Live on, Thunder.

This is harder than I thought. Closing the door on you, on us. I may be an expert at goodbyes by now but that doesn't make me any better at them. To watch all my plans come to an end and shatter in front of my eyes takes the life out of me for sure. I have trained myself well so now the tears don't flow as easy and the urge to see you and weep in your arms so it will all fix itself is withering. I think once you survive by yourself long enough, you realize you don't need anybody else's help in doing it. I have been broken so many times before that now putting myself together takes relatively less time.

Inevitably, the people I trust with all my heart, misuse this faith that I placed in them. I gave you the power to hurt me and guess what? You did. I let myself be vulnerable thinking that there was no way in hell that you would let anything harm me, little knowing that you would transform into someone who did it all by himself.

Jee ve sohaneya jee, chahe kisi ka hoke jee

Like all my past lovers, I wish you well. I end up wishing everyone well. When you love someone like I loved you, there's no bitterness at the end of it all. there's just a void - a you shaped hole in my heart, where you used to be.

There's a place in my life, that I carved out just for you that I don't know what to do with. I imagined a future only with you in it so I think that is something that will take time. The worst bit is that we really tried, didn't we? I can't even blame you because I know this relationship was difficult for you. I was difficult for you. You should have run for the hills when I asked you for Annabelle you know? I mean what good could come off a girl like me? I introduced you to the horrible side of this world and broke all your belief systems. I broke you.

But for once I know I didn't break us. Maybe you didn't either. I guess it probably was always going to break but I fooled myself into thinking that it won't. That you were my Aditya. That you were God's answer for all the times I had asked, "Why me?" I thought you were going to stick, I thought we were going to be what legends are made of. I forgot that the last time I felt this way, the legend became the legendary storm that destroyed me. But he did leave a lesson in its wake. So no, I won't be destroyed this time.

I'm done with love. I don't want to experience it anymore. Love is pain and pain, as you said, demands to be felt. Well, I don't want to feel it. I've had a tough life and I demand happiness. I can't make you incharge of it - I've got to be the bearer of my own happiness. Any time that I rely on someone else for it, it bites me in the ass.

Maana ke tu ab nahi mera, kabhi tha mera bhi

Just a day earlier I had said to a room full of marriage counsellors how despite my experiences at the family court, I was rooting for love. You killed the love within me baby. Many people have walked over and abused the little girl inside me, but you pulled the final trigger. You killed the idea of a happily ever after from my story.

But she fell in love with an English man.

Hello there.
I'm in a nice mood today so I thought I would write to you. Music is the only thing that sometimes puts me in a mood to write to you. I don't know why but it seems like a song you would have smiled to even though the singer isn't your type. You might have dedicated it to me and I have this feeling in my gut that for some time to come I would have been your Galway Girl.

Just the way Sheeran says "Pretty little Galway Girl" has a ring to it that reminds me of you. I thought my brain and the music industry had finally run out of such things. Nuances I tell will be the end of me :)

I have such a nostalgic smile as I type this. Today I'm not angry. Today I'm not sad. Today I'm me and I'm glad we met. I get so much flak for this that I don't allow myself to feel this way often. Your hatred/ambivalence/indifference makes that really easy too. But as I said, today I'm giving myself a no-guilt pass. Maybe it's my latest defense against you or the part of me that will forever believe that she and she alone knew the real you. Actually I'm more scared of the latter - this twisted part of me - has the capacity to derail all that I've worked for. Such is the power of my darker side but then I guess we all feel that way about our wild alteregos.

I was always one to believe that crazy is my normal state so it only makes sense that every once in a while I seek it out. And if I didn't know any better I would still be seeking you, my go-to link for crazy. You're a symbol of losing control, of not caring, of being a badass bitch. So it's not you so much that I miss but this reckless, carefree version of me that didn't need to adult all the time. She didn't need to be patient or empathetic to the needs of others. She lived in the moment for hedonistic pleasures. She wasn't expected to be mature or caring. She only did what suited and pleased her.

She's the Galway Girl.

So as I listen to the song on loop today at 5 am in the morning, it's an ode not to you but to my youth that allowed me one year of reckless happiness. The stories from that era are just that - unbelievable stories that leave me hungry for me. But that's the thing about addictive adrenaline high experiences like the ones we had together - they eventually drain you out. However for today, I focus not on the downer but the high.

