Voluntary Sadness
He felt sad from the pit of his stomach. It started there and he could visualize it spreading throughout his body. It wasn’t a physical ache, but the pain was worse he thought. It’s the kind of pain he has been familiar with — been through this before. Although, something about this felt different, more grown up, maybe a little more intense. This time he did not want to cry about it to his friends, binge on heart-wrenching classics, not gorge on the ice-cream or anything else to substitute the pain. He wanted to feel every second of this in order to fully understand what was happening to him, no matter how painful. On one hand, he wanted to put his face in the pillow and cry his heart out and on the other hand, he was okay, tapping the keys on his laptop. If someone were to look at him, they would not even have the faintest idea of the whirlwind that was being caused inside him; the battles he was fighting and the unchartered territories he was venturing into.
What is with this pain and this life, he thought? Love felt like a complex emotion. He wanted to hold on to it even though he knew it was toxic. He ached for her, he longed for her company, but she was nowhere to be found. She was a distant dream, a melody played in the wee hours of the morning, soothing and calming, waking you up from the deep slumber.
He never realized how a relationship he held on dearly to would teach him one of the most remarkable lessons of life. It was something with that girl he met one lonely summer. There was something about those conversations, something that called out to him. He did not remember the process of falling in love. Whenever he tried to recollect the memory of how he fell in love, not one specific instant came to mind. He felt as if he was always in love.
There were all sorts of questions in his mind. He was trying to make sense of the past few weeks, maybe months. Knowing too much about something isn’t too good either. One is always so apprehensive about doing anything, he thought. Over analyzing, overthinking and prone to more damage by the things he usually would not think too much about did not work in his favor. He wanted to replay each and every moment since the inception of this relationship, not because he dearly wanted all of this back, but the thought of this not working out had never occurred to him as something sustainable. He always thought that their relationship was synergic so they would automatically be drawn to each other, but somehow universe managed to surprise him.
That’s the thing about love: you can’t deny it, you can’t escape it, you can’t stop it. It is one of the finest experiences one can have in their lifetime. The interpretations of this experience are various and probably that is the beauty of it. You get to make your own story, keep it with you and nurture it.
Somewhere he was thankful, somewhere he wasn’t. He did not know when this would fade if ever it would fade. He was just there in love, hurting and aching, but still in love, so undeniably in love. He dreamt of her, in the quieter moments of life, when no one was paying attention when he would feel the wind in his hair when he would look at a child. It would bring him extreme joy and extreme pain, sometimes more and sometimes less — that’s love, always moving, making you feel things you have never before.
Day 6 of 30
