An Open Letter to My Past Lover

 I wrote this when I was eighteen and I lost it. After six years, I post it because experiences like these are too precious to be lost or forgotten to time. Also, my time in my hometown never fails to bring back memories- fond and painful, decisions- impulsive and coordinated and when these memories hit, I would like someone to know. Because otherwise, its a waste and this is just too good to be wasted.

That's it. Here we go:

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Dear past-lover,

I hope this letter finds you just fine, happier and better than you were in my company. Someone had once advised me to love wholly, completely: with all my soul. If love stays, fine. If love is shattered, you shall grow more creative. He was right. In fact, the only reason I started writing was because I needed somebody else to feel my pain. Anybody! A stranger, a teacher or a neighbor. I believed that if somehow I could address the sheer void I felt inside me, perhaps, I might be able to get over you. I wished every night before going to bed that the next morning wouldn't wake me up with your face in my mind. I thought about you all the time and I loathed myself for not being able to be the girl I thought I was. Selfish, cunning, vicious. Whether I be solving a Mathematics problem or reading a Shakespearean drama, your eyes followed me everywhere. You came into my life like a stealthy cat and while teenaged girls like me fall in love with tall handsome blue eyed boys, I fell for your dark circles. And I loved you. With every bone in my body and every drop of blood, I loved you. I could focus on the negative aspects which led to the final breakup but I won't cause I am neither childish nor am I here to blame anybody. I loved and I loved and I went on loving. If I had loved a stone in a similar way, I feel like the stone would have breathed life into itself to reciprocate my love. I wonder what element you're made up of. I guess men like being chased but this seemed to be a race not ending anytime soon. Yet, I loved. And every time, you left, I hoped and prayed that you come back. You did initially and then, you didn't. For days and nights, I stared into the empty verandah or the blank ceiling comparing which was more void, the darkness in the room or the darkness in my mind; with wild thoughts of killing myself and sparing myself the pain but I couldn't. Hope is a nasty thing. It just keeps you hooked. And the worst thing about pain is the numbness it brings along with it. I can never ever love anybody else with half as much honesty as I loved you with, thanks to you. Every time, I saw you happy, I cringed. Was it so easy? Was I so insignificant? How is it possible that I don't matter at all? I sent text after text and you replied with blue ticks. I called you hour after hour and I heard the sound of the ringer, on and on and on. I read books, contacted online astrologers, signed up for stupid ex-boyfriend recovery programs, subscribed to mails from several relationship counselling websites in the hope that somebody out there was smart enough to tell me how to win you back or at least wipe your memories clean out of my brain. I stared up at your window and murmured prayers to the Lord to get a glimpse of you. How wretched the Supreme Power is! He never had mercy , not did you. So, after about a year of self indulged distress, I resorted to writing. To me, it's both the drug and the therapy. It has been years since I last met you and frankly, I don't even know if you're okay or not but it doesn't matter, not anymore because in everything that happened, I realized how trivial you were in my love as well as my pain. I needed you only for that one instant, the first one to fall in love with you and I have never needed you ever since to keep loving you. It was never you who pained me, it was me allowing myself to believe you and in every lie that came out of your mouth, I fooled myself in saying that I believed you when I clearly didn't. I knew it was some other girl you proposed. I knew the battery of your phone was not dead. I knew you did not have any test the next day. I knew you couldn't ride a scooty. I knew you wouldn't take me to a movie. I knew you did not have fever the day you kept me waiting for hours across your street but I said I believed you 'cause I was afraid to be rejected, to be left behind alone, too broken for anybody. And yet, you did what I feared the most. You left. And even the gods will someday question your inconstant heart, I promise. But the transformation you left me with is perceptible. I can see the change you brought about. That change is me. You made a geeky unsmart teenager into a polished clever honest poet and I thank you for that. What I want for you is very simple. I want you to love somebody as profoundly and deeply as I had loved you. I want you to feel those butterflies in your stomach every time you are about to meet her. I want you to register every last time she touches you and then, I want her to quit being at your side one fine morning, all out of the blue, just following your instance. Maybe, then, on a cold rainy afternoon in some nameless café, you'll be having a drink while I'll just occur to cross your mind.

Never Yours,

Past-lover.

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