Abhay,
You have to know that, under normal circumstances, I would never do this. If you were in love with Simran, and she was in love with you, and both of you were happy together, I would never send you this letter. In fact, I have written to you several times over this past year, and kept the letters hidden in a folder on my computer, never to be discovered. I could never bring myself to send you those. They were obsessive and repetitive, circular – like my thoughts.
They helped me though. Sometimes, when I feel unsettled and I don’t know what’s causing that feeling, I write. I write whatever’s going on, whatever I feel, and I speculate. I call it writing therapy. Because when I go back to the page and read what I’d written, it helps clarify things in my head. I wrote to you every once in a while. These letters, I never sent you, but they were like a friend … a safe place where I could share things.
I found out last week that Simran and you broke up. I don’t want to assume that I was part of the reason why, but I have to believe that I played some minor role in this happening. I feel terrible about this. I hope you two didn’t end on terrible terms, or get hurt. But knowing how love works, that’s probably too much to hope for.
You don’t have to tell me what happened with Simran. We don’t have to talk about her and your relationship at all. That is not the reason I’m writing to you.
The reason I’m writing to you … is because, Abhay, I’m in love with you. I have loved you for as long as I’ve known you, and in this past year, no matter how many times I have tried to deny that, even to myself, I have failed.
I can’t stop thinking about you. Leaving you, making that decision … was hard. But it wasn’t the hardest thing I’ve had to do. That would be … staying away from you. When every fibre in my body revolted against it, unwilling to accept a life without you, I still kept telling myself that it was okay, I was okay. But I wasn’t. I’m not okay.
Wasn’t it supposed to get easier and easier every day? To be away from you, and stay away from you? I was supposed to get used to it. Continue living, as if a part of me wasn’t missing. I couldn’t do it. I can’t do it, Abhay. Please don’t make me live without you, because that life sucks. I don’t want it.
Is it too late? Do we still have a chance? For months, I told myself that this was the right decision, and slowly, we’ll reverse the damage, life would be normal again. I thought that if I set a path for myself, consciously wrote down my steps and followed them through, my head could guide me, one day at a time, till enough time passed, and I could begin to let my heart make decisions for me again.
Turns out, it doesn’t work like that. My entire being revolted against this decision my head made. Leaving you that day, and then staying away from you every day … every single day away from you has been miserable. A special kind of hell I’ve built for myself.
These letters I’ve been writing to you every month, they’re full of thought spirals that are often obsessive and do not make any sense. But somehow they keep me grounded. It feels as though through these words, I’ve been tracking my progress since the breakup. Most of it probably doesn’t make sense, but I’d hoped that it would eventually get to a point where my words would start making more and more sense … as I approach sanity.
Life still feels pretty insane. I’m discarding my plan for life. My brain doesn’t get to make decisions for me anymore. The more I try to be in control, the more control I lose. Deciding to be without you and move on didn’t work. No matter how hard I tried, it just didn’t work. So, I should let my instincts guide me, right? I don’t know what to do anymore. Nothing else works.
If I had to, could I live without you? Yes. I would be unhappy for a while, but I wouldn’t die. With time, things would get better, and I would move on eventually. But do I want that? No. I don’t want a life without you. I’m willing to risk everything again, wear my heart on my sleeve and dive into this with you again. I’m choosing to love you. Will you choose me too?
Abhay, I’m still in love with you. I always have been, and it looks like I always will be. No matter how hard I try to deny it, I know how my heart really feels. I come up with these elaborate plans, the reasons why we don’t work, the reasons why we shouldn’t be together. Sometimes, it feels like there are so many. At other times, no matter how hard I try, I can’t think of even one. Not one reason why we shouldn’t be together.
I know, it sounds crazy, because so much time has passed, I did something terrible to you when I ran away without explanation. You’ll probably never be able to trust me again, we will probably never be able to build the trust again, to get to a point where we’re not broken anymore. Then there’s family, and friends … they’re still getting used to the idea of us not being together. There’s so much bitterness between our families since the breakup … I don’t know if that can ever be fixed. I don’t know where we would even begin.
