Note: This is a part of a series that I call “Chapters” because even if I cannot write a novel, I sure can tell a story in parts. While the story, the setting and the characters are entirely fiction, the emotions are always true as are the inspirations (aside from the need to tell a story and I am a master at concocting emotional and tragic pieces of ‘art’, as widely known already!). And writing, as always, is therapy, and there is no better way to channel the darkness innate in all of us than to create from it.
It was all or none. If you cut out one part, let it die, unnoticed and alone, out of despair and negligence and brutal indifference, it took the rest with it. All of it, shriveled up and just died. Yes, it was all or none.
Time, affection and the expectations. The expectations had to go. You are fortunate, nay, blessed, if the one you love the most loves you the most. But it’s rare. Not all of us have that blessing. So yes, the expectations had to go. Pressed down, stifled and asphyxiated till it could haunt you no more. But more had been killed, throttled than just the expectations. The want, the need and the soul.
All of me had died alongside. The ability to feel, to love. I was human no more. There was nothing left inside of me except nightmares and a cold bed with a cool draft blowing and no one to hold me through the night, and shake me out of my screams.
And no one to tell, to pour my heart to.
There were bigger things happening, and all else barely mattered among all that glory. Every thing else was irrelevant and insignificant, especially my ache. I could be everything but petty, shallow or selfish. Yes, this dying barely mattered.
I knew that I never would be ready for an ending. But then suddenly, all of it melded into non-existence. The immortal soul died. You thought of that immense love, and you saw it as if it had happened to someone else; as I was held in his arms, it felt it had happened to two other people who had known that wondrous, beguiling sense of belonging, that wonderful joy of love. I knew it was him, that it was my safe haven but I couldn’t find him, the one who was mine, the one who was with me because he loved, too. I couldn’t feel, because I couldn’t reach in and allow my soul to live, only to die moments later. It was not simple, it hadn’t been for the longest time and today I finally realized. And ‘the connection’ was gone.
I was gone. I was dead. I could feel no more. But for the memories, the remembrances of a time so wonderful. To have been loved so completely, it had to be next to impossible to hold on to that, to own that forever.
Words. It had been just the words, your words, and my faith in them that made my universe light up, and my life happier, brighter. I have known happiness, the misery paled in comparison, sublime happiness that cannot be recreated or be mine any more. We only woke up to reality, as I’d always known. And I could not live being your duty, your responsibility, a burden. I needed the words, the never-ending love. I needed more, each and every one of what I would never have. You’ll want none, need none, feel a little but nothing to upset your day. You’ll move on to bigger things, really better things and now, it seems I will move on too. May be this is the price you pay for being exorcised?Fragments of your soul?
The conditions haven’t changed, they still spell ‘unconditional’, the passion has barely abated, they still want to breath you in, drink in the sight of you, spill over at the sound of you, but like your words they disappear under other priorities, and get forgotten as unimportant and trivial. They have learned not to want, not to expect. They have learned to surrender all that was theirs and walk away empty-handed, and if need be, onto a burning pyre.
I should be happy that it all died, quietly and peacefully. Wasn’t this what I always wanted? But the tears don’t seem to stop…
Maverick Misfit 
ouch.
that awkward moment when you want something to end yet you hold on.
that awkward moment when you want to hold on, but something is slowly letting go.
been there, done that. no more. never again.
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Raj… Not to forget that old lesson, 'Never say never', but fingers crossed 🙂
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It flows so beautifully. Poetry in prose. It’s relaxing. No hurry, no the-world-is-about-to-end urgency. It’s hard to write this way.
As to the subject matter, all I can say is that I understand.
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Karthik!! So glad to see you here! 🙂
As to the pace, after the end, there’s all the time in the universe… And as for the beauty, I don’t know how every pain becomes so.
And thank you, not every one does. Understand, that is.
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