And she was expected to be sitting by the window wiping her tears;
her friends were prepared to be ‘there’ for her. They had mentally prepared
themselves to bitch about him, to talk about how big pain relationships are and
to curse the entire fraternity with a penis to make her feel better.
Surprisingly however, the consolations, the sympathies, the empathies… none of
them were used. They did not even require to tell her the often quoted, ’Men,
you know… all of them are dogs.’
‘Why the hell is she NEVER crying’, ‘She doesn’t look sad at
all’, ‘She did love him, didn’t she’, it all started bothering them gradually. They
were the official mourners, after all. ’Oh baby, you have to be strong’, ‘Show
him that you can do wonderfully well without him’, ‘Give him the
you-don’t-give-a-damn attitude’’, all these well-rehearsed lines were all going
un-used.
She wondered about it too, just the way her friends did. Why
was it not killing her. She was not having a casual fling. She was hopelessly
and madly in love with him. She was the kind who’d cry themselves to bed each
night thinking about why he didn’t treat her right. Why wasn’t the breakup
ripping her apart then, why!
May be what she was struggling to do all these years finally
happened… may be she finally ‘matured’ up. May be she finally realized that to
stay in a relationship that is just going to add more tears in her life, is
worse than not being in a relationship at all. May be she realized that to be
stuck with someone who can never value her for who she is, is a mistake she
must not commit. May be after all these years of growing older, she finally
grew up. May be in the process of growing up, she also became stronger, way stronger and realized that sometimes the only person that she needs in her life
is herself. May be she realized that if she has to be in a relationship, it
should be maddeningly passionate love … love
that is above distances, time, conditions and circumstances. Love that
surpasses all of it, intense enough so that she doesn’t even contemplate
breaking apart for a moment. Everything else, is a farce, a sheer waste of
time, emotions and an insult to love.
She was awed by the plethora of boxes left to be opened by
her. So much that was left unexplored in life. Those wonderful novels stacked
in the corner, which she always wanted to read...but couldn’t find enough time
in the midst of wiping her tears every two minutes. The great internship
opportunities she could seize, the amazing online tutorials that are left unexplored,
the book she always wanted to write, the library with a zillion books which she
wanted to dive into. All of them seemed so much more rewarding and pleasurable
than contracting her entire world to the way one person chooses to treat her.
Naïve woman, she once was! There was so much to do in life, so much to learn, so much more than
thinking about the hows and whys of why it didn’t work out. Life suddenly
seemed so much more intriguing to her.
And then, there was this new found freedom. A new found
feeling, that her soul is independent, free from the clutches of another soul
which tried to own it at some point. The soul that could breathe more happily,
because now its happiness was dependent on little and big joys of life; not
solely on how it would be treated by another soul.
Then, there was this hope… this hope of coming across the
correct definition of love someday… to be able to experience it and say to
herself, ‘I know what it feels like to be truly loved’. Oh no, she did not stop
believing in love… love is a beautiful thing… someday, she’ll just stumble
across it and know what it truly is. Oh, yeah… she was happy. She felt free, like
the independent young woman she always wanted to be.
