Chapter 65

65 The Flashback – The Change

I really don’t remember the events of that night even after trying for months. All I know is what I was told. Apeksha told me that I rang the bell and stood at the door like a pruned dead body. There was no expression on my face, only my eyes were red and swollen. My mother shook my shoulder asking me what happened and kept demanding an answer. But all I heard was the thundering of the clouds.

She called my father and he too kept asking me questions, but it was as if no sound could penetrate my ears. I just stood there not even looking at them, staring blankly at oblivion. Before Apeksha ran to come to me, I threw my head backwards and started falling down but my father caught me.

The next thing I remember is waking up two days after in a hospital bed. You see I fainted after I reached my house. Walking for long in the cold rain gave me hypothermia and pruned my hands and my feet. There were cuts all over my feet due to my walking for hours at a stretch. My feet were covered in bandages all over when I woke up, but I was not feeling any pain. Not because of medicine or anything like that, I just stopped feeling. I was an empty shell of a human at that point.

The moment I opened my eyes I saw my mother, and everything came back flooding to my mind. All the insults I hurled at her, all the insults and abuse she hurled at me and for what, a bastard, who didn’t have the courage to fight for me. I ruined my family because of a person who didn’t even care for me.

Guilty and ashamed, I stopped talking to everyone. I even started avoiding looking at them. I wouldn’t even reply to the doctors. My mom would sit with me the whole day in the hospital. My sister would tease me and pick up fights with me to try to make me talk. My dad would scold me, chide me, beg me, plead to me to talk but I never talked.

My physical wounds were healed but my emotional ones were still fresh. I was discharged from the hospital and my parents brought me home. For the whole day, I would just sleep. I had no interest in eating or drinking or even living. No matter what they did, I never spoke.

After almost 10 days of not speaking or eating, my parents were frightened. They took me back to the hospital. There I was diagnosed by doctors that I had depression. They made my parents realise that I went through something extremely traumatic to completely stop talking. They suggested that they should check me in a facility. Sad and worried, they admitted me to one.

I went away from home for months. I never said a word for almost two months. It took months of therapy to bring me back from the black hole that I went to. It took months to get back the emotions that I buried deep into my heart. My doctors told me to accept all my anger, my sadness, my guilt, and work on it. Burying emotions would result in more damage, I needed to feel everything I felt that night and then slowly get rid of it.

Meanwhile, my dad took care of both apartments. He talked to both landlords and got me out of both agreements. He even got back my deposits. My mom packed all my things and brought them to her house. My sister who is younger than me, took care of me like she was the elder one. They even emailed my job saying that I quit due to some family problems.

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After three months of therapy and medicines, I was ready to go back to my house, but I still needed help. My progress was slow, so the doctors suggested that we all should talk to a therapist as a family. They too needed to understand what I was going through. They needed to know how to help me when I was going to stay with them.

The best day was when my therapist made me burn Ritvik’s things that he left with me. My heart felt as if someone lifted a ton of weight from it when I burned that red wedding card.

It took me six months to get back on my feet, NK, six months of medicine, six months of therapy, individual as well as family therapy to act normal, to forgive him, to forgive myself, to forget him, to move forward, to start living my life again. My therapist helped my parents understand my condition without any judgement. We all said sorry to each other for the things we said, and we forgave each other. We finally became a family, again.

Life was taking a turn for the better. I was learning to smile. I was eating better. Every weekend my family would take me to different places to divert my mind. We would go to malls, and movies, have family dinners in posh restaurants, go to theme parks, you name it, we did those activities.

After I started feeling better, I looked for another job. As I was experienced and well-known in my circle, I quickly got a job and started getting promotions soon. My life was back on track.

Then after 8 months or so, one day my phone rang. I saw the caller ID. It was a number, an unknown number. Without thinking too much about it, I picked up the phone. The voice that came out of it, pulled the earth from under my feet. It was Ritvik.

I thought I was done with that chapter of my life. But, no, here it was, open before my eyes.

“Ritz! It’s me. How are you?” his voice pierced my ears. It was getting difficult for me to breathe. All the instructions and suggestions of my therapist went out of the window in a second. I started hyperventilating. I immediately disconnected the call and ran to the bathroom.

After a lot of breathing exercises and a quick phone call to my therapist whom I had not talked to in months, I calmed down. Ritvik became a trigger point for me.

I blocked his number and again started the therapy. You know it was during therapy that I realised that Ritvik never called the foetus his child, he called it ‘your child’. So, my therapist suggested that it was better to be angry at him rather being scared of him. That would help me from not panicking or hyperventilating. So, I worked on my emotions, and I stopped being scared of him.

Now, he would call me from different numbers, and I never hyperventilated after that. I would just be pissed off. No matter how many of his numbers I blocked, he would call me with a new number. Even after I threatened to go to the police and file a harassment case against him, he never stopped calling. He kept saying that he needed to talk to me and that he still loved me.

Finally, I changed my number, but somehow, he got my new number. My parents suggested that I should file a case against him, but my mind would go to his innocent wife. Why should I punish an innocent woman whom I had never met when I really wanted to punish her moron husband? How would she feel after knowing that even though he was married, he was calling his ex saying that he still loved her?

Then one day he came to my office. I asked my office people to lie to him that I was not in the office at the moment. They lied and I ducked him that day. But he started coming back. I could not avoid him forever, so I decided to quit.

My boss loved me and didn’t want to lose me, so she asked for the real reason I was quitting such a high-paying job. I told her about my stalker ex. She suggested that instead of quitting, I should consider transferring to a new place. My designation and the company would be the same. I would just move to a new place.

I asked my parents for suggestions, and they too agreed with my boss. Finally, I shifted to Bangalore. A new place, a new phone number, a new look, a new haircut, new friends, new colleagues, that place was heaven. I was happy and free now or so I thought.

I don’t know how, but he again got my number. He again started calling and harassing me. I had no idea how he would always get my number. I instructed all our common friends not to tell him anything about me, but somehow one or the other would blab.

Finally, I stopped talking to all my Delhi friends. I changed my number and again shifted to a different house on the outskirts of Bangalore. I wanted to run away from him. I wanted to run away from my life. I wanted change.

People say the only constant in life is ‘change’ and I craved it more than anything. I finally realised that changing my look, my number or my house every now and then will get me nowhere. I had to leave my country once and for all. That way he will never be able to find me.