I had just come back from class, flung my bag on the floor, got changed, and jumped into bed for a quick nap when my phone started ringing.
“Aaargh!”, I mutter in frustration as I reach for my phone.
My frustrated face lights up as I glance at the screen — It’s her.
As I hurriedly sit up in bed and answer the phone, I am greeted by the usual hypnotizing mellow voice but with an unusually grave tone this time.
“Come to the basketball court, we need to talk”, she says in a low voice.
A million thoughts race through my mind as I hurriedly put on some clothes and made my way.
I spot her in the distance, standing on the steps, waiting with her arms crossed, the attractive petite girl that I was madly in love with.
As I walk up to her, she utters a lifeless hi, sits down, and motions me to do the same.
As I snuggle up to her and wrap an arm around her shoulder, “This needs to stop!”, she cries.
My heart freezes for a moment. “What! Why?”, I protest.
She breaks down in tears as she goes over all the reasons that she had brought up earlier on multiple occasions.
“I just can’t define what we have!”, “It’s my last semester of college, and am going abroad for my masters, so we can’t continue this”, “It really hurts to break away now but will hurt much more later”, “We knew this was inevitable since the start, didn’t we?” and so on.
Dying from within, I listen silently, offering no protest. Despite knowing from the start that this wouldn’t last, I had been clinging onto the desperate hope that some miracle would happen which didn’t.
No more denying reality. I draw her close and comfort her.
Locked in an embrace for probably the last time, we bid goodbye, in the same place that we had spent many a night gazing at the starlit sky without a care in the world.
She offers to walk me back. I don’t protest.
As we walk together silently, I steal a glance and my heart flutters the same way it did the first time I had laid my eyes on her.
I feel a torrent of sadness, despair, and disappointment welling up inside me.
She had composed herself by now but I start losing my composure.
As we part, I can no longer control myself and break down in a stream of tears.
Before she could say anything, I wipe my tears, turn away from her, and walk furiously, dragging along my heavy heart.
I come back to my room, I latch the door, and drop into bed like a dead flea.
“Wow! It’s crazy how much color life seems to have lost in a matter of minutes”, I wonder as I look around.
I don’t remember for how long I cried — I had never felt this much pain in my life before.
The Aftermath
I experienced a short bout of depression — the account of which you can find in this story:
I realized that all good things must come to an end and dwelling in the past won’t change it.
Life has a lot of other good things to offer and the void left by her absence will be filled before long.
Dr.Seuss has rightly said,
“Don’t be sad because it’s over but be happy because it happened”
Ending Words
It has been close to 2 years since then and life has been truly amazing.
My time with her lives on as a sweet memory, surfacing in rare whiffs of nostalgia.
Love is a beautiful thing to have, hard to earn and painful to lose.
Thanks for reading!
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Everton Vila on Unsplash