The December Dread

And here I am picking up the pieces you broke me into last December.

I am making it sound like a betrayal- it wasn`t. It was the classic case of "This is a one-way road". I was on the one-way road if that wasn`t clear. That had not happened to me ever before- one off the checklist maybe?

But where were we? Breaking- yes.

Well, dear reader I am sorry to disappoint your fantasies but one sided feelings are not as glorious as cinema has tried to portray. I entered the lane feeling even if I d have to exit it alone- I `ll do it gracefully and gratefully. It doesn`t happen that way. As I was saying it breaks you a little. I still find my journal entries saying how I have a feeling this would work out in the end. I still have text messages of you making me hope this was a two way road. I still have most of it in my head- except the part where reality had to strike. I would pretend this was that one kind of high school romance drama where they`ll eventfully confess in the end. I wasn`t quite sure of the " and everything was well thereafter" but I was quite sure of that " I had waited for this so long". ------Didn`t happen. No, the school wasn`t rooting for us, my friends weren`t shipping for what I was, and you certainly weren`t pretending to have that crush just to make me admit mine. Yours was real. All of mine turned out fake. And I could tell you on your face, that you like her, I m guessing I knew it all along too but that one part. You know reader, that one stupid stupid part of you somewhere that tells you- "NO! this is the story that you were waiting for". I feel it is the appendix which makes you believe all that shit, jobless people do stir up dramas ( no offence).But whatever it is, somebody please make it SHUT UP!

And reader if you find me humorous (probably not) , know that that`s a rub off of him. So is the continuous blabbering. And still I yearn for it some nights, some days I feel like a call from you would make it all quite alright. Sometimes I just feel like December was not real and even if the bleakest there is a chance. I know. Its the appendix again.

And yet the most random things remind me of you. Cake, the front page of my history book and the doodles in my economics book, my black blazer, your blue sleeves, that song in your pathetic voice, handshakes and shaking legs, my own specs and even my own eyes. I`ll get rid of all that but what about my eyes? I wish you had not taken my specs off in the most Bollywood manner ever and had never reminded me of my beautiful eyes. And if you had to I wish you didn`t bring them to tears that very December. Too emo? I guess I was that for you. You needed something else in life. I get it now. I got it then too honestly. I just chose to prolong the story in my head I don`t know why. Actually, I do know. I was quite empty without that in my life.

That was what you became for me- the something that could fill my life. Too burdensome- I know. The appendix didn`t. It kept screaming till the very end- even when everything was dead.

You called her up just like I had imagined you calling me, you said it in the crudest way just like I would have wanted to hear it and she cried just like I would have. And I did. But that was after I screamed in excitement for something I dreaded. You told her I made you realise you have something for her. And now that I remember- I did. But not before I had cried myself to sleep about you the previous night.

Why would I do that? What else could I have ?

Should I have dramatically gone into silence, be devasted about losing something I never had ?Or go to you in tears demanding what I could never have?

But then if I am all that wise, why worry writing this ? I have appendicitis I think.

And I am not even joking- it pains in the belly sometimes, some anxiety running down the throat to the belly when I say your name.

But that`s the sad part of the story. There were good times too. Much lesser in occurrences and much fainter in memory but pretty much what I have to hang onto. The mere time my eyes spent finding you in the crowd everyday, everywhere even when yours wouldn`t even meet mine for the slightest second anymore and the unreasonably optimistic appendix which kept telling me you d come back. they were good times.

Not as much as the times when you would stare at my face as if you heard all those stupid thoughts in my head about you and had the same about me, or the incessant handshakes as if it would pain you to leave my hand or the times our eyes would just automatically meet in class. Wait-? was that all in my head?

But it is September now and I don`t know what will heal something that an entire summer and monsoon couldn`t. Another December perhaps.

What if I don`t get to see one again? Or what if I ever only want to see that one?

Sometimes life continues but it doesn`t really move forward. It keeps turning its head at every other crossroad just to know if it can take a U-turn. It cannot. The roads of life are such.

January I spent taking in what I had seen, February soaking in the fact that you didn`t care, March deciding whether you deserve a birthday wish and April in the dreaded hope that I may see you. Much of May went into purposely smiling and making sure you knew I didn`t care, June waiting for your call of regret, July reminding myself that I did not need you and August waiting for the rains to cry together for you. So yes, I have been busy, no wonder I never got the time to forget you.

But September- well September I decided to close the chapter, but not before I grieved it thoroughly. I don`t know if this is enough-probably not.

Some Decembers just don`t go that easily.