You, me, and her

I look at the clock kept on the side table, it's 2 a.m and I am still wide awake, conscious of everything that’s taking place outside and inside of me. I can hear some faint noises outside, but my thoughts are very loud, deafening in fact, that it's hard to make out anything. Aware of the fact that I am moving a lot and can disturb the person sleeping beside me. But it's not under my control. Nervousness And anxiety are boiling inside me as if I were ready to explode any second now. Moonlight entering the room, falls on my wife, enhancing her beautiful features. She is sleeping peacefully like an infant. The innocence on her face makes her even more pretty. She is not very close to me but not very far as well, I can feel her breath on my skin, and the warmth of her hands on my chest. I want this moment to last forever, if not forever, then at least for some more time, although I don’t know how much time is enough. I want to preserve it, at least in my memory. Looking at her beautiful face I cannot stop myself from kissing her forehead. As I kiss her chills run down my spine, I can feel my pulse elevating. I’m terribly frightened, frighten to lose her. Although somewhere deep inside me, I know that I don’t belong here anymore. But in any case, I want her in my life, by my side. All these thoughts are shaking my entire being but I manage to sleep somehow.

I wake up with the most unpleasant sound of the alarm clock. She has already woken up, not long ago though, because I can still smell her fragrance and feel her warmth on the bedsheet. I get up from bed and prepare myself for another day. It doesn’t make any difference though, all days are the same for me now. As I enter the room, after taking bath, I find that she has already prepared my clothes, just like every other day. It hardly took me 10 minutes to get ready, I go to the dining room for my breakfast, I am not hungry but I don’t want to lose the chance to see her for few extra seconds. I see her working in the kitchen, running here and there, preparing breakfast. We don’t talk much these days. Every time I look at her, I feel bad for her, she doesn’t deserve any of this. She never says a word to humiliate or blame me, but her eyes are not difficult to read. Sometimes it's unbearable to see her like this and feels even worse to be responsible for her condition. I come out of my thoughts as I hear some noises, she is standing right beside me, serving me breakfast, I don’t look up, but her smell is enough to give me goosebumps, I eat quietly. She moves back into the kitchen. I somehow finish my meal and decide to leave. I have left some food and tea for her on the table itself, but I know she won’t eat it and I don’t have the strength to ask her to do so.

Guilt flowing down by my veins, I can feel it in every organ of my body. I drive furiously, a slideshow of memories running through my mind. I turn the car on a different route from my office. I haven’t slept peacefully for over 2 months now. I have a habit of biting the skin around my nails out of nervousness, in these past few days, I am doing it so often that I now have sharp wounds around my fingers. After driving for about thirty minutes, I reach the place I wanted to. It is a pretty small house. I enter without knocking as if it's my own and directly go inside the kitchen, obviously, I know where it is, I have been here a million times before. A girl of about 25 is working in the kitchen. Although she has not seen me, somehow she notices my presence. Perhaps she is so familiar with my fragrance, my presence that she can easily recognize it. She comes towards me and hugs me as if her life dependend on it. I give a small peck on her forehead. She smells of lemons, it reminds me of spring. She moves to prepare coffee for me. She is dressed in a casual knee-length teal tunic. Hairs tied in a messy bun, no hint of makeup just a touch of lipstick. I try to think how my wife was looking this morning, what was she dressed in? Was she wearing a saree or a dress? Was she wearing any makeup? How did she look? No matter how hard I try I cannot remember, the only image of her that comes to my mind is of a few months back. It was our anniversary when she was dressed in a scarlet saree that I gifted her. She was looking breathtakingly beautiful that day, well she looks beautiful every day, it's just that you don’t have the courage to appreciate her beauty now, my conscience mocked me. The smile she had that day was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. That smile is imprinted on my soul, no matter how hard I try I cannot erase it from my memory. She hardly smiles these days, I murdered the only thing I promised to protect with my life, what an irony it is. That beautiful moment of ours is now engulfed in the stream of time, and I have lost it forever, I am on a path of no return. My thoughts are broken by the girl standing in front of me with two coffee cups in her hand. She forwards a cup towards me, I gulp down the hot liquid, it is perfect, just the way I like. This coffee is the only thing in my life that is acting as I want it to. This cup of coffee gives me a sense of control in my life. The girl sitting in front of me is talking about something while I am lost in my thoughts, I frown so that she can repeat what she just said. Getting my cue, she does exactly that. When are you divorcing your wife? She repeated. And I wish if she didn’t. It gets hard for me to swallow the coffee in my mouth, it feels like a lump in my throat, but I manage to gulp it down somehow. The question is out in the space, waiting for me to accept it. The pair of eyes looking at me hopefully waiting for the question to be replaced by a suitable answer. But it never happens, how can I answer something I have no answers to? I keep the cup on the table and stand to leave. She has expressions of regret, the regret of doing something she was not supposed to do. It's not her fault though, she is just searching for answers, just like I am, but I guess some questions have no answers in return, just void filling the space. I just move out of the house, sit in the car, and start to move in the direction where I was supposed to be going.

