CAN WE TALK ABOUT QUEER BREAKUP AND HEARTBREAK?
An Open Letter to My Lost Love, From Your Trans Boy
The city was ours while it lasted.
I met you in a very odd way. On Wattpad, of all things. My friends laughed when I told them this. You wrote a story there, and I wanted to edit it. But we started talking, more than normal editorial stuff. And we became friends. I remember you spraining your ankle and me teasing you by calling you a blind hen. It was a weird connection, talking to you. I could be myself, my brand of weird around you, and we would snicker at whatever random jokes we would come up with.
One of my observant friends noticed this and confronted me with the “Do you like her” question. Before that, I had no idea I had started liking you a little more than friends should. Who wouldn’t? You were smart, hardworking, and passionate about the things you did. And I was a trans boy, with zero knowledge of how the world worked. I had come out two years before that, but years of hiding had made me believe I was unlovable.
I was happy to like you from the sidelines, knowing my feelings would never be reciprocated.
But all of a sudden they were. You wanted me, you were the one who pursued me. And as elated as I was, I was the one hesitant to date you. I was scared of losing my best friend. But you are persistent in getting what you want, and we went on our first date to the museum just after my birthday. We had our first kiss at a couples’ spot overlooking the Ganges. People laughed at us, pointing, and we had to leave soon. It was awkward but also fun. As we got into the cab with you leaning against me, I thought to myself, “So this is what queer joy feels like”.
Over the three years, I learned a lot about you. How you refused to sit on the ground because it’s dirty, how you refused to engage in roughhousing, or how you reluctantly let me look at mansions through the gaps in the gates even though you were worried we might get in trouble. You also encouraged me to watch world movies, though sometimes I’d be content listening to you tell me the plots instead of watching them myself. I loved how you’d get excited when you watched a movie you really liked and you wanted to tell me all about it even if I didn’t find the story interesting. I remember you listening to songs on the way back from teaching your students and sending me songs you liked. You introduced me to the songs of Joan Baez and Leonard Cohen. Literary meets. Sahana Bajpaie. Tabu.
… And then suddenly you are no longer mine.
And I don’t know what to do with all the small details of you I have gathered in my head over these years. As I was falling more and more in love with you every day and even started dreaming of having a life with you, you were falling out of love with me.
I didn’t realize.
You were already going through a difficult time with your father, with your family, and I didn’t know how to support you other than to just listen. But that wasn’t enough for you. I didn’t know what else to do other than just call you every day for five minutes asking how you were doing, and how everything was going, hoping it’d make you feel there was someone out there who cared.
But it wasn’t enough.
And I was making you feel suffocated and making you feel the relationship had expired. You told me you were overwhelmed with everything and you wanted space, and I gave you that even though it hurt me to be away from you — because I thought it would make you feel better in your current stressful situation. We fought sometimes; maybe I made you feel angry, but please know it was my way of fighting for us. It was my way of letting you know when something wasn’t working in the relationship because I didn’t want to give up before trying once.
So call me stupid, call me autistic, but I didn’t realize you were hinting that you wanted out of the relationship. To me, you were still the girl with cotton hair and the beautiful smile I fell in love with.
Now I am here, stuck with the memories of you, memories of us. I close my eyes and I remember how you looked before kissing me softly. I can feel the shape of your hand against mine.
I see restaurants and I can’t help but think of your favourite dishes. I look at the city and I can’t help but think one day it was ours. I remember how, before I left for my master's program, we looked at the grey skyline of our beloved city together from the balcony of a restaurant while it was raining. It felt like our own view, with you assuring me you’d be with me for a long time because “you are lazy to find someone else”.
You were not affectionate so that’s how you showed your love, and I was glad that you were in love with me. I was sometimes insecure you’d find someone better than me or that I might be too much for you with my inability to not take everything literally. You assured me you loved me the way I was. And it was more than enough for me.
But it wasn’t enough for you.
And it’s time for me to let go of your memories and move on. You took a part of my heart and made a permanent crack — it will take time to grow it back. Time heals all wounds and now I am waiting for time, for this terrible winter of pain to go and the spring of new beginnings to come.
The pain comes and goes now, like the tide and I hope soon you will just be a happy memory of my past, the one I can think about without feeling like being torn apart. It’s still hard when all I want when I am looking for comfort is to listen to your voice.
But I need to let go, of you and us.
My friends can’t fathom why I am so heartbroken over “a boy”. That’s how they know you- “my boyfriend” and now “my ex” of whom I never show them a picture. They can’t understand what’s the big deal of me crying over you when we had decided never to marry, probably never to have a child. To them, it means our breaking up was inevitable.
I can’t explain to them that our kind of love is different.
While we love with all our hearts like any other couple, our love is to be hidden, it is the kind of love that makes people uncomfortable.
I have no grudge against you. While you’d fallen out of love way back, it must still be hard processing our relationship, our time together in private, when our families are not looking. Because we both know they won’t understand. My family loved you, my mother loved having you over, cooking for you — but even she knew we were just good friends.
So while she admires your work ethic and talks highly of you, I’d have to hide my pain inside my heart and pretend that my heart doesn’t bleed to think I can no longer be by your side while we navigate life together.
I am thankful our paths met five years back. You taught me a lot. I experienced so much happiness and so much love when I was with you, even when I was physically thousands of miles away from you. But it’s time to say goodbye, my love. I hope we can be good friends but only time will tell. Maybe we will never speak again after this.
Your circle is different from mine, after all. Maybe you’ll find someone better, someone worthy of you, your love, and settle down and forget all about me. Maybe our paths will cross again one day, like in movies, where one has forgotten all about the other. I hope I don’t forget. I hope there’ll always be an aged-out worn-out indentation of you in my heart to remind me of the time we had. When we thought the city was all ours.
Music, movies, and books are some of your favourite things. I would have liked to do justice to your memory by writing a beautiful piece but this is the best I could come up with right now. So I would use two of my favourite songs to describe my emotions. This is a tribute to our memory together and also my way of moving on.
When you first called me and told me that you wanted to break up with me, I accepted without saying much because you sounded so sad. But in my heart, I couldn’t help but say these lines:
Tum hi socho zara kyoon naa roke tumhe
Jaan jaati hai jab utth ke jaate ho tum
Tum ko qusam jaane jaan
Baat itni meri maan lo
Aaj jaane ki zid na karo
Give it some thought yourself why should I not stop you?
My life fades away when you depart
I swear to you, my beloved
Listen to this plea of mine
Don’t insist on departing tonight.
(Link to the song by Farida Khannum)
But you can’t hold anyone back, you can’t make anyone feel anything for you, especially when those feelings are long gone. You can’t fight when the other person has long released the rope. So now I would like to end this letter using this song —
Goodbye, love!
The city was ours while it lasted.
— Shishir
To my ex-girlfriend who taught me a lot, and to my friend, confidant, and grandfather James Finn without whom I don’t know what I would’ve done during these times.
This story is a response to (and the inspiration for) the LGBTQ writing prompt, Can We Talk About Queer Breakup and Heartbreak?