She played the fiddle in an Irish band,
But she fell in love with an English man, 
Kissed her on the neck and then I took her by the hand,
Said 'Baby I just wanna dance...
My pretty little Galway Girl.'

So thank you my Englishman. I'll be in your city soon and thanking you for that dance and for letting me be the Galway Girl. It was always going to end, but you made the ride so bloody addictive and imprudent that I can't help but smile. The time we spent together was really time that I stole from the world for myself. It was like one big, bad score before quitting the game altogether. There's just so much that I need to continuously care about now that I just want to thank you for giving me a world in which I didn't need to care about anything except being your Galway Girl. 

I'm going to smile.

I'm documenting that I smiled today. Today was good because I found smiles where none existed. I got a good night's sleep and found comfort in the arms of my friend. I teased someone till he was red and I listened to Lazarus after years. I fell more in love with my professor, I sang to myself, I checked up on the people I care about. I survived. I lived. I flourished. 

This is to document a day of normal, routine happiness. In the drudgery of life, I think I forgot to notice the tinier details that make me happy. I'm happy. And for today, that's all that matters.

My David don't you worry, this cold world is not for you... So rest your head upon me, I have strength to carry you... 

Let's Hurt Tonight.

I'm so done.

I'm so fucking done with myself. I don't know why I do, what I do anymore. I don't know if I'm just going through the motions or if I have some purpose in life. I want to curl up in my sheets and not look at the world outside. I'm not strong enough, not tonight. Tonight is for hurting. Tonight is for weeping. Tonight is for locking my doors. Tonight, I want time to stop. Tonight, I want to freeze. 

I wish I could be sure that tonight is all I need but I'm not so sure. With me, I never am. Because when I break, there's no putting the pieces back. There's an uninterrupted shit-storm that hits the ceiling.

Over the years I have learnt to deal with it by myself, all alone and so it's out of character for people to be here for me. I had got used to absenteeism to the degree that presence now annoys me. I want to be left alone. And after all, if I project it enough, you will introject it and turn it into a self-fulfilling prophecy right? 

And the one person I got used to having - well, life came between us too. Of course it did. So I do all these things, in an attempt to find some comfort but I only burn bridges all around. I've set myself on fire and there isn't any water in sight. How ironic that he used to call me rain. And today I am my own worst enemy, unable to extinguish the inferno within. 

I know what I'm going to be told...

It's going to get easier, easier somehow.

But, not today.

Today I am done. I'm done with me. I'm done with my past. I'm done with getting screwed. I'm done with screwing up. I'm just done. What will it take? What more must I light up to be set free from this hell? What do you want, you evil one?

Tell me now, where was my fault. Tonight I can take it because tonight I'm particularly mad - at myself, the world, just about everyone. Where was my fault in loving you with all my heart? You, the first one to twist the concept of love in my mind? Or you, the one I called my sister but you never really considered me one? Or you, the one I truly gave myself to only to be jilted and left out on the curb - cold, alone and clueless? 

What did I ever do except love you? Why was it never enough? Why was it too much? Why? Why did you ruin me for him? If knowing love means knowing pain then I'm done. I'm done with love too. I don't want to love because now it means I've become the monster I so hated. I've become all of you.

I'm not the naive three year old who told her mother, "If bad people don't change, why should the good people?" Little did I know, they're forced to. The world doesn't leave them with a choice. But now that I'm one of you, I disgust myself. I didn't match up to the one ideal that I held close to my heart for as long as I remember.

And yes, maybe that meant getting hurt and being broken down and taken advantage of but that was still better than being the one who inflicts the pain. I am not okay with being "practical"... I miss the un-scarred, un-tainted, un-wise edition. 

But you know what this practicality ensures? I will get up, brush this off and keep moving forward. That much I have taught myself in these years. Because getting over you, and getting used to having no expectations from you, and always getting bypassed by you for someone else taught me this - I am all I will ever need. And this, has been the saddest realization of them all. 

If you're reading this, don't call. If you haven't all this while, a call tonight changes nothing. It's too late. 

I can't be saved.

Not by you.