one.

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He dumped me. Half a year of being best friends and a two year committed relationship after, he dumped me. He is my ex now. An ex.

The Ex. 

Maybe the letter X, red and bolded and blotched and bloodied, describes him better because boy do I feel like picking up a knife and hurling it at him as if I am aiming for the apple that fell on Sir Newton’s head to yield physics and the theories of attraction and repulsion. Although he gifted the world with physics that was meant for moving boxes and planets, all those laws and theories seem to be hauntingly applicable to the human conscience too. One feels attracted to another body of humanly being but play around with the poles a bit and it turns into repulsion.

It was ‘opposites attract’ for us. He was the red side of the magnet and I was the blue—positive and negative. He was warm, fun, happy; I was cold, boring and sad. But then, due to some unknown forces of pull and attraction, we collided like two stray stars in the universe and created this beautiful galaxy of stories, memories, moments and happiness. He had his own light and that made me shine. Like the sun and the moon. Without him I felt lost. Without him, I was unseen and unheard of. 

Pathetic, I know. But that is what it was. Truly.

He really picked me up from the dumps when we met and when he left…well, I think he chose to throw me way below from where he got me. 

Okay, now I am just spreading unnecessary hate. I still love him despite what he did to me. Hilarious, right?

It’s been three months now since the breakup. I am doing much better than when it all just happened. Maybe I am better because I am in a new city with new people and a hell lot of work stacked on my head. Doing a Master’s degree was always written in my cards and I am so glad that I love this academic torture because, at this point, that is the only thing that is keeping me sane.

Now doing a Master’s is not a cakewalk—when I say it is academic torture, I mean it. It is doing eight hours of classes a day, meeting and executing club activities after that, attending conferences and events, networking with people, and writing five-thousand word assignments worth only 10% of your course grade, and you have to write eight such assignments because you have eight courses in a semester that is barely five months long. So all this leaves little to no room for a personal life and you will not find the energy to think about everything that you hate the universe for doing to you.  

But today is a Sunday. I have no pending assignments to cry about. I am spending the one day where I am actually free by sitting pitifully in my room because my friends went out with their other friends. I do not wish to complain about that. I have few friends and I hate increasing that tiny dot of a circle that I have. I cleaned my room yesterday (I could have left it for today but the clean-freak in me decided to do it before) and my complete, hour-long shower routine finished two hours ago. I did my laundry and also worked on an assignment that is not yet due for another month. And still, I am left with an entire afternoon by my lonesome, with nothing to do and no one to talk to. I don’t mind the solitude when I have something to do, but right now that is not the case. With nothing spectacular going on, this empty brain of mine keeps wandering back to my ex, asking why he would dump me.

A lot of whys and what ifs kept circling in my brain as I lay on my bed, scrolling mindlessly on instagram. By the way, did you know that the freaking social media app has developed the ability to read minds? In the past two hours of scrolling, I came across gazillions of reels about tarot readings, zodiac voodoo, and “share with 3 friends to claim your ex back”.

Thanks for the help insta but I don’t want my ex back.

Although I did save and share all those reels just in case this voodoo actually works, and miraculously he does come back and texts me right now and we end up spending the entire afternoon dissecting our relationship and correcting everything that went wrong. 

I sigh. 

That is not what I should be needing. I can’t believe that the “khali dimaag shaitaan ka ghar hota hai” (an empty brain is home to the devil) saying is so true and I am a live demonstration of it. I am pretty sure that when this came in a Hindi exam during school days I definitely messed up writing the spellings of the words in this proverb.

And that, ladies and gentleman, is how free and bored I am—look at my thoughts…or, just read them I guess. 

Instagram’s algorithm gave up on convincing me to believe in those tarot reels and so it switched to showing me people being happy in their relationships, teen pregnancies, highly successful women getting married to their college sweetheart…this thing knows what will hit the most, doesn’t it?

I limply tossed my phone to the side and slapped my hands on my face, letting out an animalistic groan of frustration, self pity and boredom.

