He could see the pain and love in her eyes, but there was something missing beyond his comprehension. There were no tears. He asked “How have you been”. She hugged him, a hug firm but hesitating one, a tender one yet corruptible.
The distance between them had put them in a position where both were trying to understand each other, just looking at each other, words not required between them, they never were necessary. She thought could this be the reason for putting distance between them. Could something so beautiful once, be destroyed by a mere words; or the lack of it?
Suddenly the pain seemingly felt physical, she thought about the unspoken dreams that she had dared to imagine, the dream of a life adulterated by no one; the only life she could imagine since their meeting 3 years ago. Fighting the world seemed like a formality, when they joined forces.
That hit him hard.
“I wish things were that simple.”
She spoke, “What we had was not love”
She chuckled “Maturity! Isn’t it an overtly used term these days. Blaming everything on it. When it comes to adventure and shenanigans, everyone seeks immaturity, but otherwise maturity is required. I am beginning to think that immaturity was what kept us together, in fact led us towards each other…”.
“Yeah! How else would you explain us. We are so different from each other. Our interests don’t match. We are like two sides of coin, never destined to meet each other. On some level, we should have known that this day was bound to come.”
“Well, that was our infatuated mind taking over maturity.”
“I think I am being mature now”, she smiled. He smiled back.
“Ha, never the one to shy away from the technical terms.”
“Closure is nothing but accepting that there is no ‘us’ anymore and being brave enough to imbibe that.”
“No you fool, you don’t have to feel anything for me anymore…be as apathetic as you can. If you care, you are only hurting yourself.”
“Me too”
“It is tough when you have promised ‘Thousand years’ to each other”, she tried to joke, but the gazing intensity of him melted anything that was calm inside her.
Suddenly she felt lighter. The cloudy dust that had shrouded everything seemed to be clearing out and she could sense this from within. The heaviness that his remembrance brought was felt no more and she could un-shackle herself easily.
She can be herself again, completed after a long time.
This dream had done the job much better than her own consciousness could ever do.
What I liked most in the article is point raised about using maturity as a justification for every single thing. Although, I don't doubt the fact that we do need to behave maturely many a times in life but, yes we cannot give this as a reasoning for everything. We keep on doing something just for the sake of manifesting a mature behavior despite being uncomfortable subconsciously.
Yeah, thats true…but in the end…its the maturity that helps you cope with every possible situations, be it dealing with success, failure etc.
But yeah, I agree with your point that sometimes, we should keep the mature side sleeping and do things by impulse or just for the sake of it.