She was always with me.

I never knew she meant so much to me. Sometimes I have not even noticed her existence around me. It might sound very rude. But that’s how we were. We were good friends. We never had a formal chat.  At times, I have shouted at her, pinched, poked and even pulled her hair. I don’t remember the last time I called her respectfully by name. But some part of me always cared for her.  

I don’t remember the last time we went out for dinner together. But somehow my heart believed that she was always going to be with me. We have been together for more than two decades and now I realize that staying together for long doesn’t make it permanent. When something stays with you for a long time, your heart presumes it to be permanent. Like something that’s always there for you. 

It is not true. It was never true. It was not meant to be there forever with you. Your mind knows this bitter truth. But your heart doesn’t want to know what the mind knows. And there comes a point in life where you have to let go your emotions. Let go the girl who was always there for you unconditionally.

The common advice is to move on. 

But I have never really mastered this word – ‘moving on’. All my life I have never really moved on. I just lose myself in the immense flow of time. I leave my memories behind. So that they can no longer haunt me. Now she has joined the club of people who haunt me. I realize all these while having a hot cup of coffee without any disturbance. There was always that someone to make me a coffee. There was always that someone to disturb me by striking a pointless conversation. And now without that someone, I see the concept of nothingness. Null, empty or void whatever you name it.

I have always considered her a disturbance and failed to express my love for her. But I don’t think that’s mandatory. I don’t need to prove my love for her. She knows it and I know it.

Sometimes words are insufficient . We don’t have words to describe complex feelings. Sometimes you feel like damaged, broken, crying, shouting, and laughing at the same time. Words are of no use unless someone coins new words for such complex feelings.

I’m nothing new to this reality of losing my best people. Now all I have to do is to let go her memories. They will be buried somewhere deep in the dark. This is one exceptional scenario where I consider memory loss as an extraordinary gift.

Perhaps, memory loss is the only natural cure to leave someone you love.

Bon voyage sister.

-Pradeep

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