I Guess I am Still Not Over Him

You know that feeling when you want to grab the one you love but have broken up with and just hug it all off? Well, the quarantine is making me feel so. He was all that I had. After years of being told what to do and fighting for my own rights, I had finally found my oxygen in him.

I could hold on to him and be myself. I could be his strength when I wanted to and be a child to him all at the same time. He was to me what you could only imagine from those fairy tales, a knight in shining armour. He was everything that I was not and yet so freakishly me that I cannot even start to explain. But then every good thing has to end sometime, right? It did with us too. 

No amount of tears, pain, or justification could ever get us back together because he just didn’t feel that love anymore. Do you know what I am saying? And after a certain point of time, I gave up and I moved on. But did I ever stop loving him?

Cut to, that feeling when I saw him with other girls. It made me enraged and I stalked each one of them (you know who you are!). I kept thinking for days at an end if I have ever heard of them from him or are they just new additions to his life post our relationship? I shudder to think today what my reactions were when I imagined the latter, and I chose to think otherwise. 

You know this alarming rise in the heartbeat level when you see something that you do not want to? 

Well, that was me when I first came face to face with him post the breakup over the phone. For a moment there, everything was back again like it were when we were together. I guess both of us felt that there was nothing wrong and the months had never passed. 

But the moment I dragged a puff of my cigarette and got back to work, I died a little trying to stop the tears from rolling down my eyes. However, I realized my surroundings and knew I had to keep my shit together, anyhow. That’s what I did, you know?

I spent the night taking rapid puffs of my cigarette, dying for that one alone time with him where I could just ask what went wrong! That apart, I could not stop having my whiskey, even when I knew I was way past my limits. Days from that one moment passed by in a blur and it was just getting heavier by time. Nights? Oh, don’t get me started there. I could not concentrate and would go back to his thoughts, time and again. 

You know the feeling when you feel a piece of your heart, breaking, physically? Well, that happened with me and I knew I was not in good shape. But I also knew I had to somehow hold myself back and keep moving on if I really loved him cause that is where his happiness lay. I couldn’t have had months of progress down the drain. Could you have done so, had you been there in my place?

So, I immersed myself in work, nights at end, and channelled my hurt into passion. So, one fine day I woke up and did the needful. I pulled my hair back and put on the darkest red that I had. 

It has been a long time since and yet, whenever I get past anything even remotely related to him, I take a single moment and savour it. I still find myself checking out our pictures together while our song is still running in the background and I smile. But I don't have it in me to just run back to him and hug him and kiss him. You know why?

That was the first and last thing he asked of me.

The heart doesn't yearn anymore...