That hurt, huh...! - Her Pride

Strips of sunlight shone through her bedroom window while other traces of the sun hit her bathroom window and got refracted to her sitting room lighting up her dark world. She turned painstakingly to get her phone, ignoring the aching bones and slight discomfort of her heart. Her left hand reflexively flailed to the bedside drawer but it still could not get the phone. As her left arm lazily groped around for the phone, her right arm rubbed around her forehead trying to ease the dull headache as she recalled what had happened the previous night; trying to figure out how she got in bed. She got tired of recalling and groping blindly through her brain and bedside drawer and slowly got out of bed.

'I have never been this meticulous before', she thought as her seemingly weightless and numb feet touched the cold but surprisingly clean floor. Her awareness of the cold did not deter her from walking around her house barefoot. Memories of the past streamed through her brain. Memories of a figure hastily stopping her from getting out of bed and bringing her white clean fluffy flip flops. Memories of a face that spelt accomplishment as he retrieved a bedside mat made of knitting yarn, making it fluffy, comfy and warm. It warmed her heart that he would take her dismissive sentiments that consisted of complaints about the cold floor and a desire for something warm, comfy and homey by her bedside. A disgruntled smile traced her down-turned lips as a dull ache sipped through her heart, almost like a piece of eye lash irritating her eyeball, it was there but not there at the same time. The difference was that she could get rid of the eye lash and the pain would go. But this kind of pain, this kind of pain that kept waning and coming back was just too unbearable, physical pain was preferable.

The phone she had been searching for neatly lay beside her closed laptop at the study table. The sitting room was surprisingly neat regardless of the fact that she had thrown around a beer bottle. That night, she had thought of getting drunk but her health could not let her, the price of hospital bills was too great to pay. Mad at herself and her life, she hurled the bottle to the wall. A pair of blue fluffy flip flops with a cute bow lay at the side of the table, waiting for her cold feet to slip through them. She could no longer ignore the cold floor. The phone that was off was switched on as she headed to the kitchen while scrolling through her mails. She had an unbearable fear of social media; or it could have been the fear of herself, the fear that she will do something that would hurt her pride.

After five years of sharing each other's ups and downs, joy, pain, fights, break-ups and make ups, all that she was left with was her pride. The day she stumbled on the news, all kinds of emotions ran through her. It was confusion, pain, uncertainty, doubt and the desire to kill herself. She was on the fifth floor of the building.

'This window is big enough for me to jump right? Ah, no, I cant die, i mean its me and there's so much in life apart from love. Plus, i have not earned enough money'. She had laughed and cried at the same time as her incessant calls got ignored. She left work late in the evening. While headed to a destination she was yet to decide, she had lectured and stripped down a painter displaying his paints, indirectly deflating her anger. She knew she was wrong and that she could have hurt someones pride and artistic foundation but she did not care. She made an excuse about it being his fault for not being artsy enough and justifying chauvinism with the excuse of bringing out the authenticity of women.

Her pride could not allow her to go crazy. Because, it was her, she doesn't go crazy for love even when it hurt. All she had done was to call his sister and inquire if he was okay. At that moment she had really wished to go to his home and wait for him. It seemed futile because she did not know what he would say. May be it would hurt more or she would be humiliated. Every step took her to the bus-stop, her desolate self resonating with the desolate and deserted city streets that once burst with life. Decembers were not just good for her and the city, eventually, everyone went home, and it seemed that she had never been part of his home. The craziest she got to do was post a congratulatory message on his engagement post and tagging her friend to do the same.

'Foolish woman', she chided herself as her thoughts came back to the present, in her kitchen. A flask of wimbi porridge (made from millet flour) lay on the kitchen table beside an array of pealed oranges, just the way she liked. An appreciative smile that reached her eyes lit up her face as she poured the porridge in a bowl. Regardless of the pain, she was not alone!