Inflection Point

by Vishaal Pathak

Image credit: Aziz Acharki on Unsplash

One of these days, someone would have to tell Rohan that she was gone and not coming back. There’s no rewind, no undo button to the twists and turns life writes in our stories. It’s gone.

Would she have liked to see him like this? Day after day, year after year? ‘No,’ he knows. But he still cannot bring himself to come to terms with it just yet. Or to forgive, or forget. Interventions, advice – solicited or otherwise, threats even, have not worked. If it’s a mountain, there’s no descent to it. If it’s inertia, there’s no thud that would bring him out of the state of rest.

One of these days, he hopes someone would say, or do, or something would happen or not happen, or an epiphany would appear out of thin air that would bring his mind some peace, and he’d finally move on. But nobody seems to say just the right thing; nothing is on display that will convince him enough.

‘It comes from within,’ a friend or family would say.

‘But it hasn’t, has it?’ he’d mumble.

‘Maybe it’s an inflexion point, and you just don’t notice until you’re far along the path?’ An intelligent mathematician friend would argue.

He’d nod his head – at first, slowly, then vigorously. ‘Yeah, right.’ Calculus, of all things, of course, would be the thing to convince him to forgive himself for the choices – hasty and otherwise – he made in the aftermath of her going away abruptly.

What no one knows beneath that denial, and perhaps his inability to express, is that it’s not just about the loss, although that in itself should’ve been enough. It’s not just about an untimely death and the fact that we’re all still here while some are not. It’s not even about the death of all the dreams and the lost times. And it’s definitely not the ‘Why me?’ syndrome.

It’s about the loss of himself – in parts, maybe even entirely. It’s about wanting to start a new life with a new name without any of the pain that currently engulfs it. And about feeling confused and guilty about that last thought. It’s like living with a part of you that’s dead or numb (which, to his own surprise and detriment, doesn’t equate to peace). But it’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t experienced it – not that it’s their fault, either.

One of these days, he knows, he will, in fact, and to regrettably quote the mathematician friend, be past the inflection point and further along the path. But to that end, he doesn’t have to shake himself off any stupor, he doesn’t have to do anything remarkable. One of these days, it will happen, of its own accord, and it will be one of the most unremarkable days of his life. And he will know it only when he’s comfortably past that point and will have forgotten all about it and even forgiven himself without much effort and will inadvertently turn around and catch a glimpse.

The best way out is through. The exactitude of where the inflection point lies is, in fact, pointless.

***

Vishaal Pathak

Vishaal writes short stories and poems and occasionally clicks a picture. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in ARTS by the People, Five on the Fifth, The Kelp Journal, Vermilion, The Rainbow Poems, Open Minds Quarterly, Good Printed Things, redrosethorns journal, Just Milieu Zine and Metonym Journal. When not writing or daydreaming, he can be found exploring a new trail.