Unlove

 

Unmatch  Unlove

 It’s 2:27 am and, here we are again, my sad broken ass and you, the little voice in the back of my brain which keeps me up better than caffeine. Today, no social media post or a memory from my gallery but an old dusty paperback did the trick and woke up the voice. The book smelt like a warm dusty corner in a library where I used to sit back in the school days, safe amongst the fictional heroes, falling in love with each of them, each of the paper heroes, the picture-perfect characters not realizing in real life, there are no heroes, people are not made of paper but of flesh, feeling, experiences, good and bad and lots of other things. While I was busy falling in love with each of these paper heroes, no one taught me how to unlove, how to fall out of love with every single thing good or bad you loved about them, the worst part is no one taught me how to fall out of love of people as well.

 A person who I used to hold close to my heart, once told me if your heart is broken more than once, 1 out of these 2 things will happen - you either never love again or you keep falling in love over and over, almost a never-ending loop. Well, most of us choose the latter because who doesn’t love a good tragedy, we all do. I am pretty sure at any given point of time one would rather pick “A Walk to Remember” over “The Notebook”. We keep circling in the same loop till we realize it’s a downward spiral and not a loop and that we’re eventually going to hit solid rock bottom.

 Coming back to the dusty half-read book, a Murakami which I left half unread because the person who I borrowed it from kept our journey half-read, so it seemed like a fitting faith for the book. The voice in my head though wanted me to claw out each memory, all the good ones for now, and run them in little reels in my head, multiple windows playing the pink-tinted memories. I picked up the book unconsciously and ruffled through the pages mindlessly, words blurry as my mind traveled back to the day I got the book - a reel with scrumptious French toasts and steaming coffee with slow music filled my brain. I could feel the tears prickling in my eyes but that was not because of the beauty of the moment that was because another reel played at the same time, right before the French toasts, the cold moment painted in dark blue, where I was cold, as the person’s painful words lashed at me, breaking me one tiny bit at a time, making me weak, making me- stop! I dropped the book and the memories but no my brain had already flipped to the B-side of the tape, started playing it with new clarity. The first argument, the painful betrayal followed by the teary-eyed apology, all the accusations which made me question my sanity, all public reprimands, the false promises of fidelity, and the final heartbreak. That moment, as all the wrongs screamed at my face through the memories, the pink veil disappeared and the broken pieces of once a beautiful bond lied behind it with all the memories shattered across the dark cold floor, however beautiful it looked whenever I switched on the pink reel, the reality was that it hurt, it hurt me even when it wasn’t shattered in a billion pieces. Maybe that is the moment I fell out of love, out of the loop or the downward spiral, maybe that’s when I finally unloved the person and all the paper heroes.