Broken pieces

 (It is a fiction. Any resemblance to anyone's life is purely a coincidence.)

My name is Pallavi. This is a story of a girl who didn’t know what love was until her heart was broken into pieces.

I met Prashant on facebook. That unfortunate day, I had clicked “accept request” from more than ten strangers at once. I always felt bad about declining friend requests, especially the ones from Nepali folks. Prashant was one of those strangers whom I had permitted to step into my virtual world without much thought. I wish I were as picky about my facebook friends as I am with my real life ones.

Prashant was the kind of a guy that parents warn their daughters against. He was irresponsible, erratic, impulsive, arrogant and as an icing on the not-so-delicious cake, an alcoholic. I am not a girl who finds bad guys irresistible.What Prashant pulled me towards him was with his consistent efforts at wooing me and chasing me. He chased me to a point where I finally had to accept the possibility of having a relationship with a guy who happened to be more immature than my teenaged brother.

It was sort of an arranged marriage situation for me because I started falling in love with him only after we decided to be in a relationship. And boy, did I fall in love with this person! Despite all his crazy antics, I have to admit that he did not treat me poorly until the ultimate blow of dagger right through my pericardial cavity. But, I will get to that in a while. Prashant always seemed like a victim in my eyes. His troubled self made me love him dearly because deep down, I always felt that he had lacked love in his childhood. His issues with his parents when growing up had left him bruised and even though he never admitted to it, I could sense it in his voice when he brought up his parents into any conversation.  You might ask, what did you see in this guy to even get involved with him? Well, as I said, he was always nice to me and I didn’t get to experience the other side of his personality until much later. And ofcourse, there is always the cliched excuse of "Oh well, love is blind."

I came from a different upbringing because my parents taught me the importance of self respect. I don’t do things to please anyone unless my own reason and intuition agree with the action that I am going to partake on. This is exactly where I failed in this relationship.

Prashant claimed that I was going to be his wife because I was everything he ever wanted. He also assured me that I will be the mother of his child. How selfless I was in his love is something I can never explain in words.
On May 25^th, I landed in California for a week with my friends. I would get texts from Prashant

regularly. I hadn’t been able to talk to him on the phone every night like we used to that week. In one of the texts, he had said that after I came back from my visit, he was going to come see me. Yes, it was a long distance relationship because we were both away for schools and only saw each other over breaks. I was the happiest girl on earth that day.

But dreams, like they say, are made of glasses-really fragile ones too. Two days before his visit to my school, he admitted that he expected me to make love to him when he came down to see me. I was uncomfortable with the idea because it was way too early for such a big stride. We had been together for only eight months. I told him exactly like I felt. I said I wasn’t ready. I could sense that he was not too pleased with the idea but for the first time in all those eight months, I didn’t make an effort to please him. For the first time in all those eight months, I was selfish.

That was it. That was the last time I heard anything from him. He never called or replied to any of my calls and voicemails. Nor my emails or facebook messages. This was the same guy who had chased me for months attempting to convince me that he was in love with the person that I was. This was the same guy who wanted me to mother his child some day. But I was penalized for sticking to the very values that had drawn him towards me in the first place.

I always knew it was a hypocritical world that we lived in but I didn’t know that the proximity I was sharing with such hypocrisy was strong enough to break my heart into pieces.

I am Pallavi and this is a story about how much it still hurts after all these years.