When I woke up in a new life a few months later, I thought of you. I spent the morning pacing, questioning my newfound levity, asking whether leaving without a word was the right thing thing to do. It was cold, and the idea only made it colder.
It occurred to me how people did not leave in grand announcements or after a candid conversation. It happened, of course, but it was rare. The act of leaving itself was a furtive, cunning and even desperate attempt to be free. Bags were rarely packed loudly and with a thump. People fled from other people like they left from prisons, slowly digging a hole in the back of the wall and stealing essentials into a bag. When a window arose, they ran for their lives.
The reasons for leaving were to each their own, and I was no one to have an opinion about the right or wrong way to do it. The matters of right and wrong never weighed on people wriggling in a pit of quicksand they stepped into of their own accord. I, too, was writhing in your uncertainty, trapped in your maybes and perhapses, with no end to the struggle in sight. So when I planned my escape, I did not make an announcement; I only chose to leave.
Eventually, I reached an impasse—I would not question my leaving had I not left. So, I settled the argument within me for it to have been a decision. Often, it did not matter if it were right or wrong, only that a decision was made. Perhaps, my deciding to leave was the only way out of our whirlpool of indecisiveness.
In the aftermath of my grand escape, I had no anger left for you. I had no love left either, only nostalgia. I had spent enough time mourning the cost of happiness, so I decided to begin writing.
As I wrote a few words about this brief inquiry, a pigeon suddenly flew onto the slab of my balcony. I saw its shape through the glass door, still frosted from the cold night. It walked straight across with its head bobbing till it reached the tail end and flew away. It made me laugh for no reason in particular. Maybe, it was the ridiculous bobbing of the head.
Often, it did not matter whether a joke was funny, only if the person listening desperately needed a laugh. I had always laughed much too easily.