To the Boy in the Black Hoodie

Chapter 2

(Song:-   Used to love  by Martin Garrix & Dean Lewis )

23rd January, 2022
Sunday

Dear you-know-who,

It's funny how I swore not to think about you just yesterday, but that's all I think about. The more I try to push you out, the more you claw your way back to me. All those memories........., the ones I haven't let myself even think of visiting....... It's getting hard you know. I have tried to keep it all locked away but it really is getting hard. Yesterday, before our exam when I saw you laughing, my heart ached. Not out of jealousy, but out of guilt, out of pain - the pain that I caused myself, the pain that I caused you, of knowing that I wasn't the one making you laugh.

God knows how I have missed seeing your face, to see you laugh..... it created a havoc inside me. On the outside I appeared normal. Hell no one would even glance twice at me, I blended well into the crowd. But the inside of my head? (lets out a small laugh) It was an utter chaos, and it still is. I was still battling with myself, my inner self, when my dad left me at the college. I knew where your class was, the very bench you sat on. I knew it like the back of my hand. I had barely managed to go to my class without going to yours, without wanting to talk to you, to hug the life out of you, tell you that the past month had been a living hell for me, and that I missed you so much that it didn't matter we will find a way out of this. I was so close to doing all that....... But I stopped myself a month had passed and you didn't even as much as approach me to speak or ask about what exactly happened. You were the kind of person that would break every rules and boundaries if it meant that you got what you wanted, so how come you never bothered to do that for me?. A part of me wanted to go back to you, but the other wanted to never ever see your face, to never even hear your name cuz it hurt like hell.

When I read the question paper, there was one question that made my heart almost
stop beating. We were asked to compose a poem on <Father>. And I would be lying if I said that it was easy for me. It felt like the universe was purposefully doing all of this. I had mixed feelings about all of you including my parents, what they did was out of their care and concern for me but that didn't mean I was happy. I was stripped of my friends and had to be away from you and was given an ultimatum, that was a far cry from happy. Telling me to make a wise choice, warning me, reminding me of the promise I made that day to my parents, the same promise that broke me, broke you, and us. You want to know what I wrote as an answer to that?

'Always so selfless,
You never fail to protect us.
A little hard on the outside,
But always soft on the inside.
You, father, are a god's gift to me.'

I meant every word of what I wrote. I had memorized so many lines to write on this
very topic, but at that moment........ At that moment, none of it felt right. I wrote what I actually and genuinely felt for once, yes i was aware of what went down but he was still my father, the one that had been my protector all my life, how could I ask him to not do his duty?  It almost brought me to tears writing this, you were aware of the possibility of what could happen and you still chose me. The flashbacks of the past month came barging in. how even after all I did, they trusted me. And this time, I trusted them too. I let my parents in. I was tired of keeping them at arm's length up till now. It was you who taught me the importance of my family in the worst possible way because maybe it wasn't that you accepted it and was ready to fight but it feels as if you took it lightly, thinking that I was just exaggerating.

Because it was when I had to really choose. When I lost you, it was then that I realized how much did they really meant to me, how much I meant to you and how much I meant to them, when push came to shove you packed up and left and they stood there ready to pick back all the pieces of us that you shattered. That I realized that I couldn't do this to them, to you or myself ......... That it was easy to bear this pain now than to see all of you in pain and die a thousand deaths everyday.......

When I returned home today from my aunt's place later that evening, mom was already home from office, she asked the question that I dreaded the most. "How was your exam?" She was beating around the bush. We both knew that was not she wanted to ask. i replied that it went well, it was supposed to anyways, I had spent 15 hours a day for last few weeks focusing on nothing but that.

"Did you see any of them?" she asked referring to my friends, my best friends, the one whom I hadn't spoken a word to. I had just disappeared from their lives without any trace. I shook my head in no not wanting to put it into words. But I knew that wasn't what she really wanted to ask. She wanted to ask about you, and she did.

"Was he there? Karan, was Karan there as well?" she asked me. Almost stopping before uttering your name like she didn't want to speak it or saying it would break something.

The moment she uttered your name, I stopped breathing. The heartache which I was trying so badly to ignore along with the memories that accompanied it, came in full force. I felt like I was being choked just hearing your name had this effect, funny now wasn't it?

I acted nonchalant to her question as if it didn't mean anything to me or you had no importance. But good lord, was it anything but that, you were the most important to me even after everything it was you that I held close to my heart. But I didn't let it show, I was lying to myself by doing that, I knew. And why shouldn't I? I had acted like you didn't mean anything to me since that day. I had refused to acknowledge my feelings for you. I refused to cry for the empty void that you had left in your wake. The void that I have been stuck in since that day, the void where I can't move on from you yet can't go back. I can nothing but bear with this hollowness and numbness that you have left me in.

'Did it have to be like this?' – I have asked this question to myself every second of the day. Did it really have to end this way? Did I really have to shatter what we had into pieces? Did I really have to destroy what we had?

I had cursed us and probably even what we had. Hell I was the cursed one, or maybe the curse itself. Cuz I was the reason for this disaster.

Now even you might be thinking, that when they said I was heartless, they weren't
kidding. Nor was I when I said that I was not your sunshine and rainbow girl. That I was not the girl with the answer to your problems or light to your darkness.

I am the darkness......
And, now you know it too........

From,
The girl with blue scarf