this is how it happened

I was up, unusually awake. My head was full of thoughts, though I wasn't actively involved in the process of thought. Many threads expressed themselves simultaneously, though all of them were so tenuous that whichever I tried to hold on to, would just disappear. A new one would take the space left vacant by the abortive chain. It was confusing and disorienting and it only added to my wondering why I was awake. After all, I had been asleep only four hours, and I had the liberty of sleeping the whole day if I wanted to. Today after all was Sunday.

Or maybe that was it. It was Sunday and I had been waiting the whole of the weekend, and it hadn't come. And I was really looking forward to getting it. After all that talking, I thought that matters were more of less settled and the plan had been agreed on. And I was told I would get it some time on the weekend. But the weekend was over. But this wasn't really the first time that the agreement wasn't fulfilled. This was more the norm than the sporadic effort to keep one's promise. So why this disorientation? Why was I so upset about something which I anticipated and accepted as inevitable?

More thoughts surfaced, still tenuous. But they were beginning to take a form now. Each little thread connected loosely with another little thread, and they wove in and out till the nebula became just a little bit less hazy. Still, nothing concrete, but the emotion was negative. The prevailing emotion had been negative for almost six months now. But it wasn't just about the emotion, I had told myself. Some things can't be forced, I had reasoned, you have to give them time. But the doubts were there and with each passing day, they just because stronger. And then when days turned into weeks and weeks evolved into six months, no amount of reasoning could convince me that this agreement was still worth it.

The nebula refined itself further. Yes, the GRE. That incident was definitely indicative of something. I had always had faith till that point, and that was, I think, the first severe jolt to my faith. Things were not the same, they weren't, and this was proof. But at that point, the emotion had only made its way from the one extreme to the middle of the spectrum. It still wasn't substantially disheartening. I had ignored that as a freak incident, but in retrospect, we see 20/20.

Things has been alright briefly, somewhere near the Spring Break. But even then, it wasn't great or anything of that sort, and whatever I tried after that had also borne no fruit. Yes, it was getting clearer all the time, and I should have seen it earlier. The end was near, and I should have planned for it. The ostrich response wasn't the best way out of a situation, and that is what I had done. Faith, too, was proving inadequate to the vagaries of reason, and there was only one thing to do.

I picked up my phone. It was 3 in the afternoon. I didn't want to wait, lest faith win another skirmish and toss me into the torment of uncertainty again. Giving up a part of me was probably the more peaceful way into the future. They said that time healed everything and it was sure to heal the scars that I had sustained because of this. The other option would just prolong the misery. But it could also bring hope, because it wasn't over till it was over. I was facing the dilemma of a relative of a patient requesting euthanasia. Or maybe I wasn't. I don't want to know for sure.

I decided to end it.

I waited till the computer booted. Everything seemed to be moving in bullet time now. I was thinking of a way to say what I needed to without having to explicitly bear the burden of my own follies. I wanted to appeal to the "I couldn't help it emotion" and I was convinced that I had tried. The introduction formed in my head, and it was a good prelude to the conclusion. I poured my confusion on paper, deliberately being obscure so as to avoid cross-questioning. I was looking for a plain, simple, and well-meant goodbye.

And this is where it happened.

Reason committed treason. So what if I hadn't had so much to share in the past some time? So what if I was having to tread carefully so as not to bring a premature end to this whole thing? So what if I wasn't as thrilled with this as I used to be at one point? This was about me, wasn't it? So what if the GRE had given me a writing score that was lower than what I had expected? I could go on with this as long as I wanted to and no one was authorized to judge. I couldn't force myself to write, true, but that didn't mean that this blog had to die.

And so it lived for another day.