Biggest of all: you. How do you feel? Do you still love me too? Do you think you can try to give me another chance? Do you think we can go back to the way things were before?
This is such a shot in the dark, but if I don’t take this chance, I know I will always regret it. I love you, Abhay. And I want to be with you. I want to work with you, to put together all of the broken pieces of us … make us whole again.
The first thing that comes to mind, the one you pointed out, the incident with … that girl. I don’t want to say her name. It’s inconsequential to our lives. I will try to explain to you to the best of my abilities what that one incident did to me. Maybe then we can try to work on fixing things, if you still love me…
When I first met you, I fell in love with you as instantly as you fell in love with me. We were so different from each other, but there was this undeniable chemistry. We had the most random things in common. Even though our personalities were exact opposite of each other’s, as we got to know each other, we realized that we were more alike than different.
Deep down, we have the same values. We live by the same principles. We have the same definitions of right and wrong. But all of that we discovered later. In the beginning, all I saw were differences.
You were outgoing, with a big, happy personality that shone through in any room. You took over any space you were in. No one could ignore you; you were never a part of the background. When I got to know you, I found out that you were patient and kind. And also kind of a jerk when you needed to be. I liked that. You took shit from no one. You were confident, always knew exactly what you wanted and went for it.
When I first met you, I wasn’t the most social being. I liked to be left alone with my books. I liked to read, spend time thinking about things, hang out with my friends. I liked listening to music, looking for meaning in words. I didn’t care that I was a cliché. I was happy with my small existence. I was so anxious inside, wanted such big things from life. I didn’t have the time or energy to impress others, and I never felt the need to do that either.
Now that I think about it, I realize that you were always more of a businessman. You set out to seek what you wanted, and always won. Driven, focused, sure. You never hesitated, never questioned anything. You weren’t crippled by doubt or uncertainty. You decided your own path, and made sure things went your way.
I, on the other hand, was always more of an artist … one without a form of art. I drew, but not very often. I spent time with ideas – reading books, watching films, having conversations with close friends. From my first job, I’ve established that I like to create. That’s what makes me feel productive and brings me fulfilment at the end of the day. Coming up with ideas for campaigns, creating content of all kinds for different platforms, engaging audiences in our narrative – that’s what I thrive on.
If our jobs say anything about our personalities, it’s clear that you’re the person who single-mindedly sets out to reach goals. I’m always looking for more … what else can we be doing, how to get more people to engage with us, raise more awareness. I’m not saying that your life is easier … just that mine’s messy. My head is always full of flying fragments of thoughts and ideas, I’m always working towards something.
You grounded me. When we were together, you were my pillar. As I lived my life stumbling from one idea to another, you were the only constant thing that brought me happiness, loved me when I needed it, shook me out of my own self-dug holes whenever necessary. I depended on you.
I showed you all of me, gave you my everything. You became my everything. I couldn’t imagine a life without you.
So, when one day, after all we’d been through, you presented me with this information that went against everything I had ever known to be true … my mind could not process it. I could not believe that you would do that. To me, when you knew you were my everything.
If this new piece of information was true, everything else that I had ever believed in was a lie. These truths could not exist together. They simply did not belong in the same world.
The world under my feet shifted. I questioned everything you’d ever said to me. Everything I’d felt. Everything I believed you felt towards me … it was all a lie. I couldn’t pick and choose based on what I wanted the reality to be. I couldn’t assume that you meant one thing, but maybe not that other thing. You meant nothing. All of it was a lie. I was betrayed by the one person I shared everything with. Someone I thought I knew better than I knew myself. If I couldn’t believe in you anymore, I lost trust in myself, and the world.
Maybe it’s that blind first-love thing. I gave you my all, without questions. I never doubted anything, just put all my faith in you, until one day everything changed and I forgot how to think or be anymore.
How could you do that to me, Abhay? How could you even think about someone else? I knew that we had problems. It wasn’t the easiest time for either of us. Things were rough at home. You had started working for your dad’s company, and that took a lot from you. I couldn’t find a good job, and that was taxing. After college ended, we had less and less in common. Our lives were very different now.
