October

October used to be my favourite month of the year.

All I’m saying is, love can change so many things.

The first time I exchanged words and thoughts with G was at the peak of my hometown’s rains in July. The air becomes damp and heavy around this time of the year; the imminence of me leaving home for the first time only seemed to add to it.

I told him my favourite film was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. He watched it and sent me paragraphs that seemed to put into words exactly why I loved the film. Unprecedented familiarity— almost as if we shared a mind. I found myself breathing the damp air much easier than I had in the previous years.

All I’m saying is, love can change so many things.

The first time I met G was in September, my birth month. He found me looking lost in the corridor of some academic block and introduced himself again, as if we had not already spent countless nights staying up to text each other about inconsequential things. Oh well, we started spending countless nights staying up to sit beside each other, talking about inconsequential things or in silence; to wait and watch the sunrise.

The last night of September felt no different (at first). I sat beside him on the bleachers, in familiar silence, as he drew smoke into his mouth. Cigarettes repulsed me at some point in my life, yet here I am, for the comfort of his body’s presence next to mine. The last thing I remember before the night changed is looking at the time on my phone. 2:30 A.M. 1^st October, 2022. I remember feeling a hit of sadness. ষষ্ঠী— it was the first day of Durga Puja, my first away from home. I kept my phone down, next to his, which was already dead. Mine was going to die soon too. Maybe that was the last sign for us to go back to our rooms, to give up on the sunrise this one time. But we did not.

All I’m saying is, love can be stubborn.

October was when everything changed. I have blurry memories of him stubbing out the cigarette. I remember him saying some inconsequential things to me and saying those things back to him. And I remember laughter, so much laughter, at the ridiculousness of what we were seemingly building up to. The next thing I remember in clarity is his mouth on mine, his mouth that had just held the cigarette pressing down desperately on mine. And I remember tasting mint and smoke. My first memory of October ’22 is this— a wave of familiarity breaking all over my body, blended with a passion unlike anything I had ever felt before; a trance of some sort. The sunrise broke our reverie; only then did our touch leave each other, ever so reluctantly.

All I’m saying is, love can be stubborn.

সপ্তমী, অষ্টমী, নবমী, দশমী— all the ensuing days of Durga Puja, I spent in his bed. I filled the void created by the absence of home in my heart, with his presence. The feeling of familiarity is a slippery slope. We promised each other ‘this means nothing’ in between kisses but words lost meaning when our skin touched. I felt a new religion emerge in the narrow spaces between our bodies. Nobody had dragged their fingers down my body, unhesitant, the way he did. Despite the vagueness of our relationship, I was safe with G— he felt familiar and I felt wanted.

All I’m saying is, love can be fickle.

Halfway through October, we ended things. Neither of us knew why. G would later tell me it was because he was scared our relationship meant more to me than it did to him. I would later tell him that I was scared of the same thing, the other way around. And we would laugh about it. But halfway through October ’22, I felt lost without him around me all the time. I had asked for this, I reminded myself again and again. I could not afford to fall for someone like him— his heart changes moods like the weather of my hometown in July. I visited my Calcutta home for the mid-semester break during Diwali. He visited his home in Jammu. Both of us were immensely lonely for these seven days. Both of us found familiarity in each other again.

All I’m saying is, love can be fickle.

November rolled around. G and I decided to be the kind of friends we used to be in September. But it wasn’t September anymore. When we broke down in front of each other about arbitrary things in our separate lives, neither of us stuck to just words to comfort the other. We knew each other’s bodies too well now to keep our hands to ourselves. ‘What a mistake this is,’ we kept saying, in between kisses, but the kisses did not stop. What a fucking mistake it was.

All I’m saying is, love can be fickle.

Throughout winter break, G talked to me about politics and I talked to him about philosophy and we talked about people we found attractive but never about November. 2022 turned to 2023 and we really went back to being the kind of friends we were in September once again. At least, for a while.

Spring ’23 started and he told me he really liked V. I told him to ask her out but he did not. February is a month of risks. I mean, it is the month of love, but that is not a major distinction, is it? Two days before Valentine’s, he asked me if I missed it too— us. The feeling of familiarity is a slippery slope. The next thing I remember is his hands all over my body and his lips marking my neck.

