Dear Almost Pistanthrophobia, Yes, Your Love Taught Me This New Word

This beautiful letter to an ex is filled with the peace of knowing that all of life’s experiences leave us with precious memories – even the ones overlaid with scars.

Even the love stories that are not ‘happily ever after’ teach us something! 

Yes, that is a new nickname for you. Wait, don’t dash off to Google it, read the letter first darling, the meaning is right there at the end.

Oh! Don’t rush to the end now, like you always do – you seem to be extra fond of endings, not the happily ever after types though, but please have patience with me one last time.

Remember the beautiful gifts we once gave each other and the best gift ever –Time? You can surely give me five more minutes of it, my dear.

We had common eyes and common dreams those days, ah! The shiny idealism of young love! We were the envy of our small world; we were too perfect to be even believable. We wrote poems for each other, made wishes and said prayers for each other to survive the long distance.

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Nothing in the world seemed precious enough to not give up for those stolen moments of intimacy, when the bodies would tire holding the heavy receivers of landline phones but the hearts still wanted one more word, one more song.

The meetings like dreams come true, two young doves in their utopia, oblivious of time the traitor waiting to prey.

Soon the long distance became too long a distance. It was not the others who came between us, but we who became the others.

We didn’t even realise when were the last times of everything we shared – the last time you put your head in my lap, the last time you brushed a crumb off my lips, the last time we laughed at a private joke, the last time our bodies touched each other’s warmth.

Now it is all past tense.

Do they amputate hearts like limbs yet?

That is exactly how my chest felt, an empty ribcage where there still remained a ghost heartbeat but my heart was gone.

The letters, the pictures, the gifts remain and most of all, the memories. You remain in me in the way I stir my chai, or write my expenses, or check all the doors and knobs twice every night. I am sure I remain in you the way you arrange your currency in your wallet, the way you sometimes experiment with food and say the difficult new words twice.

People and relationships don’t break instantly like glass tumblers, they feel the knock, then show a crack, then the cracks deepen and finally they break slowly over a lifetime and yet the residues remain, of your quirky Bollywood humour in every conversation I have, my messy wardrobe in every wardrobe you will ever see.

You have moved on my dear and so have I, to a point of no return. To say “I love you, but….” is to say “I never loved you maybe at all.”

I have let go of you and yet I hold on to some precious life lessons and memories from our time together. No we can’t be friends, but we can be two strangers having the same burial ground of a time bygone.

“Like some wines our love could neither mature nor travel.”

― Graham Greene

This loss of losing a loved one to life is like a wound that might never heal and yet I wish you all good things in life, so that if and when you look back, you have a lot to be grateful for, including me.

You became almost Pistanthrophobia (the fear of trusting people due to past experiences with relationships having gone bad.)

But I would rather make you a valuable life lesson and move on with a smile and a healing hug.

Blessed be!

Dear-Not-meant-to-be

Your once one-and-only!

You can view our entire #LettersToMyEx series here.

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