What Ayesha Thought Part 7
Two months, since I bid farewell to something I’d begun to
feel was mine- The sun was shining, it was a pleasant day, almost warm- when I
left this place feeling frozen inside. Was I happy I was going back? No, I
couldn’t be happy for anything after what had happened to me, but yes I was
delighted I wouldn’t be crying in front of him. It’s actually not as terrible
as I’m making it sound. I didn’t get raped or mugged; I just had a little jolt
of lightening strike my heart.
Honestly, there’d been a metamorphosis. I’d changed. Seen
colors in me I never knew existed, and then I witnessed the dark side of the
VIBGYOR, the place where my rainbow ended. I know I sound funny being so
metaphorical, almost like a poet, a heartbroken poet. So I’ll paraphrase it
saying, I fell in love and Love, took the better of me, leaving me vulnerable
to everyone and myself. I cried, cried
as much as I could hoping my tear tank would empty by the time it was finally
time to return and till an hour ago I was positive I wouldn’t cry. But hey,
what’s this familiar heaviness building up inside my chest and the sight of my
University? Is that a tear in my eye? No, it’s got to stop. “You don’t have to
do this, you’re stronger than this. Remember, who you were, not what you’ve
become.” I say to myself over and over again. The tear falls down and I stop
another one from following, but the heaviness just won’t go away.
I sipped some water and stepped inside the Uni. No, Dear
memories, don’t come back. Stay where you’ve been buried. But the shameless
stubborn ghosts, they always return. I cross the ‘Fag Bench’- no there isn’t a
place in the Uni called that, it’s just a name I’d kept for the bench where
we’d first sit and shared a fag. He hated when I fagged, I loved it when he
stopped me. I feel the urge to smoke,
but there won’t be anyone to pull a lit cigarette away from my mouth, so I curb
the urge myself. I cross the library, where we’d spent hours, together. As he
studied his text, I pretend to be busy blogging or watching a sitcom, wherein
I’d secretly been studying him. There’s
a bitter-sweet smile on my face, and I permit the tear that I’s blocked before
to flow. Dragging my bag and baggage
forward, I make my way towards my room. But the route isn’t an easy one,
there’s a hurdle on my way- his room. I try my best not to look, check if
there’s any activity or if Omar had gone back to Pakistan for vacations. And I
succeed; I walk past his room without tilting my neck the slightest bit. I
can’t do this, I say to myself as I stop walking a few steps ahead of his room.
I can’t not see the place where it all started. Where the night I’d repent for
the rest of my life, and yet be thankful to, was spent. I can’t, not eavesdrop
into his room through the window like I did before. Peeping through the curtain
to see the bed where I’d very conveniently slipped into slumber over his chest
while watching a movie and woken to have fallen in love with him. The room
where I first realized he had someone else in his life, a secret he’d hidden
that had broken me into pieces. The room I’d stomped out of in anger and self
loathe, for eyeing someone else’s man and being low enough to change my being
just to please his eye. The Awesome Room, the Awful room. So I turned back, my
eyes closed, mustering all the courage I had in me. I had to lift my heavy
steps and drag myself to face that room. I let out the biggest of sighs and
opened my eyes, but I couldn’t walk ahead. For there he stood, the owner of the
room guarding it like a guard outside the Buckingham Palace- stern and alert.
And I turned back to runaway. Yes, me who wouldn’t run on a
treadmill, was now ready to take a flight…
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