The Digital Shadows: Love, Lies, and Longing (Part 11)

The End of Her Innocence

After resigning the job, she was continuing her enrolled course in a nearby city. He was living there too, and every weekend, she visited him as usual. But happiness was rare—perhaps once in ten days, she would feel a fleeting moment of joy. Most of the time, she was questioned about her past, blamed for things she had never done. Over time, she lost herself.

She started pretending—acting as if she loved him, speaking to him like a stranger. Smoking became her habit, a way to escape. She was no longer the girl she used to be. Her innocence had died. She wasn’t living; she was merely surviving.

Then, her family found out about her love. They were devastated. Meanwhile, he continued to torture her. He broke her with words, accusing her of infidelity after every intimate moment. “Your body has changed. You must be sleeping with someone else,” he would say, each word piercing her like a dagger. At one point, she became numb. She stopped responding.

One day, his friend’s family invited them for lunch. She had only jeans and a t-shirt with her, so she wore that. But he erupted in anger. “Why didn’t you bring a chudidhar?” he yelled. For three hours, he raged at her—body-shaming her, calling her ugly, insulting her with the vilest words. She lay on the bed, crying, silently asking God what sin she had committed to deserve this. Then, he did the unthinkable—he spat on her face. Not once, but three times.

By 1:30 PM, he demanded that she get ready to go to his friend’s house. Her eyes, swollen from tears, could barely stay open. She refused, but he forced her. She went, drained and silent. Being an introvert, she didn’t speak much to his friend’s family. On their way back, he mocked her. “You embarrassed me. You looked like a clown in front of them. You don’t even know how to sit properly.”

That was it. She had reached her limit. She went home and started blackmailing him—threatening to reveal everything to his family. She had become someone she never imagined—a person consumed by pain and desperation. Unable to handle it, he told his mother. His mother called her, not to console her, but to scold her. “You’re a girl. You should stay at home. He’s a boy; he will be like that,” she said.

For the first time, she fought back with her. She answered his mother with the same anger that had been hurled at her for so long. But he twisted the situation, making it a bigger issue. “How dare you speak to my mother like that?” he fumed.

That was the moment of clarity. Even if she married him, he would always stand like a statue beside his mother, never by her side.

And so, she did what she should have done long ago. She blocked him. Deleted every picture. Every memory.

For the first time in years, she felt a sense of relief.

She was finally free.