Chapter 189 - Hug me, please (1)

| Innaya |

Sometimes I wonder how my life would have turned out had I not met Eshan. A small voice always keeps telling me that we were destined to meet. There was something strong, an unexplainable force that always pulled me towards him and I could not find words to pinpoint what exactly it is.

Destiny never played fair. When you think everything is going peacefully, a wave of misery hits you with full force. 

I locked myself inside the washroom, refusing to go out and witness my husband with his friend who seemed to be having some different intentions altogether. Why did she have to jump in our life now as if we were already having any fewer issues?

A lot had been changed in the past one month. 

A lot.

The choice I had made a month ago had come with its repercussions and one of them was... Eshan had grown distant from me.

Having PTSD had always made things problematic for me and even though, with Eshan's help, I was getting better, one incident, one choice, one argument and I was back at the square one.

Normal people would never understand the struggles of a PTSD patient. We get better. We stay better. But it's never permanent. It never is. It takes us a mere something to go back to being awfully awful.

People might find that irritating, unrealistic and annoying but then, this is reality. This is how PTSD patients suffer for real. I wished people understood that it's nothing like what they show in movies. You are never really out of it. You are never really over your past.

You continue to suffer. You continue being awful. You continue to accuse. You continue to get accused. You continue to spoil your relationsh.i.p.s even though that's the last thing you want to do and you continue to... grieve over the broken pieces of your relationship that you yourself have broken.

I splashed water on my face over and over until I felt the calm of cold water relaxing my tensed muscles.

Pressing my hands on the corners of the sink, I stared at my reflection in the mirror. What had I really become? Why could I never get better? Why did Eshan have to face because of my PTSD?

I could never really come out of the guilt. It was always somewhere deep inside me. I always felt that he was too good for me. Too good literally.

I reached out for the hand towel to wipe my face dry.

I had just begun working on myself and this... Ayesha appeared out of nowhere and I could just feel that she was here to mess up our already messed up life. I could just feel it. She gave me that vibe.

Ayesha. Ugh. She was making me realize time and again that Eshan and I... we weren't blissfully happy together.

"Innaya."

I heard a knock on the door followed by his voice. A tear trickled down my cheek when I didn't hear the same warmth in his voice that I always would.

I wiped the tear before I adjusted my hair and stepped out.

As I was out, I was met with his eyes that scanned my face almost as instantly as they fell on me.

"Have you been crying?"

I did not respond to him and rather went to straighten the already neatly arranged bedsheet. "No. Why would I be crying?"

"You have an issue with Ayesha staying with us?"

His other question left my hands stilled, clutching the bedsheet in my fist. "No. Why would I have an issue with her?"

"I don't know. You tell me," he spoke as he came closer to me. Closer yet so distant. I purposely kept my gaze on the work in my hands, pretending to be busy setting it right until he spoke again.

"Stop adjusting the already neat bedsheet and tell me what it is."

I didn't like his firm tone. It held the authority that he knew I was pretending but then, I smacked myself mentally. Of course, he knew. Who else would if not he?

"I have no issues with her. I am not sure why you think that I do."

He moved a step backward and my heart sank. "The fact that you don't make a clear communication is what weakens our relationship, Innaya. I am not sure if you realize how much it hurts... but know that it hurts as bad as several knives slashing through your skin simultaneously."

He was hinting at our past. It made me tremble and he watched me. I knew he did because he immediately came forward to hold me but his hands stayed in the air. They didn't reach mine and it... hurt.

"You have to trust your people and know that when they hide something from you, it's only your betterment that is there in their minds while doing that," I said and almost regretted speaking that because my voice cracked giving away, that I was breaking.

"One gets to decide alone what is better for their partner and take the decision also? A relationship includes two people. No one person gets to decide anything and when I say anything, I mean 'anything'."

He was making me cry and I couldn't admit that.

I moved to the cupboard and pulled out my dresses. Throwing them on the bed, I scattered them and edged the closet and began setting them right. I did not know what to do. I needed something to distract me. I needed something to help me get out of this situation without arguing more with him.

Our arguments never end well these days. One way or another we would hurt each other. But, I could not do anything. I was helpless.

"Sometimes, in life, you are helpless. You don't have control over situations. Sometimes, in life, you have to do what you don't want to do but you still have to... because... because..." I could not complete it. He was not supposed to know, and I would not drag him into this mess. He had nothing to do with it. I would not let anything harm him.

If hiding truth meant his well being, then be it. If I had to suffer because of it, then I would. It was not like, I had never suffered before. I had, and I was used to it. He was not. The man like Eshan never deserved to be subjected to unjustness. He never deserved to suffer because of someone else.

"Because, what, Innaya? Because of what?"

It happened almost in a blink of an eye, that he left his place, came closer to me, slipped his right hand around my back and held me closer. 

"Because of what, Innaya? Because of what? It has been a month since I am trying to know because of what?"

My downcast eyes we're fixated at his feet. He slipped his finger underneath my chin. "Do I not have a right to know? Do you not think I deserve to know?"

Damn it.

His eyes filled with agony met with my teary ones.

I couldn't keep looking into them because it was so painful, so heart-wrenching to live every day with the pain of hurting him.

My head fell forward momentarily before I let my arms fall from his shoulders. "Hug me, please."

***