Dear Mounica,
Vivid imagery of that melancholic night haunts me, still. Broken heart, sobbing clouds, and split roses floating on the flooded road. A punch in the gut for me as you looked your best that night.
With painful embarrassment, I remember suiting up and wearing perfume for the first time and buying an expensive bouquet of roses, all beyond my financial capacities just so I could see that little flicker in your beautiful eyes. The weather was generous at first- cool, pleasant and exhaled fresh fragrances with rain to follow.
I was tapping my feet impatiently at a table at the open air cafe, your favourite of course, peering around, nervous for some reason until I saw you strutting with a folded umbrella, and most important of all- with a gloomy countenance.
‘Sorry, it’s not you. It’s me’, you said, so cold in your tenor.
You could have sledge-hammered me and it would hurt less. Rooted, I stood without clue of what to follow that up with.
This is the cruelest way to end a relationship . Was it my fault? Have I not loved you enough? Have I treated you wrong? Have i hurt you? All these questions bounced in my head, and none I could ask. Because apparently, it was you, not me.
The clouds started sobbing with me as you turned, unfolded the umbrella and started strutting away. The atmosphere that was so jubilant and euphoric turned melancholic and gloomy at once.
Is it our perspectives? The nature which seems to go through a spectrum of emotions with me, is probably just a change in humidity and temperature with you. It has always been like that. You have always been the calculated one and by default smarter in the relationship. Was i just a petty calculation to your mind? An equation that perhaps does not agree with your constraints.
‘I like you. But that’s how far it can go. It’s not your fault.’ you said with blatant ignorance when I demanded an explanation, a week later. Honestly, I wanted to hurt you. Instead, I walked away and hurt a dog that was pestering me on my way home. I kicked it so hard ,until it bled to death.
You are a drug I am addicted to. A mistake , if I could, want to unmake. Maybe, that’s why, I swallowed my pride and buried my dignity, just so I could be near you under the false pretenses of a friendship.
I thought I would find peace and tranquility in your presence. I found transience instead. Everytime, you took his name before mine…How dare you? How ignorant of you?
‘He’s practical. His feet stay on the ground. Just like mine.’, you said. I didn’t even ask you ‘why him?’ . Was that a covert implication of what you were looking for in a relationship? of why I was not right for you?
But darling, pieces with similar contours seldom fit together.
It was the night before your birthday. I was making one last attempt at making you understand the depth of my love. I wrote songs and poems in your ode. Every memory I had of us, tangible and intangible , I wrote about how I was besotted by you.
That night, with jubilance, I reached your party, with a strong belief in the work i had put in, sure that it would move you and make you come back to me….. your true lover.
Heavy clouds, fresh fragrances in the air, and jubilance in whole of the weather- This is bad omen for me as this day always ends in a heartbreak. This belief was fortified when I saw him kneel on one knee in front of the gathering and hold up a shiny diamond ring before you. The only thing shinier than the diamond was the glint in your eyes, the glint I wanted to see when you open my gift. Shattered, I dropped my gift on the table with the other cheap ones, the ones you wouldn’t probably even consider opening and left.
Alone, I sobbed in the rain. A hopeless romantic can never get a materialist. It was time to finally let you go, and brace for a life without you.
I could not. I just could not. the world had become a living hell. Half- dead, I dragged myself through the seconds. Alcohol, I adopted and beard I grew, like a lover’s widow. I was in a free fall, a fall with no end to it. I felt INCOMPLETE.
Months later when you called, I was relieved by your cognizance of my existence. I was hesitant to answer at first. Maybe my irrational hope , the only thing I had in my wreckage, made me answer your call.
Half-drunk, unshaven and this time with no flowers, I reached the cafe. There you were sipping coffee and waiting for me for a change.
‘I saw your present. Since then, things have not been good with him. I made a mistake.’ you wailed. ‘I am sorry. I have fallen in love with you.’
I took you in my arms and let you cry on my chest. In your weariness, you did not notice. I was grinning devilishly.
I love you. I am convinced now, you love me more.
That gift was an attempt not just to win you back. It was an attempt to win you and then BREAK you. I wanted to hurt you, remember.
I felt incomplete because I thought I missed the opportunity to break your heart.
Yes, it aches me to know that here, life is handing me a perfect opportunity to live the rest of my life with the woman I love and there, I am throwing it away. But I am willing to bleed to see you suffer.
Darling, do not loose hope. I might come back when I feel you have suffered enough.
‘I am sorry. It’s not you. It’s me.’
I am a sociopath.
With love,
–END–
