"Where were you?"
"I am sorry, baby. I was busy. "
"You didn't talk to me for two days."
"I am sorry. Are you upset?"
"I am upset. But it's okay. Let me just hug you."
That was a conversation that she had with him when she didn't talk with him for two days. She couldn't remember why she was away but she remembered him being sad and so upset about it.
he had been upset just because they didn't talk for two days and now it has been almost three months since they talked.
And just like how she has been doing it for these three months, she sent him a voice note while crying, breaking.
"Do you remember that time when you got upset because I didn't talk for just two days and now you haven't talked to me for three months. Don't you miss me? Just what is keeping you away? Will you even ever come back."
She choked on a sob, wiping her tears and snot.
She was sending that message from her workplace. His memory plagued her like a curse and curses had no exact time to spawn. She would be vacuuming and the tears would be falling as she would just question everything.
"Why God? Why did this had to happen? If you wanted, you could have given him to me. Why didn't you? Why must I live through this? Why? Please give him back. Please. Please." She cried like a child.
Away from her parents and in a foreign country.
Sometimes she even wondered if she was so broken because she was away from her family.
And that made her remember again and again about the time when she had asked him to let her go if he couldn't be with her for real. She had cried at that time but also asked him to make a decision and he didn't let her go at that time.
He had cried or at least sent a message saying that he was crying. That he couldn't live without her.
But now, he had so easily just disappeared.
"I wondered what's worse?" She wiped her tears as she recorded the voice note, "You being dead and knowing I will never know what happened to you or you being alive and not giving me closure and letting me rot in my misery."
He always said she was his reason to live.
Was she though? She wondered now.
If she was something special, then how come she had no trace of him in her hands now. It truly felt as if he was a ghost who didn't even exist or just words on a screen.
It was crazy how he had made her feel at the top of the world without ever giving anything.
His softness, him always being so sweet and gentle and never getting angry.
Him being so oddly submissive and letting her take the lead in conversations.
But it was also him who talked with his friend on call but never with her.
Who didn't even give his real name.
Who never gave any information about himself.
The same person who did streams on you-tube but never let her see them.
Did the anxiety only became an issue when it was about her?
And at the end of it, there was a bitter truth. She got manipulated into thinking it was true love. All that person ever wanted perhaps was he undivided attention and love. He got her love, care without having to lift a finger. It wasn't her fault she loved him so deeply but it was her fault for loving so blindly.
She tried to build a sandcastle in the middle of the ocean on a banana leaf.
There was nothing supporting it.
Because now, the ugly truth had been slapped on her face. She knew it, if he wanted, he could have asked a friend to contact her. He could have used so many ways to free her from this pain and wait.
But he chose not to.
Because to him, she wasn't even a person perhaps.
To him, maybe she was just part of an online world.
That's why while she couldn't stay away from him more than two days, to him, leaving her was nothing. Because to him, maybe she wasn't a real human. But she would never get an answer to that.
She was left with questions that she would have to live with for the rest of her life.
"I don't think I can fall in love anymore. Because no one is ever going to be like him. No one is ever going to make me feel special the way he did. Even though he is the one who broke me into pieces, It's only him that I still want to fix me and I know it won't ever happen so I just-"
She wiped her tears as she typed the text to her bestfriend.
"I just want to stop feeling this pain. And once I do, I am never trying to fall in love again. I never want to experience this again. I am done. I tried my best. I did everything I could, I gave so much and now I am so empty that I don't feel anything but pain. And I am done. I just hope I can be okay."
Her friend was sending her encouraging messages but honestly, despite all those message, she didn't feel good.
Nothing made her feel good.
In fact, nothing made her feel anything but pain.
And all she could hope for at this point was to be able to breath one day without her ribs breaking with pain.