I know all of this. I know how hard it was. Somewhere along the way, as we grew, we grew apart.
It was painful, and disappointing. I missed you, I was unhappy … but not once during all of this did I think about someone else. It was never that bad. Our love was still very real. Maybe the romance had faded a little, maybe we weren’t as carefree and happy anymore. But we still loved each other, didn’t we?
Then how could you kiss that girl, Abhay? Why? You say that it was just a mistake, and I want to believe you. I want to believe you so badly… But then I remember how I felt the night you told me about her, and all of those terrible memories come back to me…
We tried to move on from it. Admittedly, we did a terrible job at it. You were right, we should’ve resolved the problem before moving on. But working on a resolution required addressing the problem. It was too real … I couldn’t handle it. I was too weak. I couldn’t bear the thought of you with someone else, so I wanted to pretend it never happened. I couldn’t talk to you about it, dissect everything, relive it…
Our relationship was perfect from the beginning. From day 1, things had come easy for us. We’d found each other young, and put our faith in each other without any conditions or scepticism. I didn’t want to accept that we were not perfect. Or that a mistake was made that could destroy everything. So I ignored it.
That didn’t work either. Ignoring it, pretending it never happened was taking its toll on me. For the first time in my adult life, you weren’t in it with me. I was in this alone. I refused to let you in, because you were the source of the pain. You did this to me, and I was angry. I didn’t want to give you the satisfaction of having helped ease the pain. Very stubborn and irrational of me, I know. And it cost me dearly.
We were acting as if everything was normal, but I found myself questioning everything that came out of your mouth after that. Or anyone’s mouth. What if everyone was lying to everyone else all the time? All you can do is trust that people are honest … you can’t always know for sure. Then how can you trust anyone fully, ever?
That incident planted a seed of uncertainty in my head. It refused to be squashed. It kept growing and growing till I believed nothing and no one. And every little thing that went wrong in our lives after that added to this pile of issues.
When everything with our families started happening – the arguments, cold wars, the drama – and you seemed unbothered, that added to it. When you made new friends at work and didn’t have as much time for me anymore, that added to it. When I couldn’t figure out what I wanted in my career, that added to it. When I woke up from terrible nightmares and couldn’t tell anyone or seek help, that added to it. When everyone planned out the rest of our lives for us without our inputs and I felt unable to breathe, that added to it.
It piled up. All of it, together, it was too much for me to take. Without you, I found myself terribly inadequate to handle all that. And while you were so close to me, you were also farther away than you’d ever been. Then one day, I broke.
I have lived with you in my life, and I have lived without you. Nothing is worth a life without you, Abhay. I know we have problems. Big problems. Re-establishing trust on both sides, that’s a tall order. But if you still love me as much as I love you, we owe ourselves another chance. Please, please give me another chance.
What do you think? Are you where I am? Or am I making a complete fool of myself by saying all of these things right now? I don’t mind; as long as there’s even a one per cent chance that we can fix this, I’m happy to be the fool.
I want to build a life with you. I want everything back. I want to be by your side, and love you and care for you. I want your kisses, I want your arm around my back, I want your shoulder. I want your voice in my ear in the morning, the softness of your hair, your hand in mine. I want conversations and understanding and truths and challenges. I want us back. Please, please tell me I’m not too late.
When you get this letter, please don’t rush to a decision. Please give it time. If you decide something now, but then go back on a decision once you’ve had time to think about it, I don’t think my heart can take it. I’ll wait for your letter, but please only write to me when you are certain.
One way or another, no matter what happens, please know that I will always cherish our time together and remember our moments fondly. When I think of you, I will never let my heart grow bitter. I believe that you truly loved me. Maybe we’ve lost it, maybe we haven’t … but no one can take away the time that we spent together. I will always have that. Maybe that can be enough. Maybe I can convince myself that it was enough.
But Abhay, from the deepest corners of my heart … I hope that it’s not too late.
Nidhi