What has become of me?

I never realized how alone I was until the breakup happened. Suddenly the world became quieter and my head became the noisiest mess to ever exist. The number of times my thoughts spiralled into me thinking about myself and for myself in the past three months is probably an all-time record. Before this, I never thought about myself and the miserable state I live in. My thoughts were always occupied by him and his smile and his happiness. I spent all my waking hours feeling responsible and dutiful towards making him feel loved, heard and seen.

But myself?

I couldn’t care less.

I never saw the tiny lines of worry, concern, stress and sadness that growing up and adulthood gradually etched on my face, creating permanent grooves. These existed from way before, the years of smiles and frowns adding their wrinkles, but most of them got amplified by all the negativity that my relationship fostered. But I never cared and saw myself thoroughly. And once the breakup happened, I started thinking about all the reasons why it happened and what if it hadn’t occurred the way it did. Only recently, when I marked the 119th day of not talking to him, did I end up seeing myself in the mirror. Actually seeing myself. 

My 5’2 frame with blessed chubbiness and the right curves, stretch marks on my arms, stomach and hips from my adolescent phase where I was concerningly heavy, the small nicks on my legs and arms from all the times the razor blade did more than just get rid of the hair, tiny bumps of skin lacerations, discoloured patches and birth marks—every imperfection has somehow made itself so much more clearer now and I discover such features on myself every day. My long, dark hair seems to be thinning and falling out more and more and I am not sure if I should blame the emptiness and loneliness that I feel or Delhi’s water. Or maybe even the semi-nutritious mess food, which I often forget to have because I am too lazy to get out of bed to make my way there. 

Basically, I have never seen myself so clearly before all the mess that happened in June and all the overthinking I did after that. Does it bother me? Yes. It makes me realize how little I cared for myself before now. I can see why these “imperfections” are called imperfections. I understand why people hide them with makeup or get surgeries done. They are ugly.

I mean when I was wearing those rose tinted glasses that love gives out for free and saw my ex, I never saw a single imperfection in him. And I am sure he never saw them in me either. The discolorations which I found mildly disgusting on myself were never an issue for him. Even despite being borderline-fat-kind-of chubby the first time we met, he still loved the way I looked. He loved every fear I had about my body image. He made me believe I was pretty and beautiful. My body dysmorphia vanished because of him. I know I was glowing with happiness whenever I was with him. I know my cheeks and ears were always tinted a cute red because of him, giving me the prettiest of natural blushes. I smiled more, showed my teeth more. I laughed out loud and let my inner child out so frequently. He loved everything in me. Or so he used to.  

But now that he is gone, all these imperfections have started bothering me. I feel ugly with them. Unlovable. Not pretty enough. I don’t like how my brows crease when I am thinking or about to cry. I don’t like the shape of my ears, if that even makes sense. I can see why he would leave me, although that wasn’t a reason for him, my brain has conjured it up as a reason.

I know that he was the embodiment of “true happiness” for me. Until he no longer was and I was left all by myself. Till now, I haven’t found what it feels like to be happy again. I see no reason. The world is tinted grey now. I smile but it is one of those sad curls of the mouth. I can see that whenever I look at myself in the mirror, and I am pretty sure that I am doing a shitty job at hiding my sadness from the world. If not my smile, then at least my personality and constant grumpiness is a dead giveaway that something is not right. It makes me despair to no end that I am down deep in a hell-hole and I know I have to get out of it, but I just can’t. I don’t know how. I know I need help but I don’t know whom to ask. I have people and yet no one seems to be really there.

Sometimes I want to turn back time and get a hug from him. It feels like all my troubles would melt away with just that. His warmth would be sufficient to defreeze the ice that has slowly made its way around my heart and, maybe, inside it too.

Another sigh. 

The ceiling is so high up—is the next thought that crosses my mind as I drift out of my head. Sometimes I wonder whether Newton’s gravity is strong enough to make the fan drop on its own accord and squish me underneath. And if that happens—

will my ex cry for me?

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