Himachal, 26th December
In the stillness of this evening, the silence is louder than the couple fighting next door. I can almost hear myself breathing. I love growing up and I haven’t slept in three days because I was so full of love and laughter that I did not wish to miss it. I washed my over-expensive coat that he accidentally spilled wine on at 6:30 in the morning today and put them to dry, only for it to rain few minutes later. Ugh.
I don’t know if I need rest or if I need coffee. Yesterday, something bothered me a lot, but I handled it very well. I can feel myself being calmer. But, my best friend stayed on the call, while I wept and wept at 4:00 am. She doesn’t love herself, and I can always tell her why to, but I wish I could tell her how to. She’s responsible for a lot of my sanity.
My aunt’s husband divorced her and then moved in to the house next door with his new wife. For twenty seven years, my aunt woke up every morning and saw the love of her life build a home with someone else. So you see, happily ever after might just be a hoax. Even Romeo and Juliet didn’t have their’s and here I am — hoping for a happily ever after again. How did someone manage to make me feel so pure again that I can imagine this again?
In the loneliness of this room, the sadness is louder than the annoying sound of the heater. I have never been kind to myself. Yet, this man goes and sleeps on the couch when I tell him that I’m not ready for someone to kiss and touch the places that this other man once did. But he places a gentle hand on mine when I talk about Nani or Sky and Lyla. He kisses my forehead when I thank him for being patient with me. I don’t have the stomach for it.
It’s easier leaving than loving. The only thing promised is that promises are broken. Horrible horrible things happened to me in december but here I am, still feeling warm because of the people who love me, people who let me sleep in their cars in the middle of the night when I say I need to escape my home, people who cuddle me to sleep when I can’t stop shivering, people with whom my appetite expands, people who have only known the memory of Sky and Lyla but talk about them like they were everything to them, and people who will come with me to Himachal on a 2 hour notice when I say I wanna run away. It’s snowing outside today. I want to meet this writer who lives in the bombay suburbs with his wife and a cat. He’s obsessed with coffee. I stalk him everyday. He looks like someone who’ll have answers to my questions. If I pull out the sadness and lay it out on his dinner table, maybe he’ll know when it ends.