All I’m saying is, love can be fickle.

I spent my first Valentine’s Day in college with G. It was not love but it was something quite close to it. Neither of us had the courage to name it. Unprecedented familiarity. Spring always brings chaos into my mind and my life; this year was no different. Each day was wildly different from the previous. I found myself in the arms of a boy who was a stranger one afternoon and slept beside a woman who loved me the next. And yet, G and I gave each other all our sunrises. No matter who we spent the night with, or even on the occasion that we spent it with each other, we would go out on a walk at dawn and sit in silence, waiting for the sun.

I saw myself change every moment, and morph into a person I never thought I would become. I was not scared to use my voice in lectures, I found new vices, I walked up to strangers to strike up a conversation, and I wrote often and madly. I discovered novel ways to hate myself too. I had promised myself I would not pick up a blade again and my mind found a way around this promise. I learnt to tolerate the burn of liquor and like the aftertaste of neat vodka. I learnt to draw smoke from cigarettes and sometimes, from something stronger. I learnt to bite my tongue and smile at acquaintances while they flattered me with their honey-sweet words and hoped for a chance to touch my skin. I hated how I was changing but it was a metamorphosis that I could not stop. Later, I would realise that I never really wanted to.

I fought with G often now and he said things just to hurt me often too. It was as if we were making up for all of ’22 when we didn’t argue, at all. Now we knew each other’s weaknesses better than anyone else and both of us carefully crafted weapons of words that would draw the most blood out of the other, without being fatal. He told me I was incapable of committing or being committed to in my entirety and I told him he is scared of vulnerability. I kissed his nemesis while he watched from a distance and he flirted with my best friend only to get back at me. We danced around each other so often, leaving constant wounds before the previous ones could even heal. But nobody knew our bodies and minds like each other so we took the wounds in stride— nothing kept him away from my room for too long, like the waves to a shore, he would come back no matter what, and I would let him. I hated myself more every time I let him back into my bed, again and again. Who had I become? I had never given a higher place to passion than myself and yet, here I was doing that, again and again.

All I’m saying is, love can change so many things.

Spring was soon ending, and the fire of all those small arguments was starting to die down. One afternoon, G asked me if I had ever truly thought of him as someone I might come to love. I owed him the truth, so I said no… while tracing the infinity sign on his back with my fingers. I had realised over time that I would never love him like a romantic partner. What I felt for him was not love, even though it was something quite close. Perhaps, one day, someone braver would come up with a name for this feeling. But I would never love him in the way he was asking me if I did. I could only see him as an occasional constant in my life, a friend and an intermittent lover who floats in and out of it, a familiarity that I could always go back to, no matter what, a safety net of sorts. I felt him shift, so slightly, and then draw my naked body closer to his. The April sun was just setting and it cast a golden glow all over his room. I watched his brown eyes turn the colour of honey in the sunlight.

That afternoon, G told me he liked S. And that he wanted to ask her out. He kissed me all over my body while I offered him possible ideas about how he might confess his feelings. The same night, I left his room only to go to M’s. I sat on her bed and watched her paint. She turned off her music and asked me to sing instead because she liked the sound of my voice. I would have jumped from the tallest building on this campus if it would make her smile, so what was a little performance? I could only obey. She showed me her art when she had finished and we danced around her room like stupid teenagers, until my heart felt a lot lighter and she smiled a lot wider.

All I’m saying is, love can change so many things.

After all the dancing, M fell asleep with her head on my lap. I would have stayed up the whole night just so she could sleep peacefully but my phone’s shrill ringtone woke her up. It was 1 AM, and I could tell from G’s voice that he was drunk out of his mind. I asked him who he was with and he said he was with someone I knew well enough. The voice in the background was indeed one I knew well enough, some past fling of mine. N was some other boy from our batch and I had shared a cigarette with him at a party several moons ago, before letting his lips touch mine. G admitted he was jealous that N had kissed me and not him. I asked him if he was okay and G said he wanted to ask S out right then, because if he did not do it then, he would never do it. I stayed on the phone while he struggled to type out his texts to her and M ran her fingers up and down my legs.

