I remember the surge of happiness which engulfed me when his smile greeted me as I stepped inside the studio.
It was everything.
The eyes which spoke kindly without so much as a trace of regret were the same eyes that strove to hide from mine when he thought the love ran out.
He was my second chance. The last bit of hope on this whole chase of love. It failed and I don’t really know if I expected anything less than what I got.
I remember believing that there will come a day where you would leave. Maybe I did that out of an irrational fear with the notion that it will not come to pass if I dread enough. I did not want you to leave. Did not want you to stay with me if you never came out of that shell you hid in. Still couldn’t stop hoping you will see how it killed me. Maybe you did. And maybe you did not care enough.
People think I cannot live without love. But isn’t that all I have done my entire life? Live without it. Isn’t that the reason I hold on to it when I get it. Isn’t that why I am so bad at it no matter which ways I try to secure it?
A good part of me always lives in the past. Something I tried to kill, but sticks to me like a scabbing wound. At times I wonder if it would be better to go away and start afresh. Because sometimes it gets so impressively lonely that it amazes me. The crushing weight of it makes you forget every important thing in life. Makes you forget every second of life you have lived so far, and every second yet to be lived.
Something I learned after a proper heartbreak is that, it gets physical. For me, it is a heavy heart. Literally. And it never goes away. It weighs you down. I keep dragging in one heaving breath after another thinking it would subside. Let me tell you. It is hard to live with it. Hard to breathe. It demands your attention and all or any strength you have left has to be directed there. Because keep breathing right?
Nothing confuses a brain more when you can’t decide which love broke you.
And nothing hardens a heart more than realizing that all love did was bring you to your knees.
To me, pain is that one dear constant that I find beside me. Unfortunately, all comfort it can give me is more hurt. Yet I am sure that it sympathizes. For pain favors the ones who do not shy away from it. I embrace the gritty familiarity of it every single time. And it folds me in its stiff embrace knowing that it is all I have.
Still, life goes on.
Some days I resurface. Some days I don’t.
