It’s funny how we spend our entire life running after something we don’t even want in the first place. The irony of it is so wicked.

I once knew someone who kept running after love. And love was the one thing she’d never get. The mirages kept her going on with an iron resolve and when she finally found love, all the she wanted was to lose it.

It scares me, how often these days I wake up wishing things that I shouldn’t be wishing. I am becoming this terrible person. These animal urges, these raw animal desires. All I wanted was love. And all that I can think of is the hatred that boils deep inside of me.

I have no love. Perhaps never had any. I hate the people who are happy. Hate the ones who do not begin their days with tears and end them the same way. I hate this worls and every single living being in it.

Today I saw a dead woman on the road. A bus just hit her. Her crushed body lay on the busy road. The policemen clearing the crowd that had built up and surprisingly, I didn’t turn my face away the way I am used to. I simply looked at the corpse and wished it was me who had perished in this manner. Lying on a road, away from home, with no one to claim me. I wished it was me and my thoughts shocked me.

I am too afraid to wish anymore. Too scared to want anything. I just want this to end.

Please God… make it stop.

She stood at the edge and looked around. The air smelled damp. Like every year, moonsoons had played peekaboo this year too. In the clouded sky, the moon was somewhere lost. She know that even though the sky was overcast, it wasn’t going to rain. Not yet.

The lands might be parched, people dying of thirst but sometimes… just sometimes, god wants to play with us. Peekaboo.

From where she stood, the houses looked small. The cars looked small. She took a deep breath. Once more the warmth in the air hit her lungs like a sack full of metal. She was swaying now, almost ready to collapse. Steadying herself on the edge of the building was not an easy job. Yet, she had to do it. It was not time yet. The goodbyes had to be said.

She closed her eyes slowly and mentally scanned the faded memories. There has to be one… there has to be one, she chanted. Finally she selected the one where he lay on her stomach and she lay on his back, kissing him everywhere. Smiling, laughing.

Yes. That should do.

She opened her eyes. Smiled. She had to do this before the distant memory slipped away once again from her realm.

Another deep breath…. and then light. Eternal light. And freedom.

Finally. No chains.

So he’s gone and got married. The one who drove me to alcohol. It seems strange to see him with his pretty white wife. The facebook picture that just screams at me. Pretty. That’s the word. Pretty, which I never was. At least not for him.

Seeing him sitting with her just makes me realize how wrong I was for him. How stupid to have believed that he could have ever went beyond first impressions. How senseless to have believed that anything good could have come out of the liaison…

Seeing him with her just makes me realize how ugly I am…

What seems stranger is that though he moved on years ago and has now got himself a pretty petite brunette, he still uses my words to pass himself off as a dreamer. No he isn’t all that he claims through my words. My words were not meant for him to cloak himself from the world. He is still the same son of the preacher man. The same freak he used to be. But something has changed. Not with him, but with me.

Once, I hated him for hurting me. Today, I hate him for being happy.

For the first time in my life, I have broken my own code. I have spoken where I shouldn’t have. I wonder why I feel guilty? Is it because I do not believe that I am right for saying exactly the thing that I wanted to say in exactly the same manner that I wanted to say it, or because I am not used to ever venting out my feelings verbally.

I always knew that there was a problem. Always knew that something wasn’t right.

I love husband. all said and done, I do love him. I have shared my most intimate moments with him and so has he. When did I lose my judgment and started to believe other people on face value? How did other people get more power on our lives than ourselves? When did all of this happen?

I will have to stop. Right here and right now. I do not fear anyone anymore, because I know that I am the only one here with any stakes involved. Also because I don’t have to be answerable to anyone anymore, other than myself.

It will take time perhaps, but it will happen!

You look at the empty walls. A sigh escapes you. It wasn’t supposed to be like this… However, this is the only way it has ever been. For you and for him. It is time to move on. You wonder if you will be able to recover from this blow. This time, it feels harder, more definite. Yet you do not feel heavy. You are torn, mostly because of the enormity of whatever that’s happening.