G confessed his feelings to S and she agreed to give it a shot and I heard all the emotions in his voice. After I cut the call, M asked me, “Do you love him?” and I remember saying, “Somewhat, I suppose. In some strange way. But not in the way people usually do.” She held my face in her hands, smiled, nodded and kissed me anyway.

All I’m saying is, love can be stubborn.

Despite G calling it love, what he had with S, we did not stop being friends as we had been in September ’22. He begged me not to let S know of our shared history lest she overestimate the significance of it. I complied, for a while. If I knew then, how heavy the weight of this secret would become, I would have betrayed this promise right then. G still gave all his sunrises to me and the silences between us changed in tone. He felt it too, I’m sure because I saw him desperately trying to fill those silences with talks of meaningless things. He had never done this before. Spring was giving way to summer. It was his birth month then and I remember telling him that night at the party that I might not reveal his lies to S, but I would not tell her more lies to cover for his. Despite it all, he left her side at dawn to come to me and ask me to walk with him and watch the sunrise. The feeling of familiarity is a slippery slope. I agreed anyway.

All I’m saying is, love can be stubborn.

Summer happened and all was going well, a little too well, I suppose. I remember how my heart dropped when S asked me one day if G was keeping secrets from her. It was one of the most difficult moments of my life— betraying his trust, having to rip the truth out of my chest and handing it to her. Almost immediately, I received paragraphs from him (not an unfamiliar thing), filled with vitriol (a completely unfamiliar thing). I remember falling sick right after this as if my body had decided to give up all hope like my mind had. Neither S nor G would talk to me over the rest of the summer, and they would not talk much to each other either. I had lost a friend, and I had lost a friend and an intermittent lover.

I came back to college for the summer semester, despite all the chaos in my mind telling me to stay in my shell of a home. G was supposed to come too, but I guessed he made the better decision to stay away from it all as long as he could afford to. The second weekend of the semester would prove me wrong. He came to visit campus because he missed his friends and continued to return every weekend after. His friends also happened to be my friends so we wound up in the same room often, sitting at different corners of the tiny dorm opposite each other— it felt like trying to sit still and calm whilst a storm went on around you. G would later recount this time to me as one of the hardest things he had ever had to live through and I would almost regret having ignored his presence. Almost.

All I’m saying is, love can be fickle.

My body gave up again, end of August. I found myself running back home again to recover before I had to face the Monsoon semester. My mother did not question me when I asked to miss the first week and stay home a little longer. I did not think I could bear to spend my 19^th birthday on a campus where I no longer saw any love for me, so I spent it at home. S texted me after ages to wish me and I remember smiling at her text. If only I had known then that it was out of mere formality and with an undertone of malice that she had sent it to me, I would perhaps not have been so happy about it. G would tell me a few weeks later that he had been beside her when she sent me that text and scoffed at how she would rather I never recover to return to campus. He never wished me on my birthday anyway.

All I’m saying is, love can be fickle.

I did recover enough to return to campus. G begged me for a proper conversation in person and I begged S for the same. I gave it to him, she did not to me. My friendship with him was sorely mended, held together by fraying strands of familiarity, yet again. I still remember the conversation where he implored me to consider what we had special. I remember him asking to steal me away from my friends for this conversation at 2 AM on a Thursday night. And I remember thinking that no good could come from it. And yet, I agreed to walk with him alone, all while texting M, praying she would see my texts and rescue me. I should have never left my friends in the first place but I have never been able to say no to him. We sat on the floor at the end of a corridor in some academic building and talked. He talked, I listened. And he asked me a question. “Do you regret it? Us?” I told him I did not, of course, because that was the truth. And then I let him kiss me again, despite knowing in my heart how it would break me and hurt everyone tied to us, all because I did not know how to say no to him.

End of September, my kinder friends threw me a belated birthday party and G showed up despite not making the guest list. He shared a cigarette with me, flirted with M and engaged in every conversation. He kissed me in that crowded room and I was taken by surprise, this was new. We had never crossed lines of friendship publicly. We went out for a walk, drunk on the substances and on something else, stopping only to talk about past memories or to kiss in places that we had already kissed in. Familiarity is a slippery slope. S texted me when she saw us together— she texted me some cruel things that I would rather not think of ever again. I left G, went to M’s room and broke down in her arms.

