Ruhi’s POV
I didn’t write in the diary that night.
I kept it on my bedside table, untouched, like something that needed permission even from me. Every time I reached for my phone, my fingers brushed against its plain cover instead. It didn’t call to me. It didn’t demand anything.
That was new.
All my life, things that belonged to me still came with instructions how to feel, how to react, how long I was allowed to hurt. This didn’t. It just existed. Waiting.
I slept badly. Not because of fear, but because my mind wouldn’t slow down. Memories drifted in fragments, not sharp enough to cut, but not soft either. Just… present. When morning came, I didn’t feel lighter. I felt real.
That was enough.
I carried the diary with me through the day. From room to room. From silence to noise. I didn’t open it when my mother’s name crossed my mind. I didn’t open it when someone asked me if I was “okay” with that careful tone people use when they’re afraid of the answer.
I opened it only when I was alone.
The house was quiet in the afternoon. Not the tense quiet from before, but a respectful one. No one followed me. No one asked questions. That, too, was new.
I sat by the window, sunlight warming the edge of the bed, and placed the diary on my lap.
For a moment, my hands hovered above it.
Then I opened it.
The first page was still blank. Clean. Too clean. It made my chest tighten. I had so much to say, and suddenly no idea how to begin without turning it into something neat and understandable for someone else.
So I didn’t try.
I picked up the pen and wrote the first thing that felt true.
I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about my mother.
The words looked strange on paper. Incomplete. Almost wrong.
I waited for guilt to rush in.
It didn’t.I wrote again.
Some days I miss her but only when I feel low or when I'm failing because I remind myself I have faced worse and I'm still here standing .
I hate her.
Most days I feel tired.
My hand shook then, just a little. I pressed the pen harder, grounding myself in the movement.
I was a child.
I keep forgetting that.
Everyone else didn’t.
My breath hitched not into tears, not yet. Just awareness. The kind that sits heavy in your lungs and refuses to be ignored.
I stopped writing.
Not because I was overwhelmed, but because I didn’t want to turn this into a confession. This wasn’t something I owed anyone. Not even myself.
I closed the diary.
And for the first time, I didn’t feel like I was running away from the truth.
I was choosing the pace.
Later that evening, Aayansh came by briefly. He didn’t ask about the diary. He didn’t glance at it. He spoke to my aunt about something mundane. I listened from the hallway, holding the diary against my side.
He was practicing. So was I.
When he was about to leave, our eyes met. He hesitated, just for a second, like he wanted to say something else.
Then he didn’t.
That mattered more than words.
After he left, I went back to my room and placed the diary in my drawer, beneath my clothes. Not hidden. Just… mine.
That night, I added one more line.
I am allowed to take time.
I didn’t sign it. I didn’t explain it. I didn’t promise anything beyond that page.
And somehow, that felt like the most honest beginning I could give myself.
I didn’t realize how much I had been holding inside until I stopped being afraid of what might come out.
The diary became part of my routine without announcing itself. Some days it stayed closed. Some days I opened it just to stare at the page, pen resting uselessly between my fingers. I learned that even that counted. Silence could be intentional now.
On the third day, I wrote again.
I am angry in ways I don’t know how to explain.
Not loud anger. Not breaking things anger.
The kind that lives under my skin and makes me tired for no reason.
I paused.
For years, anger had felt dangerous. Something that made people uncomfortable. Something that needed to be softened, justified, or hidden behind apologies. Writing it like this without decoration felt almost rebellious.
I continued.
I am angry at my mother.
I am angry at the people who knew and stayed quiet.
And sometimes… I am angry at myself for surviving in ways that made me small.
That last line stayed with me longer than I expected.
I didn’t cross it out.
Some truths didn’t need to be kind to be real.
Later that evening, my family gathered in the living room. No confrontation. No speeches. Just presence. They were also learning too how to sit with me without trying to fix me.
“I’m going out for a walk,” I said, standing up.
No one asked where. No one asked why.
Outside, the air was cool and ordinary. The kind of ordinary that once felt unreachable. I walked slowly, noticing small things the way the streetlight flickered, the sound of someone laughing from a balcony, the weight of the diary in my bag.
I found myself at the park without planning to.
Aayansh was there.
He stood near the railing, phone in his hand, like he wasn’t sure if he should be there or leave. When he saw me, he didn’t move toward me.
Good.
I sat on the bench instead. After a moment, he joined me, leaving a careful distance between us.
“I wrote today,” I said, surprising myself.
He didn’t ask what. He didn’t ask to see it.
“I’m glad,” he said simply.
I watched my hands, fingers tracing invisible patterns on my knee. “Some of it isn’t nice.”
“Feelings don’t owe anyone politeness.”
I smiled then. A small one. Real.
“I’m scared that if I keep going,” I said slowly, “I’ll find parts of myself I don’t like.”
He turned toward me, not urgent, not intense. Just a present.
“And if you do?” he asked.
I thought about it.
“Then I’ll still be mine,” I said.
The words settled between us, steady and sure.That night, I wrote the longest entry yet.
I loved him once because he made me feel safe.
Now I’m learning to love him because he lets me be unsafe, angry, confused, uncertain without trying to take it away.
My chest tightened as I wrote.
I don’t know what our future looks like. And for the first time, that doesn’t feel like a threat.
I closed the diary and pressed my palm against the cover.
There was grief inside me. Still. There probably always would be. Some losses don’t disappear; they change shape and learn to live alongside you.
But there was something else too.
Space.
The kind where breath comes easier. Where love doesn’t feel like a test you might fail. Where truth isn’t something you’re punished for needing.
On the last page, I wrote:
I forgive them not because they deserve it,
but because I refuse to carry what they did forever.
I forgive him not as an ending,
but as a beginning we both have to earn.
And I choose myself.
Every day. Even on these days I don’t know how.
I closed the diary one final time and placed it back in the drawer.
Not because the story was over.
But because it no longer needed an ending to prove it mattered.
Some stories don’t end with certainty.
They end with choice.
And this one.This one finally belonged to me.
Months Later
Some things don’t change loudly.
They change in the way mornings feel less heavy.
In this way silence no longer scares me.
In the way my name sounds when I say it to myself.
The diary is no longer empty, but it isn’t full either. It sits on my shelf now, spine slightly worn, pages uneven. I don’t write every day. I don’t need to. Knowing it’s there is enough.
Aayansh and I don’t rush anything.
Some days we talk for hours. Some days we barely speak. There are days I pull away, and days I reach for him first. He never asks which version of me he’s going to get.
He stays anyway.
My family learned a new language too one without excuses. Without “we meant well.” Trust didn’t return all at once. It arrived slowly, like a visitor who knocks before entering.
And I let it.
There are still moments when my chest tightens for no reason. When a memory surfaces without warning. When anger shows up uninvited. I don’t fight it anymore.
I sit with it.
I name it.
Then I let it pass.
One evening, Aayansh and I stood on the balcony, watching the city lights flicker one by one.
“You’re quiet,” he says.
“I’m okay,” I reply. And this time, it’s true.
He nods, accepting the answer without searching for more.
I think about how love used to feel like something fragile I had to protect by shrinking myself.
Now it feels different.
It feels like standing still and being allowed to take up space.
I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t pretend to.
But I know this:
No one owns my silence anymore.
No one edits my truth.
No one decides my story before I do.
And if love walks beside me now it does so at my pace.
That is how the story ends.
Not with everything healed.
Not with every answer found.
But with me. awake, choosing, and finally free.
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