He’s asked you a straight question. It’s your life or his. You choice is clear. Not to him, but to you of course. You choose yourself. This time, there are no second thoughts. You abdicate all ties. You pick yourself. Your Life. Your Happiness. Your Dreams. You.

Nothing will change your mind.

Nothing.

He: “Do you think I am joking?”
She: “Umm hmmm.”
He: “What?”
She: “I mean No.”
He: “You think I am joking.”
She: “No.”
He: “I am serious. I think I have dengue.”
She: “Ok.”
He: “Why are you talking to me like this?”
She: “How else should I talk?”

He hung up after that. She knows it is going to sting him. This indifference of hers. Perhaps more than her cheek stings from morning’s violence. She knows that he is feigning sickness. He is feeling guilty about beating her in the morning and wants to take it back. But violence leaves its marks. Not only on her body, but also on her already blemished soul.

She wishes that it continues to sting her, so that she continues to sting him. She laughs at herself. The pitiable state that she has got herself into. This time, she takes the full blame because it was her own actions that brought this upon her. Not the morning’s beatings, but the general bad luck – the hoarseness from everyday screaming, the soreness from being molested day after day, the pangs of the beatings.

Bad luck, she laughs, this time a little louder. Well, talk about trivializing an issue. For the first time in her life, she identifies with half the population of her country. For the first time she feels like an Indian-born and bred woman. She laughs again. Mad perhaps with the increasing self-pity. A woman. The person who is beaten, raped, blamed, jeered and leered at. A woman. Broken. Damaged. Decrepit.

A woman.

Have you ever felt that you are addicted to getting hurt? Addicted to self infliction? Wow… those are some big words. I think I am addicted. I think I can’t be in a non-abusive relationship.

I took a little break this weekend and traveled to Mumbai for the weekend. I spent a lot of time with myself and do you know what happened? I missed being with husband. When I came back, he was all apologetic and missing me. He held me tighter than ever on that night.

I too had missed him immensely and thought about him pretty much all the time. Yesterday went pretty well, with the both of us all in love with each other once again… all in love once again. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring.

I am so stuck up… feel a bit helpless and disoriented.

There was once a time when I was in love with a man who didn’t know if he loved me. I certainly did love him. The equation never sat right and ultimately he left. I fought for him, stooped quite low in fact and even today when I remember him and the things I did to win him back, I feel embarrassed and small.

This time, I am not putting up a fight. If someone feels that they deserve better than me, then so be it. If some one feels that I am not good enough, then I will not want to correct them. I will silently move on.

Time has taught me to manage on my own. I am a survivor. And I don’t need a man by my side.

Have you ever felt this animal hatred towards someone? A hatred so pure and primal that you obsess with it? Today he beat me for the third time. Everytime he has ever beat me, I have hated him. Today, he beat me and then dragged me all over the house.

Some fairy tales aren’t meant to happen…

So basically mom’s a little sore with me. I know that she is, even though she claims she isn’t.

Mom had a really hard time when she got married. Dad had chosen to stay with his parents and extended family and mom had a hard time with his mother.

I am terribly sorry for my mom. Whatever my grandma did to my mom, my mom has put that in the past. I however, have to bear the results of my grandmother’s actions everyday even though she has long since passed away.

Basically what I’m trying to say is that what my granny did to my mother was bad, but my mom suffered temporarily from her misgivings. I however, have a lifetime of physical discomfort because of granny’s callousness. Physical ailments that I have been living with and have to live with forever.

So it’s not right for my mother to tell me that I don’t know what suffering means. I don’t think it’s right for anyone to say that for me. Just because a person suffers in silence and doesn’t make a fuss about their suffering, it is not correct to assume that they know nothing of it.

And getting upset at me because I am suffering, doesn’t make sense to me mom. So quit it. And while you are at it, please also stop being upset with me.