Clearing of Haze

There is a strange kind of grief that comes when you realise someone can care about you deeply and still not be able to love you the way you need.

I think that is what I have been grieving all along.

For the longest time, I thought I was grieving Nikhil. Then I thought maybe I was grieving the future I imagined with him. Then I thought maybe I was just attached to the feeling of being loved, protected, chosen. But after everything that has happened in the last few days, I think the truth is more complicated than all of those things.

I loved him. Deeply. Honestly. In the kind of way where you don’t just love the person, you begin to love their world too. Their family. Their routines. Their childhood stories. Their silences. The atmosphere around them. I think somewhere along the way I had unknowingly started imagining myself inside his life permanently. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just quietly. Like someone who had already emotionally moved furniture into a house she never really lived in.

And maybe that is why Bonnie moving out affected me the way it did.

I remember sitting in a restaurant with my mother when Nikhil texted me saying that I was flying with Akshay, which was followed by him saying that he wished he had created boundaries earlier, that he should have done with Bonnie what he eventually did. I panicked so badly that I ended up crying in the middle of the restaurant in felt of my mother, and ended up swapping my flight in such a state of panic and anxiety because I could not emotionally handle flying with Akshay anymore after that message. My chest felt hollow. I cried in a public place trying to hide my face because all I could think was: did I become the reason two brothers drifted apart?

But now when I sit with things calmly, I know that cannot entirely be true. Bonnie and his wife had already been speaking about moving out months ago. Families are complicated. Relationships are complicated. Life decisions are never caused by one person alone. I think Nikhil was speaking from hurt in that moment, and I absorbed it like guilt because somewhere I already carried guilt about us.

That is the thing about loving someone when things are emotionally messy. You slowly begin carrying responsibility for everything that hurts them.

And I did that with him.

I carried his sadness.

His anger.

His disappointments.

His loneliness.

Even his love for someone else.

Especially that.

I realised recently that when he speaks about Rishika, I feel almost nothing. But when he speaks about Arzoo, it hurts immediately. Not because she is a bad person. Not because I truly hate her. But because she still has a chance to be chosen by him in the present. And I think that is the real wound underneath everything — not the loss of him, but the ache of not being chosen by the person I would have chosen completely.

We spoke for hours recently. Some conversations were soft and funny and beautiful in the way only familiar people can be with each other. We spoke about flying, seniors, websites, random things, old memories. For moments at a time I forgot the pain completely. It just felt easy. Like companionship. Like home.

And maybe that is what made everything harder.

Because in between those easy conversations came truths that quietly broke me.

He told me he doesn’t care the way he used to. That maybe earlier he reacted because things mattered, but now they do not in the same way anymore. He told me not to be vulnerable with him because he cannot take care of me when I break. And strangely, I appreciated the honesty even while it shattered me a little.

I think for a long time I wanted him to protect me emotionally.

I wanted him to look at me and think: I cannot let this girl feel alone.

But love is cruel sometimes because people can genuinely care for you and still not have the capacity to love you the way you need.

That is what I am finally accepting.

Not that he is evil.

Not that I am crazy.

Not that our connection was fake.

But that connection alone is not enough to build peace.

I know now that a part of me kept staying because every now and then he would still let me into his emotional world. He would miss my companionship, ask for my advice, talk to me all night, tell me things honestly, laugh with me in ways that felt intimate and real. And those moments would make me forget the larger reality: that I still felt uncertain underneath all of it.

I think I exhausted myself trying to survive on emotional intimacy while starving for emotional security.

And I do not want to live like that anymore.

I do not want to panic in restaurants.

I do not want to overanalyse silences.

I do not want my nervous system attached to whether somebody texts me back.

I do not want to constantly wonder if another woman is emotionally closer to the person I love than I am.

I want peace now.

I want a love where I do not have to decode every interaction.

Where being cared for does not feel temporary.

Where companionship is not followed by confusion.

Where love does not activate guilt, panic, longing, and uncertainty all at once.

Maybe I am not fully over him yet.

Maybe a part of me will love him for a long time.

But I think for the first time, another part of me loves myself enough to admit that this connection is hurting me more than it is holding me.