Suddenly, I don’t know what to say. I do know what I want to say but when the moment comes to speak, I can’t say it or even write it. And yet…
It is that time of the year again when the memory of the days and nights when I knew who I was often come back to me floating through the night. Sometimes I want to touch you, just a bit. A bit of your skin on my fingertip, a bit of your warmth against mine. Sometimes I want to hear your voice. Not much, maybe a word or two just to assure myself that you are real and that it wasn’t a dream when like a tree in bloom I had released my blossoms on you all at once knowing that it would be a long time before the next blossoming. Maybe never. Then suddenly everything fades and I don’t know what to say or do and this overwhelming quiet that cocoons me becomes a constant reminder of my sudden isolation, Was it really sudden or is it that I had always felt the undercurrents but ignored them. Imagined that they never existed. Denied their presence. Denied her presence even though it was always there. Like a shadow. Your shadow. You said you loved me but the way you spoke of her always told me otherwise. Under all the disdain, regret, sorrow I felt a sense of pride with which you took her name.
Maybe I need this silence to pull myself out of the wreckage of my own dreams. There is an old knot in my heart that I need to untie. I don’t want to hurt loudly now. I don’t want all that I feel to find its way to you. I want to become invisible as much as you want me gone. What you give comes back to you . I gave myself.
Sometimes it is difficult to make out if it is loss of feeling or a feeling of loss. Sometimes it is best not to stir the embers of a dying fire lest some sparks turn to flames and consume you.
Some things are better not found. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. For a long time the question lingered on my lips and then on a fateful day I asked, ” Whom do you see when you close your eyes?” “No one.” You replied. “Who was I supposed to see?’
“The person you love most.” I said. Your silence, your hesitation unraveled everything like a loose thread in a knitted sweater. A thread I should not have pulled.
If one is unaware of something it is best that it stays that way till one is capable of dealing with the deluge of hurt and pain it brings. There is a reason why we don’t know it all. The knowledge that one cannot do a thing to alter, change or rectify it can suck the meaning out of life and leave one dejected and defeated. Suddenly I feel exposed to things I wish I had never known. They have emptied my life of joy. Of love. Of trust. Once more leaving me fragile, vulnerable and alone.
I have decided to stay in the peace of my new-found quietness. Someday maybe I will find myself. Someday maybe you will remember all that was good between us and then look for me. Perhaps it will be the day when you will find yourself. I hope you do because I want to be found and I want you to find me with the credence I long for, the credence that has faded with time. Till then I will weave myself warmly in a cocoon and wait for the unfolding which will come from you.
