I cried for the first time in our bittersweet relationship when — on a warm night, under the bright full moon — you suddenly cried.

That night, we sat in an open space surrounded by parks and beautiful, quaint, old buildings. The sky looked the best a city’s sky can be, cloudless and clear

The atmosphere was too perfect for someone to cry, I — who was on cloud-9 enjoying our ‘honeymoon’ period — thought . We’d been dating for only three months.

A sudden surge of uneasiness and worry engulfed me. I wondered why you cried.

“Do you miss your family?”

“Do you miss your late sister?”

“Did I hurt you?”

I kept asking you question after question.

You shook your head. No, you answered.

“No, I am thinking about a girl whom I love very much. I wish she was still with me now but it all went wrong,” you said calmly as if nothing was wrong with telling the girl you were currently dating that you were in love with someone else.

As if it is possible to love two people at the same time. Back then, you told me you loved me every single day, without a fail.

Or is it possible? To love two people at the same time?

It is not for me. If you are with someone and you keep thinking of someone else, you are absolutely in love with the latter. But I guess not everyone thinks the same.

Then what am I doing here with you? I thought. And I started to cry.

You asked me why I cried, I said nothing.

You said you wouldn’t talk about it again, but doubt had started lingering over me and lasted for the next years we spent together.

“I wanted not you to stop crying over her, I wanted you to stop thinking about her if you really wanted to be with me.” That’s what I wanted to say, but there was not a single word escaped my mouth.

That exact moment was the start of me crying a river, over and over again in our relationship. You kept asking why I cried, again and again. You did your best for me, you said.

Did you? Did you do it for me or did you do it to make a man out of you, of what a man should do?

Then after a thousand days we’d spent together, someone came out of nowhere. Or had she’s always been there all of the time?

And there you were, started crying again, saying that you could not decide whom to choose: her or me.

I asked you, is this the same person that made you cry back then?

Yes, you replied. Again, innocently.

This is it. I said.

I guess this is a goodbye.

I don’t want to be chosen over someone else. I want you to admit who you want to be with, whatever the risk, I said.

You’re just a man that can’t be moved.

And neither could I. I was there all the time holding your hand, even after knowing things would never ever work.

“I am tired of trying to be the girl you want me to be just to win your heart…”, I finally said.

You stopped crying. You stood up and walked to the door, wiping the tears left in your eyes and cheeks. You stopped a while and looked at me, with an empty gaze.

Off you went.

I cried in silence.

And there at the same spot, you stood again months later. Quarrels after quarrels, you cried.

You said you wanted to be with me, you said you had known whom to choose.

You begged me to come back to you.

But I wasn’t budged, I shed no single tears this time.

I knew you’d been in a relationship with a girl back in your hometown. The matter was not about me or the girl of your dream — whom you said you had loved for ten years. That time, I said, it was her and her… The two other girls.

Come on, boy, I said. Did you do this when you were with me, begging someone else to return to you?

I had nothing to do with you, it was only you whining over our lost routine… You’d been too comfortable with it, you feared it’d vapor into thin air. Take the risk, man, take the risk, I said.

“I am in love with you like hell but I made a mistake and it all went wrong,” you said.

I didn’t cry seeing you crying.

I showed you the door.