You

As she sat beside him, lying on the bed, covered with a thin piece of bedsheet, head turned to the other side, sleeping peacefully with a twitched smile on his face, she mused. A muse over what she had done. A muse over what she had chosen.

Beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.

Rumi.

What did I choose? And how did I end up choosing this life for myself? A life that you say is so wrong, yet satisfies every cell of my body, heart and mind. Perhaps, I do know somethings more than you. Of course, I do know somethings more than you. I know myself more than you. I am what I am, and what to better in myself according the rules that you set for me? She turns and looks at him, and sees what she was probably waiting to see her entire life. Liberation…. She was free, finally. From the so-called society, from the expectations set by everyone around her. Yes, it was not perfect, or even acceptable to all. But finally, it did not matter. Acceptance no longer mattered. Because she knew the world now, she knew herself now. Her lips, her skin had touched liberation. And she was never going back. Going back? To what? She turned her head and tried looking at the past. But the past was a blackhole, you can’t enter a blackhole and expect not to get torn into pieces.

It did happen once, not too long ago, in another life perhaps. It did happen once, she faintly remembers. She remembers picking up her broken pieces and running off to save herself. You laughed as she ran. You laughed because how could she escape? and how did she escape? how did she have it in her what you claimed to but never had in yourself? Because she did love you. Of course, it wouldn’t chime in your twisted head, it wouldn’t and she realized it the hard way. So she had to protect something more valuable than you. Herself. She had to protect who she was. Because if she didn’t do that, she would be lost. And she knew losing herself would close the door to millions of people like her.

She had to protect herself from not only the strange world but from her own protector as well. Ironic! And harsh! And nothing if not the truth. We seldom have to fight with outsiders with the strength with which we fight on the inside.

So here she sat, in that small bubble of a room, in her emancipation and stared at him, as she knew what had finally happened. The rules of the society shattered. It wasn’t the ‘love’ that people claim it to be, though it certainly was ‘love’. but then again, you set what love should be too, didn’t you? Love freed, and here she sat freeing herself. Now, finally, she found that respect, for the right person. A no-future, a no-past, an only-present, an only-moment.

No, not for a second believe that she wasn’t afraid. Of course she was. And no, her life wasn’t easier, it’s not a fairy tale, my dear! It was going to be rough, the road ahead. For what sets you free, binds you with it as well. But for a flicker of a moment, as she brushed his hair, she was happy.

You are free to decide, if it was worth it or not…….