dead girls don't love [dgdl]

chapter 18 \r

THE SUN DOES NOT STOP SHINING for the moon even when it knows about its craters and flaws.

Ashna had gotten no response to confirm this theory. Ivan did not reply for minutes before he just asked if it was true and if he understood something she did not mean. This hurt Ashna's already broken heart, her mind was already screaming.

She had only replied if someone can lie about a thing like that. And he had said, 'no', 'sorry'.

Even when he was not there, Ashna knew he had no words to say. He was taken aback, his mind spiralling around trying to grasp what suddenly was happening.

This revelation meant that the world came crashing down on him, and he was not even informed, never imagined and it was truly shocking. His heart was twisting inside him, sadness had grabbed the neck of rage which was igniting and he still could not make what was all, at once, revealed.

Tears threatened Ashna's eyes as the night grew darker and darker. Tears that she felt had dried long ago.

Still, she texted him about how it was child abuse and had happened when she was eleven. That she did not remember all of it perfectly until lockdown gave her all the time to overthink; bloody cursed lockdown.

As a result, it brought depression, anxiety, self-loathe and permanent insecurities. She did not tell him these things though.

Ashna was texting Ivan but it felt like she was saying these things to herself.

Ivan just 'hmm'ed her over the text.

Then, if she could understand, not filled with so much misery and discourses, she would know it was good that he reacted that way. He listened to her without any conditions or anything.

For people who don't understand such things and take them lightly, they are very quick to react, and whisper words of sympathy, some may blame as well or try to say words which make no sense. But there are also those who, even when they know they can't understand the exact things, value and respect others' pain. They respect their stories, even when they are stories coming from hell.

Ashna knew it was too much.

For her who had lived so many years with its disgust, it could never become easy. Tonight while she said it to someone, it felt like a fresh wound all over again.

It felt as if she was dragged back to the point where she could not ever recover from the trauma of that awful and grisly incident.

It took all her guts to text Ivan, stopping him in the midst of typing, that she needed time.

Maybe, she just wanted to give Ivan the time too. Stupid! Stupid! Selfish!

Her mind taunted her. Did she not know this feeling whatsoever it was— oh but so beautiful and homely—going to greet its end? Maybe at that moment, she was thinking of nothing else but to run away. From her thoughts, from the cruel and ugly mess of truth she had spilt, and from Ivan.

In the fairy lights which shone upon her for the golden girl Ashna was, she cried to sleep last night.

Ashna felt like last night was another one of those cursed nightmares which woke her up early in the morning, saddened.

The entire day, truth kept her mind crippled and her heart weary. All day, she did the same things, went to college, studied, in fact, kept herself busy, to not think of any other thing. But she did not call Ivan.

Neither did she contact him the day that followed.

She did not realize in her miseries that she was leaving him weary too, juggling amidst uncertainties by telling him a thing so new and unbelievable, and without any explanations, and those he did not even demand. But he so wished she did not leave him alone to brood.