I check the time once again, it’s the sixth time in the last five minutes. The watch shows 10:05 p.m. I just want to pass time as much as I can. I am exhausted and tired of running, but have no place to rest, there is no place where I belong. I don’t want to go back to the girl after the morning incident. Neither do I wish to go to my wife, she never asks me anything, but her eyes always do. I have no courage to look in those eyes. It's 11:30 p.m and after few glasses of alcohol, I finally get the strength to go home, no, not home, the place where I am living currently is more accurate. I know she might be asleep. It's just her coping mechanism. I haven’t said a word to her, but I am sure she knows everything. The only thing I don’t understand is why is she still living with me under the same roof. She is a very strong woman and has strong opinions then what is stopping her from leaving me. Maybe she wants to see the extent I can go to deceive her, or maybe she wants me to call off this marriage. She wants this marriage to be ended by the person who would do anything to protect it. Just to make sure that I know, how big of a hypocrite I am. I open the door of the house, to my relief she is sleeping. Dinner is already kept on the dining table. I want to ask her if she has eaten. But then I know her eyes would answer “ as if you really care”.

I am neither hungry nor sleepy, so I sit beside her, holding her hand. First, it took a lot of strength to even touch her, but then I really want to feel her warmth on my hands. What happened in these few days? How did we reach here? How did things take such a wild turn? I have a vivid image of the day we married each other, it's still fresh in my memory. We have spent 10 years beautifully, then what happened now. I focus my eyes on her small face. I want to trace her beautiful features, just to seal them in my memory but decide otherwise. I blame myself for all the unfortunate things happening in our lives. I wish I never went to that party. I wish I had never met that girl. I still remember the first time I saw her, I was mesmerized by her aura, the feelings I had then, were unexplainable. She was so young and so full of life. Her eyes reminded me of stars in the sky. When she held my hands I felt like I had the entire universe within my hold. I just kept looking at her for a very long time. Believe me, I never wanted things to turn out to be like this. I always felt that you are the best thing that ever happened to me, I never wanted to cheat on you, never desired anyone else. I tried my best to avoid it. I stopped contacting her thinking that the feelings I have for her were temporary and will fade away very soon. But it never happened, they only got stronger.

I know for sure that I love her and I want to be with her, but then why am I not able to leave you. Why is it getting so difficult for me? When I am with her, all I can think of is you and when I am with you all I think about is her. Do I still love you? Why does the thought of leaving you tears me apart? And if I try to leave her, I won’t be able to forget her, she is already a part of me. No matter what I do, things are never going to be the way they used to be. No matter how badly I want them to.

Overwhelmed by these emotions, tears start flowing down my cheeks. I want to cry in your arms, I want you to comfort me, tell me that this is just temporary and will end very soon. I want to embrace you and absorb all your warmth but I know, I can’t. I have lost the right to do so.

Holding your hands I wait for all these feelings to disappear into the air but it never happens. I know for sure that no matter what I choose, I will never be happy again. I will never be whole again. I have already lost you, haven’t I? you are not waiting for me to choose you, you have already left me. you have moved to a very far place where I can never have the same access to you. All I have now is your shell. Once this shell leaves, I will be incapable of loving anyone because there is no definition of love without you. I look at the clock, it's 2 a.m. I wait for the sleep to take over me.