Today the sun felt a bit warmer, birds chirped a little louder. White and grey they were, I noticed, after a long time. Trees appeared a darker shade of green. Breeze lightly seemed to ruffle my hairs. I saw a kid running and I smiled. A moment later, I was amazed at myself. Something had changed, something inside was gone. I felt like waking up, after a long time. Like a sheet of numbness had been lifted from my senses. The world around me took a more lucid turn now. Nothing felt superfluous, like ecstasy or euphoria, just the ordinary. But now, even the ordinary seemed precious.

I remembered those days. I’d wake up in the morning, my thoughts circling back to the same thing. Like even in sleep, I have been thinking about it all the time. As if even my sub-conscious mind refused to let go. Sleep wasn’t sleep, it was delirium. I’d wake up in the depths of despair, while I had gone to bed perfectly fine. This was possible because of millions of trivial efforts throughout the day, but the next day was same cycle over again. The same relentless cycle, and no matter how hard I tried, it never seemed to become easier. There were moments when I caved, when I pulled the sheets up and prayed and pleaded through my tears, to anyone who was listening out there, to get me out of this. To take my hand and pull me out of this abyss. But when I pulled the sheets down, there was just a swathe of darkness around me.

I was torn up with the same thing ricocheting in my mind; how could he? Did he ever or did he not? Even after all those promises, was I just another one?

Of course I knew the answer, and of course I couldn’t accept it.

But yesterday, something happened, something that shattered me completely. But I needed it, I desperately needed it. I needed it to evaporate all the doubt, all the conflict. And it did, it did the exact same thing. What he was with me for the past few months was exactly what he was with her yesterday, in front of my own eyes. And at that moment I knew, unequivocally, that he did not. He never really did. It was all a façade, a very well played masquerade. And all this time, even after all those lies, I believed him because maybe somewhere inside, I had never let go of that hope. A hope that things might be the same again, that time might turn back. I believed him not because I thought it was true, I knew it wasn’t, but because I wanted to. And today, I don’t want to anymore. Not because the hope was gone, but because now it wouldn’t be worth anything now. Whatever we had, it had shriveled and crumpled in the sun of time. That utopian picture of love I had grown to love didn’t exist anymore. And it was just me standing alone in that vast expanse, watering the scorched bushes, praying that it might rain.

Love didn’t work that way.

I understood now.

So even if things will be the same again, they wouldn’t be.

As shattered as I was to accept this, something inside was glad. Something that knew I wouldn’t live in the shadow of doubt anymore. It was that something which brought about this morning.


Something that had realized that arduous journey of letting go was at its end.