear. You held my hand, I could still feel you hand. It was so gentle yet firm that gave me the hope not just to cross the road but also cross the life together. I fell for you the first time I saw you. There was this feeling in me that you will continue to hold my hand for the rest of my life. I missed the person now who can understand my fears and act rather than waiting for me to say that I am in fear.

Maybe I wonder, I became the person I am since people around me understands even before I try to explain. The problem with me is, I don’t speak, I don’t share maybe it’s because what’s a mountain to me might be a dust to you and I don’t want my mountain to be a dust in my world. I have a wonderful world that I love and I believe it’s beautiful that way it is. Very less people have a beautiful world for them. I was raised by you ‘dad’ and I never missed Mom once in my life but when the love for my life said what he had said that day, I missed Mom so much and I wondered how you would have felt when the world labeled you. I hadn't shared the story of Mom with anyone, I kept it to myself like everything else until you made me realise that it was none of my mistake to live a life that I am living. I opened up with you.

I shared everything with you, my love for you always had no bounds. I don’t remember how I fell in love with you. I spoke the most with you than every other person combined till then in my life but you still blamed me that I spoke less. I said everything about me but you always told that you knew very little about me. I couldn’t explain how my everything seemed so little for you. After knowing you for more than 6 years and in love with you for over 4 years, you made me realise that even no one is different from everyone; we don’t remember love but we only remember the pain.

I still remember that day, you, me our parents standing around us and discussing our future. They were worried as we would be together. We never had any plans together but had plans individually. While you wanted to do MS in US stating that your current job sucks and I was planning to write. We both wanted to marry but we never knew what we do after marriage. When two people are in love, money would never be a hindrance but if two people are planning for a marriage; the first roadblock would be money. But we never had a problem with money, you have savings in these two years of work and also the part time freelancing photography that you were involved with and I have a good bank balance with the IT work I was doing. I thought we could be happy but when I told about my dream of becoming a writer everything fell apart.

You used to love my poems in college. While I stayed in room sleeping  but created a huge buzz while I won the inter- college poem championship. You always told me that words hardly came from my mouth but they were flowing incessantly from my pen. I liked when my thoughts came to life in the form of words. I knew what I wanted to be in life but I joined the IT company when you told me that we needed to save money before we would marry and that I could continue to write even while I work. I believed !

I did not realise that I was chasing two rabbits and catching none while I joined the IT company after the placement when you insisted me to join. While you were selected in a MNC and enjoyed, I was selected and didn’t know whether I was sad or happy. All these days in life, I never wished to have a person to speak my heart but at that time all I needed was someone to share a shoulder to cry on and hear my words out but and there were none. While you excelled in your field, I was falling between two stools. I wasn’t good at office and I wasn’t able to to write what I wanted to write. I don’t blame you and I am not envious of you that you are happy in what you are doing, it’s just I was not able to be where I want to be. I felt like a caged bird but a caged bird does have wings. While I wanted to fly, you wanted me to fly as well but in your world. We fought; you fought to be honest and I listened as usual. I still thought that we could have sorted out like we had sorted out so many issues in the past.

You wanted to do MS, you wanted to marry. I wanted to be a writer so I wanted time. You doubted whether I would be successful, your smile was like mocking. It tore me, I should have shouted back when you raised your voice but I stayed silent. My silence was valued till then. But, now it was treated as a defeat. You took advantage. I remembered how you used to tell me that you could understand my silence, but if at all you did then you should have understood how hurt I was and how hard I was crying inside.

When you said that I was no different from my mother who left my dad after marriage to live with some one else, I knew that you had gone far away from me.Maybe, that’s why I always believed that everybody doesn’t need to know everything about you. You had never been in my mother position to judge her for the decision she had taken and you have never been in my position to understand how difficult it was to grow up in a society where everyone keeps taking about everything about me. I wished people could just stop speaking, when I understood that people would not stop speaking, then I decided to stop listening. All my life I have been kept various names and had been blamed for other’s deeds. I could not understand initially in my life and there were none to explain me where my mom went. The problem with life is, once you know something you can’t un-know it. I wish I never had known about Mom. I cleft myself from the world and created a world for myself but you entered into that and made my world just exactly as the other horrible one which I left years back. Now, I don’t have a world to live in. I cry incessantly until no tears came out but once I cried enough, I decided not to cry anymore.

I had learned to be happy when I am with you but did not learn how not be sad when you are not around. Moving on was not easy after dreaming of staying with you for forever. I knew that you have moved on when I saw your wedding invitation on my desk. I was happy or sad or both or none, I couldn’t figure it out. I was this person through out my life. I never was able to show my happiness or anger, I reacted the same for both.

The person whom I wished to be mine is going to be someone else’s. I realized I cannot live without you only when we had separated but I am not going to cry over the past thinking of you. I loved you and that ends the story. I built my world without you and it stays that way. I may never end up hating you but I can try to stay by not loving you. When a person leaves, we all have a choice; to remember the person for all the love shared or to forget the person for making in believing it would last for forever. Sometimes, love remains but people won’t.

 I wore the best dress and hired a taxi to the marriage hall.