It was the 15th! Just a month more to the predicament. I was engulfed in my misery and somehow I had started to accept that I was hurt, and I was heartbroken; I had started to acknowledge that pain had arrived and it was there to stay for a while. It was more than a month that I had not known if daytime existed. Nights met me with wet pillow case covers, loud ‘tick-tocks’ of the clock, and an emptiness engulfing me whilst running a marathon of the past in my head. I had allowed my wound to hurt me. I chose to feel every ounce of pain that my situation was inflicting upon me. Love comes with a destruction!
Wiping my tears, I asked myself if I was going to grow a mustache. I cried more seeing my baggy eyes. My mirror seemed to be yelling at me for having hurt my eyes to a point wherein it had changed its colour. It was red! “NO! I don’t like this!”, the heart whispered precariously. Besides everything else, I was hungry. My t-shirt’s print became my expert: “I need my morning coffee”; yes! it was time to get that coffee. That evening brought back my morning.
I slipped in those slippers I had for long not used and hit the salon. Plucking out my mustache, shaping my eyebrows, my eyes cried more! But, this time, my heart directed my hand to get that unused lipstick in my bag and said, “Put it on!”. I wasn’t putting on lipstick on my pain, I was wearing my lipstick to tell my broken heart that it could do better without pale lips. The accident took away the colour from my lips, but, I certainly had lip-colours.
It wasn’t strength. It wasn’t I-feel-better-now situation. It was I’m-trying-to-cope-up-with-my-situation. With pain in my heart, lost happy memories, tears in my eyes, and colourful lips, I walked towards The Sienna’s Cafe- the mystical place where I had experienced for the first time what it meant to feel shy and to blush. Yes, I was looking for colours. I wanted my heart to skip a beat yet again and redden my cheeks. I desired to re-live those happy moments again. My head shouted, “You’re going to inflict pain on yourself. Don’t go to that place!”, but, the heart wants what it wants!
I had been there before. That day, when I walked in, strangely, it felt like the first time. I realized that I hadn’t had the chance of ‘living’ the place before as I was too love-struck. I wanted to take the same table but I didn’t get it. I was finding my way inside the cafe and everything seemed so bizarre. I wasn’t able to place myself. “Washroom! Let’s go to the washroom first!”. It always has helped me. It’s like my thinking-tank. One place where I can gather myself. Weird, I know! Who likes being normal? And, here’s what I found inside:
At that point, I felt that these pictures resembled my mental state. They were as vague in its meaning to me as I was in understanding myself.
Nevertheless, my phone was buzzing and I knew it was work and I must not avoid work calls. While speaking to my client, I plunged myself in the one available couch only to be told that a couple there had reserved it. Excusing myself I somehow found a table by the wall where all I could see was a wall in front of me and part of a mirror that couldn’t reflect my image but became my window to see what was happening at another table. How unusually was I placed!
Struggling, I took out my journal and placed it on the table. I went up to the counter and ordered myself a Mocha and taking in the waiter’s suggestion, I ordered a tomato-pesto-mozzarella cheese sandwich. I wanted to order what we had ordered the last time but I restricted myself. I was here to do what I had never done. So be it!
I had spent about an hour and a half in that cafe. I was trying to observe the place and write a review. Could I be more silly? With emotions brimming in my eyes and sight taking flight back into times I cherished and would cherish forever, my heart ached. I knew one thing for sure: I am in pain and this pain is not leaving me anytime soon. Re-adjusting my focus and trying to build a vent through my words on the paper, I scribbled. I allowed myself to be flawed. But, the control. Ah! The Control! We humans are so tailored to be correct that we fear to be flawed. I had to drop my pen down and gulp down the inability that encapsuled me.
Sitting by myself, was I? Or was I alone? I could find myself trying to figure out the music playing in the background. It didn’t feel home. I felt I wasn’t in my city. So unnerving! And I wanted to embrace this. I couldn’t understand what music was it but I loved it anyways! I could connect. While I was ramming myself over the ignorance of music and its kind, I remembered his mother. What an artist! What a singer! What a musician! Look at me, how ignorant!…before I could start sinking into the dirty-puddle-like hatred for self, the ferry lights were turned on and I was sitting under the stars! The chair next to me missed him. My rumination was disturbed by a group behind my table, trying to get one extra chair. I offered the one that couldn’t bring him back.
Chewing on to my sandwich, I was reminiscing old times! The more I chewed on the mozzarella, the more I suffered heart pangs. I had to stop to cud. I wanted to cry. I never had stopped my cheeks to feel wet with the agony of my heart and nor was I going to do that then. They had to flow. I wanted to see myself. My selfie made me aware that I could JUST BE without giving-in to theories that promote forgetting, erasing and trashing out that that was and couldn’t be.
Paying off the bill, I left something behind. Something that had irked me. I had practiced being alone to fight loneliness. Walking back home, taking the same path we had taken that night, I realized that I wasn’t lonely. I was heartbroken. Being alone and chewing on the mozzarella cheese taught me how to sleep before midnight after a month.
I woke up the next morning remembering my nightmare. I saw a woman, double my size, named Nalini, tutoring me reasons of why my loss was her gain. I knew I had a tougher and longer path ahead to heal myself. I knew I had more teachers to find.
-The Jilted Bride
Life Scruples 
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