5.45 PM: Death and Resurrection

Death and Resurrection 

As I sit alone in one of the prettiest places I have ever come across in Bangalore, watching rain pattering outside and listening to the humdrum of the crowd, my mind wanders off as it often does when I have the rare company of my mind and music. Rains and monsoons often just lazily make your mind creep into the darkest corners of your head and deliciously make you realize the many trials and tribulations you’ve been through or are going through.

I reached for the caffeine relief to get my mind back to the present. A statement by one dear friend I finally met after three years flicked through my mind, the bottom line of which was how much I had changed in the past few months. Now, on a typical non-gloomy day, this statement would’ve made me proud of how far I’ve come. Still, thinking and overthinking statements are some masochistic pleasures that my mind enjoys, along with the caffeine only accelerating the same. 

My hands reaching out for the caffeine freeze instantaneous, Hazelnut Latte - no sugar, my now regular order at any place seemed like a habit from another lifetime, I vaguely remember that person, her memories, dreams, and most importantly, the hope she held in people seem buried under a giant black tombstone, long dead and their screams lost in the cold air of the graveyard. She feels like an actual human being capable of living, while I feel like a hollow apparition haunting the world in her carcass as she silently screams in my head with all the memories bursting with light that I know will burn me and the armor; I have built so intricately, away. 

Now, mind you, the cost of burying voices from the past in the head, however, used you become to it, burns right through you; even when you’re sitting in a small beautiful cafe surrounded by humans, you feel something scratching at the center of your chest full of screams and pain trying to cut you open from inside. However, when you have wilfully stifled and killed yourself in the past, its haunting becomes a brown noise you can tune out, and the pain is a potent reminder of why you killed her in the first place.

Teary-eyed as I grab my umbrella and get out of the cafe, I see her across the road with a bunch of sunflowers and a white sundress holding on to her umbrella, too bright for the gloom that surrounds her, before I can tear my eyes away she waves at me with a heart-melting smile. I wave back as my grey jacket, and black trousers are drenched in the rain. She runs across the street and holds her umbrella out, and right before she melts into the gloom, I see a sunflower lying stranded on the pavement, a reminder of death and resurrection. 

4:20 a.m: Love and Other Drugs

 Casablanca. A Walk to Remember. Me Before You. 

3 Movies, all three have 2 of my favorite concepts, Love and Tragedy. As a hopeless romantic, the idea of unrequited love and the eternal sacrifice of the protagonist are two key things that make a love story great. I know walking into the sunset holding hands is fantastic but watching the love of your life fly away from you with another man, ah, the beauty of that unadulterated love and sacrifice fades any other romantic gesture to a mere parlor trick.

It’s 4:20 am, Louisa Clark is reading the letter from Will Traynor at a cafe in Paris in the penultimate scene of Me Before You; and my mind wanders off to how all the tragic unrequited love stories end with a letter, quote, or memory but what happens after is never shown. What does Louisa Clark do after Will dies? Or what happens to Rick Blaine after Ilsa leaves Casablanca? What happens after you walk away with a broken heart? After the person, you trusted more than yourself betrays you entirely and leaves you amongst the shattered shrapnels of a bond you once shared, and all you are left with are memories and a pure unadulterated shot of pain?

Withdrawal.

Just like any other drug, love makes your body and soul crave the safety and comfort of that person and the high, the rush of oxytocin through your veins as you see them walk through your doorway or the instant shot of dopamine the comfort of their arms provided. Still, once they are gone, the pain creeps through your bloodstream, burning through it, and soon your body screams and suffers in pain. The pain isolates you in your hell made of memories, the song which reminded you of them, the favorite coffee shop you sat at, the notes, the texts, all the bloody things which you cherished now rip out your heart one tiny piece at a time, crippling you one day at a time.

But the worst part is the hope, the hope you lose each time you go through a heartbreak.

As you sit there on a date, sipping on wine slowly, watching and marking every moment, your brain is already in overdrive, driving the situation in fifth gear, knowing that it’s going to be a car crash because that hopeless romantic is sitting in the back too busy hiding in shame and tending its wounds. But after enough car crashes, as you tire out and listen to that song which you wiped from your memory and tears make their way, somewhere you realize that the pain is bearable, your heartaches but not that bad, relief floods you. However, you still hold onto the pain because that is the only thing left of love you felt and shared, and you cling to it for dear life. By this point, the hope that pain has provided has gone, and all that is left is the void numb and cold, which takes away both despair and hope and leaves you empty.

But as you feel the numbness taking over you, waiting for another car crash to walk in, you suddenly feel your heartbeat again. They walk in with a black turtleneck and black-rimmed glasses. As they hold their phone in one hand and a bunch of sunflowers in the other, their eyes searching for you, something deep in your heart tells you maybe this time this car crash would end up differently.