Mental conflicts

When I was 16, I was told, “First love doesn’t survive.” It scared me — not because I was afraid of a breakup, but because the girl who told me was my first love. It was also the first time I realized that being in love is like going to war — love and survive are often used together.

When I turned 18, my father told me that I can take care of myself. I spent a really long time of my life watching him take responsibilities and getting through hard times calmly. Today, there is a chaos in my heart. I wonder if he has been hiding his struggles all this time or did I go wrong somewhere?

Sometimes, I look at all the people I have lost. All the people with whom I found a spark, and I often find myself saying sentences like “we could have ended together” inside the metros and buses only after I have said my goodbyes. But that’s not how it works.

Please, leave.

Don’t ask me about my sadness. Or my anger. They exist together, and sometimes, they are just the same.

Don’t come close to me with the idea of fixing me. I don’t need it. You can’t do it, you don’t have to, and most importantly, you shouldn’t. You’re a woman, and in no way, you’re obliged to undo my twisted body. Come close because you’re willing to accept me as who I am.

Because nobody says Au Revoir anymore. We all are in a hurry to run to the next person after bidding goodbyes. Our hearts grow older before our bones, that’s how it is going to be. We find it wrong to say ‘I love you’ after the first date. We only buy drinks to have sex or to forget people. We don’t let anyone get inside our head. Our walls are so high that we have trapped ourselves with loneliness. We were not meant to be incomplete, but we have chosen to be.

I’ve been spending a lot of my time wondering where I would’ve been with that person if I had put in a bit more effort. Would that make a difference… if I gave it a little more time or asked the person to stay? I would like to believe so.

I think that’s the saddest part about an unhappy person’s life — I find compatibility, people who are perfect and you know there can be something more than just friendship or romance, there can be love that’ll survive, but nothing ever happens. I do nothing about it. I know I must. My story never begins because it just shouldn’t, and perhaps, that’s why I let it all go before it destroys me.

I have learned from all the previous lovers to express my feelings, but it has also taught me to stay away.

Talk to me, and sometimes, maybe, tell me to stop writing these sad pieces about loneliness and aloofness. Because, love, my fingers have forgotten to write happy stories. They only linger on the letters that will form a sad word or sentences like “I’m forgotten” or “I don’t need you”. Don’t make me think about us, because it makes me think about someone from my past and thinking about her splits my heart open into two and wide open, making me feel vulnerable in front of those who are just intrigued by the idea of a man incapable of emotions.

Take my palms in your hands and close the fingers, forming a fist, and open them again. Repeat the process, keep doing it until you see my anger slipping off the tips of my fingernails. But if my hands are already tightened into a fist, and I am staring at a wall, just know that I want to punch it hard. Don’t run away or try to stop me from knocking down the buildings, just sit patiently and stay with me. Look at me and smile, and tell me to smile.

When I want to cry and tears abandon me, come a little closer and let your hands cup my unshaved face, smile, and tell me: “It’s okay if you do not have tears. Some cries are dry as a desert, but it doesn’t mean they don’t hold value.” Please, when I tell you to leave, don’t. When I hold the door for you, shut it close and have both of us locked in the room.

Stay until you decide to let go.