More Than Myself

She told him she’d be gone for a week. A family wedding. Some town he hadn’t heard of. He had nodded, even smiled, and said something stupid, like 'enjoy.'

He didn’t sleep that night.

Not because she was away, not just that. But because the air felt... wrong. Too quiet. Her absence didn’t echo; it swallowed. The fan spun exactly the same way, the lizard still clung to the same wall, but everything had shifted. And he hated that the world didn’t notice.

It had started small. A text about a class they both missed. Then, long walks on the service road near the campus boundary. No romantic lighting, no stars, just flickering sodium bulbs and the sound of auto-rickshaws growling past. She never walked in a straight line. She’d skip once in a while, cross to the other side just to kick a discarded bottle cap, then cross back.

He’d smile, pretending to find it amusing. Secretly, he was memorising her gait. Counting the steps between her skips. Wondering if she always wore black laces or just this week.

He started keeping a mental log of things she liked: Elaichi in chai, but not too much. The smell of fresh print. That one Hindi film she rewatched every time she got a cold.

And slowly, it became less about knowing her and more about erasing himself.

He stopped listening to his old playlists because they didn’t fit her mood. He grew his hair out because she once casually said, short hair feels too disciplined. He began staying up later, eating less, and speaking slower. Just in case she ever said he was too much.

When she wasn’t around, he’d open their chats, reread them top to bottom, wondering how many words she meant and how many she didn’t. She used full stops rarely. Was that laziness? Or comfort? Or indifference?

He overthought it like it was scripture.

One evening, just three weeks in, she called him her favourite person.

He stared at the message for ten minutes. Didn’t reply. He wanted to…wanted to say something grand, something that showed how his whole world now revolved around that one sentence. But instead, he just typed:

You are more important than a heartbeat.

She replied with a heart. That was it.

And he sat with that heart for hours, trying to translate it.

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He stopped telling people about her. Not because he was hiding it, but because it felt sacred. Like a fragile thread that could snap if exposed to too much air. She wasn't a girlfriend or a crush. She was a presence.

A truth.

A necessity.

But beneath it all was a quiet panic. He began checking her last seen obsessively. Noticed when she started taking longer to reply. Wondered if her affection had expiration dates.

One evening, she mentioned she was applying to a university abroad. Just said it in passing, like the weather. He laughed and said, That’s amazing.

Then vomited later that night, quietly, into the bathroom sink.

Love wasn’t the word for what he felt. Love was too soft, too manageable. This was something else. This was dependence with a heartbeat.

He didn’t know who he was anymore without her voice in his day. Without the micro-rituals: waiting three seconds after she texts to reply, mirroring her typing speed, and deleting his drafts till they sounded casual enough.

She hadn’t asked for this. She had just existed. And he…he had knelt.

And now, every version of his future began with her name.

Even the endings.