Today She Broke Up

Today she broke up, she was all dazed and lost.

She could hear the doorbell, but the idea of opening the door was there only in her conscious mind, she didn’t move at all as she lacked the will to do so.  She has been prostrate on her bed for a while now, failing to realize that it’s been three hours since she broke up.  Her eyes were sore and her throat parched with her hair all muddled. Her room looked like as if it had been ransacked. Unlike other days there were books strewn all over on the floor, a heap of photographs in a corner and some worn out dresses falling out of her wardrobe. The organized and dynamic Sneha was not herself today, she was crying incessantly over her break up with Anuj. A yearlong relationship had come to an end just a while ago and there she was sobbing her heart out, unable to fathom the feeling she was going through.

“Black would look great, why don’t you go ahead and buy the black dress?” asked Anuj feeling irritated after being asked the hundredth time.

“Well, black does make me look a bit slim. I’ll think I’ll go with this,” said Sneha brimming with her radiant smile.

‘It was just six months back that we had decided to move in together,’ thought Sneha to herself lying on the bed. Short glimpses of this past one year flashed chaotically in front of her. From shopping to looking out for studios to shift into even sleeping together. They were living as a perfect couple. For her it was like a perfect dream, she had finally found her peace in this man.

But the armour had a chink in it, their relationship was far from being perfect, which any third person having spent a day with them could conclude. Sneha was taken for granted by Anuj every time their relationship lacked communication and it was always her who was being blamed for creating mountains out of molehills. Sneha realized all of it, but all this time she was living in denial.  After all, Anuj used to comeback and apologize and for her, that’s all that mattered.  She didn’t have anybody else to lean on apart from him. Without him she would have been a total wreck; at least that’s what she used to believe.

But after a year she mustered her courage and put her foot down.  She ended her yearlong sufferings, mental tortures, emotional intimidations and being beleaguered all the time.  She was crying today not because she was no more with Anuj, but because she missed the confident, independent Sneha all this while. She didn’t need anyone to make her believe what she was capable of, now she wanted to lean on herself than on others.  She was overwhelmed to meet her once again, she needed to come to terms with her new self.  She got up and answered the door. Anuj was standing there with her favourite tulips.  She looked at him, smiled, gave him a hug and said, “Thank you, thank you for giving me that push,” and closed the door.  She wiped her tears, washed her face and started organizing her room back to normal, with each piece that she took and kept back at its place, she felt as if she was rebuilding her life back brick by brick. Today she had broken up and today she was free.

And there somewhere across the street, a writer nonchalant to all this, penned down a short poem when he saw a canary being released by her owner,

Today I broke up

Today I break these shackles, today I fly

For the first time, I feel my feathers

As this cool breeze passes by

I break off from being judged

From retrenched aspirations

From this neat little fiction

From all this fudge

Today I fly away in azure

Just to be me

As of this wailing life

I found a cure

Today I breathe

Today I fly

Today I broke up

To be me.