I sit on the bathroom floor, away from it, at an arm’s distance. But that wretched heart out of my body does no good either.
I swallow my words. I curl my fingers into a tight fist. I take a step back. I cross my arms over my chest. I wear a mask and veil my emotions. I blink a little more than I should and lose not the tiniest opportunity to move away from you. My body engages in all of these movements involuntarily and quick because it knows who I am and how I have loved and what it’s done to me. It loses not a second in pushing me away because it knows that if I spend another minute around you, another second looking at you, another moment talking to you, I will fall for you, once again, in that long, long list of ‘once again's’ and then there would be no coming back from the disaster that was you, my love.
I wonder if people down on the streets, when they look up, can see me while I stand in the balcony on sunny mornings or rainy evenings. I wonder if they can tell that my eyes don’t know how to swim but I continue to drown them in tears anyway, at odd times of the day and night. I wonder if they can tell that my tears blur my vision so bad some days that I can barely see what’s right in front of me. Can they tell that there are days when I find myself looking in the mirror for an extra minute, trying to understand what it was or rather is, that you see in me that makes you love me? I wonder if they can tell that there are nights I wish to scream so loud, so hard, that I decide not to because I know there is no one around to nurse me back to health if I injure my soul with all that noise. I wonder if they know I move my tongue over my lips, more than I’d like, and find myself only tasting the saltiness of my tears. Can they tell, from where they stand, all the love that I am made of, all the love that consumes me, is love that I harbor for you and you alone? Can they tell that I am a hopeless romantic, a torrid heart keeper and a morbid soul, all wrapped together and held in place by mere muscles and bones? I wonder, if they ever wonder, who I am.
I wish to store my tears and send them off to a lab some day where someone could decipher for me their topography. I am sure whoever gets to this task will be in for a shock; be it elation, grief, joy, sorrow, pain or hope, I am sure they’ll find you in there, somewhere, in it all. Because that is how you are in me; you are everywhere. I was never sure of my capabilities or want to love, such, but now I believe I know nothing else but this. You are, some nights, the only thought that has me consumed and then there are days when I have been so occupied with work and daily chores that you don’t cross my mind or heart for even a second. But those are only days because the night still lays open and available for you to make your way to me, and you do, in my dreams, both beautiful and horrid.
I wake up with you in my head, my fingers craving your touch and my eyes craving a glimpse of your face. It is relentless, the way your memory fights and pokes me for attention, all day and all night long, and despite my best and most sincere efforts, I lose and you flood me right away in an instant. I am foolish, I agree. For someone who isn’t a swimmer, I chose to fall in love with the ocean. The more I try and let go of the idea of you, the more I find myself holding on to it. I know now that burying all of this is in vain, a futile and silly attempt, because I had failed to see all along that seeds don’t fear burial- they are made for it. And therefore you grow back, sometimes after a few hours and sometimes after a few days, but you come around soon enough, stronger than before, for me to realize that I should give up burying you in all. It doesn’t help. Not even a tiny bit.
I know we have discussed the possibility of an us and established rather clearly that maybe there isn’t scope for it. I know we chose to be friends and that it is better that we keep it that way and though that means I have no right to feel this way, it doesn’t mean that I don’t. A platonic friendship colored with the emotional hues of romantic love, never given physical form but always aglow with an intensity artificially dimmed by the label of plain friendship- that is how I view us. But my mind is quick to point out that these are mere words, which sound fancy and lure the heart into wanting to believe very meta ideas of love and life but are nothing more than an illusion; a weak man’s way to cushion his broken heart. I don’t know what is what but I can at the very least speak for my heart. Rumi said you must keep breaking your heart until it opens but I am not sure if the absence of an upper limit on that task is a good idea. I am told often that it is okay for us to have cracks, we are mortals after all, and that it is these cracks through which light is meant to make its way in and illuminate our darkened and heavy souls but I am never convinced. For someone who is opaque, my dark so black, I am highly suspicious of any light being able to make its way in. I wonder if love could do the trick. Unfortunately, I haven’t found an answer to that yet.
I spend more time in the shower than usual. The bathroom floor was cold and the hard had started to make my rear hurt. I wait for the water to calm me down but it gushes over me, not caring even a little for my tears. I guess there is no one for you out there but you. I step out of the bathroom and realize only then that I had been in there for almost an hour. I am glad I am home alone; Thumper isn’t around too. I don’t move towards the closet right away and sit down at the edge of my bed, still wrapped in a towel and dripping all over. I couldn’t care less at 2 am; it’s the middle of the night on a hot Sunday. My cell phone rings and I throw myself over the bed to pick it up from the side table. It is a text notification; it’s from you. A playful grin spreads across my face and I remember how you’d told me once that I was always full of those. That only makes me grin harder and I read your message at least a million times before I put my phone down. I don’t reply right away; not because I don’t want to or because I need to play games but because I can’t let myself lose to you again. I have cried for you, with you, because of you, and all my life I had been someone who’d do it all to keep from crying. Funny, how it all goes out the window, when love comes sneaking in.
I change into an old pair of shorts and a comfortable t-shirt. I miss Thumper and drop Mr. Jacob a message asking him to send me a picture of him, all happy and barking. I need to know that he is doing okay. The day's newspaper lays spread out on the floor, out of place, and I get on my knees to wrap it up and put it away when an article catches my eye. It elaborates how the way your partner holds your hand can reveal how he feels about you. Interesting, I say out loud, and pick up the paper to give it a read. I want to know if this article and its findings would hold true for us too. Maybe it is different when it is two women holding hands. I brush aside that train of thought as immature and ignorant and go on to pick the kind that matches with our kind of hand holding. I spot it at the end of the article, numbered at type six, and it instantly leaves me blushing. Interlaced fingers are apparently the real deal. The more of your partner’s hand you hold, the deeper your bond is. It signifies connection on a more substantial level than mere physical attraction and talks about how it means more oxytocin in the blood and more happy for your heart. I reminisce all the times we have had our hands in each other’s and it leaves me with a warm, fuzzy feeling in my being. I sit like that, blushing, on the floor of my bedroom amidst scattered newspaper for a few seconds before I get up and clean out the space.
I think of that day often, when I had knowingly made my way to your house whilst out on a run in the evening but had continued to fool myself by repeating over and over in my head that that had happened only by chance; it had been coincidence that your house had fallen on my route that day. I had been stupid then and I was being stupid now, I remind myself, and move under my sheets with a book in my hand. I decide to skip my daily dose of green tea for the night and turn to where I had left off in the last chapter of the book.
So much has happened between us but I still don’t know who or what we are. I don’t know if we could ever find an answer to that question. I wonder if we even want to. I wonder what we’d do once we have an answer. It hits me right then why dad’s been saying that I seem lost these days. Of course, I’d be. I am. Because I am always in two places- one, where I am, and two, where you are. I finish the book in another half an hour and decide to sleep for the few hours I have left for myself before I must face another Monday and another meeting with the CFO. I drift into a light slumber still wondering; wondering how you’d react if you knew all of what goes on in my head. I wonder if you’d leave, following your discoveries of my real self. I wonder if you’d instead stay. And that leaves me more terrified than anything. What if you see it all and go nowhere? What if I truly and sincerely have found someone who I can be vulnerable with and they embrace me for all that I am, but more importantly for all that I am not?
Disclaimer: There are mentions of some proverbs and quotes here which aren't mine. They are either paraphrased or quoted from various sources but I don't have names of all of the original writers. In case you know who these beautiful words belong to, you can leave a comment.