Broken

 

It has been so many weeks. Yet, I have not been able to grasp the loss of
friendship and whatever else I may have fooled myself into believing.

That Monday morning I drove up north, I had steroids in my black bitter coffee and left for my mother’s hometown at 5.30 am, fuelled with insomnia two nights straight.

The roads were empty sans for a bread delivery truck and an old Volvo tank. We were stopped at the traffic light parallel to the street he lives in and I can’t help but glance across. I wished he would walk out of his house in his shorts and all of early morning’s grouchiness, just so I could see him once again.

It feels undone, raw. I’m still trying to make peace with the whole mess. In my unrelenting mind the replay button is constantly looping all our times together in jigsaws of memory glides. From the moment we met at the rooftop, to the point I walked out of his car, into my house and broke down to the floor when the door was shut behind. 

This is unusual terrain. I don’t know this hurt. It doesn’t feel familiar. It doesn’t feel familiar at all. I have had my heart crushed a million times. And a million times I knew I was going to be fine before I could even say, next. But this wound, it feels changing. It feels like a permanent leech. The kind of parasite that can’t be seen, but kills slowly, surely and silently.

Someone should give him a medal and a victorious pat on the back. No man has ever gotten this close to me emotionally, all guards down. That makes it my fault then, doesn’t it? To let him get to me, to let him make me overlook all the ugly possibilities.

Nice guys like him never fall for girls like me. Idiot. Yes, I felt like an idiot.

We were coming back from lunch that Saturday afternoon, when he said it was better if we went back to just being friends. Actually he said a lot more than that. He thought we got too close, too fast, and he was overwhelmed.

My face was hot. My brain drew a blank. He might as well have slapped me hard on both my cheeks.

Initially I brought him a joint so he could de-stress from the workload he faced, but it seemed like I might need it more than he did, because if he had not lighted it, so help me God I would have hit him.

The rest of the way home, we braved the jam in awkward silence interspersed with nasty exchanges. Inside I was scolding myself. Don’t cry baby don’t cry please don’t cry. Not in front of him.

I pondered if he has forgotten the post-coital conversation just last week, when I confessed I really wouldn’t know how to return to the friendship we previously shared. In my exact words, I told him – “because now I wouldn’t know how to look at you anymore and not want you”. 

Perhaps I should have picked up on the vibe. An hour prior the unceremonious dumping he was a little bit out of character while he ate his spaghetti Bolognese, commenting on other women and anticipating sex on his work trip to Bangkok. I ignored it, rattling on about my horrendous week at the hospital and recollected the moment my mom walking in on us cuddling, despite the needle drips poked through my vein. As I should have seen doubt bleed through his eyes as we bounced travel ideas, and I foolishly planned for the near future. Did I miss it, or did I just choose to?

I considered the odds that I might suffer from clinical schizophrenia as well. Because it means I must have dreamt up a false connection that night when it was as if we stopped having taut filthy sex and made passionate love instead. I must have hallucinated the tears he cried as he shared hush-hushes of the past and held me so close to his chest I felt his heart beating and his warm breath nuzzling my neck. I must have weaved an entirely fictional experience that whole weekend of pure unadulterated dialogues between us. I must have.

I thought about what to say to my friends. Our friends. We shared mutual ones. It made it that much harder that everyone liked him, liked the idea of us. It made it that much harder that despite what he did, I don’t hate him. As much as I want to, I don’t. Fuck.

I’m so scared to close my eyes, I still see him. There is an image of him created vividly, one night when I sat on his bed as he undressed, and he moved in a childlike manner to kiss me, comforting intentions. His expression embedded in my mind for some cruel sadistic reason I can’t pinpoint. I’m so scared to close my eyes; scared he would somehow seep into my dream and turn it into a recurring nightmare.

Would it be so appalling to confess I still feel his tongue against the softness of my centre and his fingers parting my legs to give me pleasure? Or the fact that I sometimes imagine his skin against my palm and I revel in these memories I fight so hard to discard. 

I used to secretly laugh inside and snicker at women crying over some bastard that didn’t deserve them in the first place.

I guess it goes to show that really, you wouldn’t know what it feels like till it happens to you. Padan muka (serves you right), like any busybody would say.

The long distance drive that Monday morning proved to be cathartic. I accelerated on the highway, cold wind in my face with four hours of contemplation, quiet self reasoning and letting go. It was then I found solace that you know, it was okay I admit I am, not that strong after all.

That I am, human. Not a man-eating feline. Just another person. With emotional burdens that might include soft spots and heartbreaks. 

Heartbreak. So beautiful a word with hidden unsightliness. A term we complicatedly embrace with shame, solemnity, magnificence all at the same time.

And for now, it is mine.