Unreasonably stoic

It was extremely dark in the stairway, and my wet hands flimsily gripped the cement banister, one leap after another up to the second floor. I stood at the door, gasping for precious breath, while my thoughts wandered the disconsolate distances of melancholy spaces. Why should it end like this? What went wrong?

I wanted to knock, but I had been paralysed by these thoughts spinning through my head. I had given this relationship eight years of life and love, and it was going to end in a moment's decision. The unfairness of the situation mocked me with the meanest of sly grins, yet echoing like a hundred thousand wicked peals of laughter. I was forlorn, famished and forgotten. A page in my history's book turned over, even as I was just writing the first line.

What will I do now? When will sanity return? And what about these tears I cannot stop? My hand nervously reaches to the door, and I knock at the door, first gently, then steadily. The voice that spoke to me on the phone that the door will not be open for me, apparently meant every cruel word. Those were the toughest words I have ever heard in my life. It stabbed away at a corner of my heart, chopping at it relentlessly. Have I become so unwanted?

I felt like an abandoned child in a cold desert.

But I kept knocking. Just as life fights for itself, love fights for itself, naturally. It was not about success or failure. Anymore. It was about that dogged, invincible feeling that people so easily abuse. I had given her my everything before she hung up on me. I had invested my soul into a relationship that ended with the click of a phone line going blank. I had made every effort at reconciliation. I had sacrificed the world I knew for the world she dreamt of. Everything I ever wanted had vanished into a blackhole. Gone.

And then I paused, and heard something in me say just two words: so what?