The Break Up

I saw her sitting in the corner of the room, quiet and disturbed. She didn’t utter a word, neither did she hear what everyone said. Her once twinkling eyes were now distorted. The laughter that once filled the room now refused to come. The silky hair had now become coarse due to lack of care, and the happiness which was once evident was nowhere to be seen. My best friend had just broken up. 

“That’s normal” you say. Well yes it is. Only, for her it wasn’t. I didn’t know what had upset her so much, she was the one who ended it. Maybe it was because being single was an unfamiliar territory or because he didn’t agree to it immediately or maybe it was just withdrawal. I didn’t know. But we did the best we could; we did the whole shebang, from break up songs to cussing her ex to telling her that a million other guys would die to be with her to writing cheesy letters signed with your lover.

But nothing worked; and we gave up. The episode ended for me until she came to me one day, tears filling her eyes her mouth sealed shut. “Are you okay?” I asked. She nodded a weak yes. And then she spoke, in a soft quivering voice. But the words that her mouth emitted were far from weak. “You might have been wondering why I was depressed since I broke up. It’s natural; I wondered about it too. You know that all I did for the past weeks, maybe months, was hope and pray that this would end. And it did. But somehow, the happiness that I expected, never arrived. Never felt the joy, just remorse. No, no it wasn’t because I broke up. Yes, at first I thought so too. That maybe it was a wrong decision. But it wasn’t, I knew in my heart that the relationship deserved to end. That the spark was dead and it couldn’t be re-ignited. I never felt happy because I didn’t know, I just didn’t know how to exist on my own. Yes I could breathe, but I didn’t know how to live. I was like a smoker who decided to quit, but couldn’t help wanting to go back. I burnt his letters, I threw away the gifts that he gave me, but the regret stayed, because I existed as his girlfriend, nothing else.”

“No you didn’t!” I shouted in protest. She looked me in the eye and without raising her voice said “What would you say when every habit is associated to a person, every word links to an incident, every scene brings back a memory and every song a tear?” Before I could answer her lips changed into a tragic smile and she spoke, “I called it love.” My numb mouth refused to speak words of comfort neither did it move to express disapproval, as she said “I stayed because I got addicted to him under false impression of falling in love. Yes I fell, rather I crashed because I liked how people said we looked good together. How I existed only with him, not that it was correct. But what did I care? Hell I existed, and that was enough for me then. I stayed, because I felt needed. And that’s where I went wrong; I liked the feeling so much, that I spent a year being someone else’s idea of perfect. That I gave so much of me, and left nothing for myself. And that’s why it hurt.”