All I'm saying is, love can be fickle.

I remember telling myself so vehemently, that I’d never let him near me again. And those promises only lasted until September did— 2:30 A.M. 1^st October, 2023, I saw my phone light up. “Do you remember what day it is?” He meant only that he had touched me for the first time, a year ago, today. “For old times’ sake?” Familiarity is a slippery slope. I told my roommate I was only going to talk to him, for love of nostalgia and reflection, I suppose. I knew in my heart that would not turn out true— when he asked to kiss me, I could not say no. I had never been able to say no to him, and how could I when he felt so familiar, so safe to me? Didn’t he deserve all of me simply because he gave me comfort that no one else could? I know now, that the answer to that question is in the negative, but I didn’t then, and I couldn’t bring my mouth to form that word, either way.

The only question in my mind remained— what would make him not love me, after all this time? How selfish, I remember thinking, to wish for him to love me in the way that true lovers do when I had no intentions or capacities to love him in that way either. The way we loved was unique by itself, but it wasn’t the love of true lovers and for the first time, I felt the lack of it in my life. If the boy I had given my body, my mind and my soul to, didn’t want my heart, why would a stranger ever want it then? I suppose I learnt my lessons later; you can make someone apologize for hurting you over and over, you can make them look at you for a moment too long, you can make them want to kiss you and you can make them beg for it, lie for it, but you cannot make them love you.

All I'm saying is, love can be fickle.

What an unfairness that my hands still shake when I write about the 5^th. That night is imprinted in my mind like no other. I don’t have to flip through my calendar to know that the 5^th of October 2023, was a Thursday. The last Thursday night before the mid-semester break would begin. I planned to stay on campus this time instead of returning home for just a week. I was growing weary of how G’s hands had started to feel rough on my skin lately and I did not want to see him then. I remember how he called me, and begged me to see him because he was leaving for home the next day, when I stopped viewing his messages. I had never said no to him. I couldn’t say it this time either.

I have blurry memories of him locking the door like he used to every time, of the way he took off his t-shirt and undid my dress so dextrously, all because… familiarity. It was like any other time when I try to think about the night. He kissed me and I let him. He asked me to kiss him, and I complied. Some sort of mechanical dance, that both of us knew the steps and rhythm to. A trance, almost. But for the first time, the trance broke. My skin burned wherever he would touch me, and not in the way it used to. It did not feel the way warm, loving hands feel on frozen skin anymore; it felt like scalding hot water being poured all over instead. I have never heard my voice sound the way it did— so small, so weak, so fragile— as it did when I asked him, “G. Can we stop?” The first time. The first time. The first time I had denied him something. And it was all for nothing. He took what he wanted anyway.

October became my least favourite month of the year.

All I'm saying is, love can change so many things.

My atheist mind took to religion the day after as I booked a flight home under the guise of wanting to spend the days before Durga Puja with my family, as I’d been unable to the previous year. Instead of just the seven days of the break, I found myself staying home for four more, as long as I could afford to stretch my absences from lectures. My mind fought against me every time I recalled the night. I had given him a yes yet again, hadn't I? Only, this time he had had to pull it out of my throat and pretend he hadn't heard my multiple no’s before the reluctant yes. I remember feeling powerless in a way I had never before. If my no did not carry any weight, I would rather have said yes of my own accord and held onto the false feeling of agency. But what was done was done. He did not even realise what his hands and words had done to me. Familiarity is a slippery slope. He was certain he knew me better than I knew myself; he was certain that my no only meant ‘convince me’. It did not.

It took me a long time to rid myself of the guilt of giving in to his coercive words. It took me even longer to stand in a room with a boy alone again without wishing for one or both of us to combust. The first time I kissed a man after October happened was months later, in the spring of ’24. I remember how his hands felt so much gentler and yet. And yet. The moment they travelled any lower than my chest, the first whisper out of my mouth was, “G. Can we stop?”

All I’m saying is, love can change so many things.