The One That Got Away

 She looked at the clock on her studio wall. 09:55pm, it showed. 

‘You still have time!’ the Heart said. 

‘To do what?’ the Head was still wide awake after a tiring day of online submissions, lengthy webinars and writing reports. 

Logging onto the Facebook App, her eyebrows snapped together when the newsfeed showed her that it was the birthday of one of her favourite actors. 

‘You should’ve noticed it today morning – the entertainment column was displaying his movies to be played on TV all day!’ the Head shrugged. 

‘Yeah, well she was focused on work,’ the Heart justified her – not that there was anything to justify about. She was definitely not one of those people who celebrated the birthday of celebrities – well not all; maybe some! 

‘Thank you Heart,’ she said and smiled. She knew exactly what to do for the two-and-a-half hours till bedtime.  

X-x-X 

“There you are,” she said out loud. Ten minutes had gone by as she’d searched for the flash-drive holding movies from 2012 before she found it in the cardboard box labelled ‘table top’. She drew the curtains, switched the tube-light to an LED lamp, plugged in her bass-buds and sat down with a favourite cushion to enjoy the 2hour and 7minute film. Some scenes tugged at her heart strings like they did the first time she’d seen them, while some others weren’t as amusing anymore. By the time the end credits rolled, her smile had gone, her heart beat was slow and her cheeks were burning. She put the laptop to sleep and sighed. She felt stuffy, her throat was dry and it felt like she couldn’t breathe. She got up, pulled the curtains out of the way and opened the window. A slight drizzle had begun. She felt her legs give way as she sat down clumsily by the window – and wept. 

She’d been grieving the unexpected loss of a loved one for the past year. She realized that she’d been suppressing her grief – she’d been hurt and angry and she’d thought she was past the phase of acceptance but clearly, she was still in denial. All those emotions and memories that she’d bottled up, finally washed over her; shaking her to her core and she let those tears fall. For once, she didn’t stop herself – neither did her Heart nor her Head. 

‘You need this,’ they simply said. The drizzle outside became stronger as she kept her eyes closed. It hurt. She knew it would one day – eventually; but it hit her differently this time. It struck her like how a pianist bashes all the right notes in a staccato rhythm; like how the arrow from a bow pierces its target; like how beautiful a flame is, at a distance but how it burns, if you get too close. 

‘He’s gone and he’s not coming back’ her Head said. 

‘She knows, but she can’t handle it’ her Heart replied. 

“I can handle the present,” She rebuked them both. “It’s just the fear of the future that frightens me.” 

‘We know,’ they sighed in unison, ‘no matter how bleak, atleast there is a future for you.’ She sniffled. 

“Yes, I know,” she wiped the tears off her cheeks and chin. 

X-x-X 

Please don’t think I’m leaving you, I wanted this to work. I really did, but it just can’t anymore! I’m sorry. To me, you’ll always be the one that got away. Take Care. Wish you all the best!  

She’d actually googled the meaning of that phrase and the Elite Daily had told her that it meant exactly what the words said. It meant that there was someone we regret not being with from our past; because in the present, we feel that they may have truly been ‘the one’ for us and we may even wish that we’d known better – since we wouldn’t have let them go in the first place. 

She breathed in and remembered a line from the film she’d just watched: ‘Cheran arhathayullavar thammil cheratte’ (transl.: ‘Let only those who are eligible, be a pair’ in Malayalam). ‘That ‘eligibility’ isn’t conditioned to either/or; it’s meant for both the people involved in that equation,’ she composed herself. She took a few more deep breaths, stood up, patted away specs on her Kurti, inhaled the freshly wet earth and remembered one of her favourite quotes of all time – 

I’ll do it, because I can; I can, because I want to; and I want to, because you said I couldn’t.

X-x-X