FLIGHT OF THE SONGBIRD

My dear Nightingale, today I set you free.

This phrase I had repeated incessantly in my head without being able to voice it, and now that I have completed the feat, I regret my decision of not letting it out earlier. Never did I ever know that a simple line could untangle all the knots done and undone in years. It’s so comforting, and I can barely imagine the tide of relief it has brought in for you.

How did we come to this is an absurd question I won’t even bother asking, for I don’t even remember when or what we started out as. Whatever it was, it must’ve been better than now, for how delusively fascinating each mistake seems at first! Now that I look back, I’m glad that there is not even an outline left of our good days; they faded away because we allowed them to.

I’m not going to eulogise the death of a relationship which, otherwise, would have marked the death of us. Like Kekule’s snake, we were chewing at our own bodies, clawing at our own flesh, stuck in the labyrinth we created for ourselves, a place where we believed we were safe, ignoring the fact that we still had ourselves to be afraid of.

We boxed up the few good memories we had, we put them away, much unlike the others who dust and rewind their own, and now that we scavenge for them, we realise that we’d thrown them out with the garbage, long, long ago.

We hid our feelings for each other, because emotions were for weak people, and we believed us strong – strong enough never to need them again. But when we sneaked back and looked, we’d forgotten where we’d left them. Maybe when after we have finally sated our restless souls, we’ll find them, and they’d hardly be of use. Gratefully, we would bury them.

We stayed in this cul-de-sac of a relationship not out of love or compassionate caring for each other, but because of a habit we’re too wary to walk ourselves out of.

Once a cluster of your own cells start multiplying, it seems harmless at first, no more than just another part of yourself. Sucking in life from you, it grows and grows. You’d fool yourself thinking it’s you who is growing, but soon it grows into something bigger than yourself, and you wane under its monstrosity. Soon enough, it’s all that remains.

This is how our relationship turned out to be – while it should have enabled us to grow into better versions of ourselves, it turned out to be something we grew to fit into. It was claustrophobic with all those complaints, confusions and complications, leaving hardly enough room for us.

It’s preferable to let go when all holding on will ever do is chip away pieces of us in a meaningless attempt to keep itself together.

My dear songbird, go. Put your rusted wings to some use. Free me in the process of freeing yourself.

Upoma Aziz is a walking-talking-ticking time bomb going off at random detonators. Poke her to watch her explode at www.fb.com/upoma.aziz