I snuck into my terrace, again. A packet of Marlboro and a lighter jiggled in my loose pyjama pocket, as I leaned over the metallic railings of the terrace to see if there was any trace of life in the dead silent lane. Finding none, I lit up my cigarette and took a long puff. Immediately, the smoke hit my lungs and compelled me to let out an ugly cough. One that was loud enough to make me conscious of grabbing the attention of Abdul Chachcha, the owner of a small shack that was visible from my position on the terrace and the silent viewer of my midnight escapades.

It was my fourth cigarette of the week.

And for a change, I was aware of my choice of poison.

But before I could guilt trip myself out of it, I laid on my back on the cool cemented floor of the terrace. The sky was moonless and starless, probably the dullest night sky that the summer had seen. But it mirrored the state of my heart - the void left behind by your absence - so, I wasn’t complaining. And for the first time in a long time, I was not resisting the daze that the cigarettes were putting me in.

“I miss you,” I confessed into the solitude, “I wish you were here.”

It was like I was standing on the edge of the very architectural masterpiece I had always aspired to be atop of, yet all I could do was scream out loud, “I made it!” (I love you) But, what use was a scream this loud, if you could not hear it? I missed you and I hated how I could not find you anywhere nearby. I looked for you in boxes of cigarettes and delusions of alcohol, in your absence. I looked for you in strangers that looked like you. But there was no one that felt like you, and I only missed you more. So much so, that the thoughts of you clouded my mind and transpired into parts of my daily habits. As if it was not hard enough that we were oceans and time zones apart, that this distance between us was not already chipping away at my days and nights - you were so closely ingrained into me, that I could be mistaken for you. Yet, it was not you.

And I hated how I could do nothing about it, but stare up at the plain black night sky that hovered over me like an empty canvas. Almost tempting me to try to reach up and paint out something (you).

But again, I could not.

Indeed, to love you, was the sheer inability to do anything about it.

Growing up in a family where I had always known that I was loved but I never felt that love, I grew up feeling a void - an absence - in myself, in people, in relationships. And repeatedly, I saw how I could neither allow myself to be loved nor love someone unless it was from afar, unless it did not feel unbearable. That love for me was now mixed with a familiar sense of distance and coldness, was a bitter pill to swallow. For, how else do I phrase into words what my hands felt in the absence of yours? The crippling void that settled upon them and the simultaneous breath of fresh air that then had the space to gush in?

And this ugly truth almost made me want to apologise to you. That I was only capable of loving from a distance, that my own love had the potential to turn me loveless; made me want to dial your number to tell you, “Save yourself. Do not come back for me when your semester gets done. Leave, before I run out of love for you.” But, I did not. Neither did I apologise nor did I call you. I didn’t apologise because loving you had grown equivalent to missing you and I could never apologise for loving you. So, I rather swallowed this bitter pill. So much so, that I got more comfortable with the distance, more comfortable in your absence that I was ever in your presence.

So here I was, in a state wherein the only love I knew was the one I gave you from a distance. Whether we were five thousand miles apart or five fingers away, loving you from a distance had begun to engulf me with a welcoming warmth that I failed to dismiss.

Indeed, to love you was to love the distance between us.

I always disliked it when Bronte’s Catherine in Wuthering Heights said, “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” I never thought that two people could be that similar, that two people could be such loud echoes of each other without chipping away at their individual aspects that set them apart.

So, when I met you for the first time, I was afraid that my theory would be proven wrong.

I am glad it was not.

Everyone thought I was foolish, to revel at our dissimilarities rather than rejoicing at our similarities. But they did not understand that it was important for me to be able to look at what we shared, from different vantage points. They did not understand the massacre that two identical souls could unleash. They did not understand the cost that one had to pay to reciprocate the exact amount of love they received. But, I did. I had loved - passionately, deeply, truly, wholly and I had only burnt in it.

Yet with you, I was reassured that our love would not ruin love for us. I was reassured that our love would not burn us, that our souls were not made of similar things. And rightly so, loving you was the most comfortable warmth that I would ever get to experience.

When you cradled my head in your chest and wrapped your arms around me, I felt the safest I had felt in a long time. I felt like I was home, even though I barely knew what a home was. In our longest silences, when my hands crept up to hold yours and you intertwined them together, I felt my love-torn insides getting stitched back together. My raging pacing heart was at peace and I had no other thought in my head than the feel of your skin on mine. When you buried your face into my neck, pushed my hair aside, and traced patterns on my bare back, I failed to dismiss the bone chilling intimacy of it. Even when your body loomed over me so impossibly close, even when my dorm room resonated with our sounds of passion, even when all we did was give in to our carnal desires for each other; the intimacy that followed was impossible to dismiss.

But, my love, I got exhausted. I ran out of all our love to shroud the sheer exhaustion I experienced from missing you and all I could do was apologise. I apologise that it got exhausting to watch myself get exhausted, I apologised that the distance between us exhausted my love for you. All I could do was apologise to you with honesty, because that was all that remained of us with me.

When John Green said, “I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once,” I felt it. When Franz Kafka said, “You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love.,” I felt that too. Because to me, love was what love did. And over time, it only did different things to me. So much so, that all that I was left with was a very uncomfortable and daunting truth - to love you, was to leave you while I still could.  

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