There would come a point in every person's life-defining moments - where they'd be put to test. When life came to a grinding halt and the only way ahead would be with a decision. Those decisions would mold and shape lives like stream currents defining its banks.

One such moment occurred in my life at half-past ten on a silent night in September. The night that changed my life. The night when the roots of my six-month relationship shook.

The ground beneath the dream house I built crumbled, the cracks on the walls rooted, deepening and splitting into various directions. The happy couple photo which rested on the imaginary fireplace mantle fell off its position, glass shattered.

Philip's answer, or in the present scenario his silence spoke volumes. He knew his lie was caught. His inability to counter my accusations was marinating my mind with anger.

"You can..." My mouth was bone dry and there was a chance I had hyperventilating. I didn't recall it better but the gnawing beneath layers of my skin shifted to my chest, rendering my lungs to give up. "You can see everything?"

Philip didn't answer for long. His stare towards the floor was his way of avoiding conflict. I was seething with the sting of his betrayal which flowed in my blood and pricked me every time I tried to breathe or look at him.

"Answer me dammit." As opposed to a roar, my feeble voice escaped the hold of my tongue.

Philip bestowed me with the mercy of further pain when he looked up. He was ready to talk. To fight.

"Yes." He nodded into his chest, tears brimming at the waterline of his eyes. Any day that wasn't today, this sight would have killed me. Not today. Today, I wanted answers. More than my need to be held, to weep in his strong embrace, I wanted answers. "Yes, I can see. Two weeks ago, I had a cornea transplant. I was on leave for it."

The mountain of his lies toppled at my feet. I didn't know what more to ask. With my knees deciding to dig into the floor of the room, I knelt under the news - the part that my boyfriend had surgery and never bothered to tell me.

"When I got the call from the Bureau, I went for the interview." Philip started his narration. I could feel the intensity of his gaze boring through me. My face dipped into my chest while the only functional organ seemed to be my ears. "When they got me checked, they told that I had a cornea thinning accident at the war front. So they gave me an option to take up the surgery. Because I was already taking up the job, I decided to do it. And..."

I found his fingers curling up at my fists. My head was heavy to lift itself up but a small nudge under my chin with his index did the trick. He bent near me, holding my hands in his and looking at me as if I had the next word. The next say.

I didn't. I had nothing to say.

I love Philip more than my life. For four hard years of my life, I loved him with such an intensity, it hurt every bone and marrow, every cell to its nuclei. I loved him hopelessly and expected nothing in return. I cared for him and every night, before tucking myself to sleep, I prayed for him, for his well being. For his vision to return.

The man who held my hand, whose hold used to work as small packs of electric jolts did nothing to me today. I felt as if being held by a stranger. A stranger whom I once knew.

"You lied," I whispered, my dry words escaped. My throat dug back, piercing into my vocal cord but somehow I had managed to speak.

"Darling, I didn't lie. I wanted to tell you. I didn't want your hopes to rise and shatter if the surgery went unsuccessful. If something happened to me."

Philip teared up. His heartbeats paced faster when he held my hand against his chest, looking at me with the innocence of a child. His care and concern filled eyes were a portrait of the betrayal and pain it caused me. His greyish eyes - a tinge of green were my place of comfort. I would always stare at him while he talked, hoping for the light in them to return.

Now they had.

But I felt nothing. I walked around with a sighted man like he was still blind. Philip used a lie to keep me in the dark. In a way, it wasn't Philip but I who was blind. I was blinded by love to know better. I trusted my man, only to be bestowed the slap of reality. Nothing is ever permanent.

"Daisy, please look at me."

Philip cupped the sides of my face. His warm breath hit every inch of my skin. His hand had turned warm from its previous cold state and I wondered if it was the blood rush. "I didn't want to disappoint you, love. I wanted you to know about it if only it was successful."

"When was it declared a success?" Was the only logical question I had for now - one which hung over the mold of our relationship with its sharp edges glistening.

Philip fell silent, biting into his lips. He refused to gauge me but held my hand in his.

With the silence in the room, these past few days revved up in my memory. I jerked away from his hold as if it was the only way I could breathe, away from the clutches of a lie.

"You don't know how many times I wanted you to tell me, I was beautiful or cute." It was time to state my peace. The dryness in my mouth was replaced with the watered layer of sadness. "How many times I twirled around you then arrested my steps because I know, you can't see. How many times I have wanted you to look at me while I wasn't looking only to catch you doing it."

"Darling, you are the most beau-"

"Too late." And then I heaved air and what felt like bile which never emerged. I felt disgusted at myself and my weakness. How I thought I was strong but when faced with turmoil, I let go. I didn't fight it out. I crumbled like sandstone under heat and wind.

"Too late for what Daisy. Just because I lied-"

"Just because you lied!" I held onto the side of the wall to distance myself from the man who looked like Philip but didn't feel like one.

My Philip wouldn't lie. He wouldn't justify when he was wrong. He would have accepted it and told me he was sorry. This man was not Philip. He was a decoy. An alien entity I didn't recognize.

"Tell me Philip," the last of my strength held onto my lungs before they withered under the pressure of what came next. "Did your folks take care of you post-surgery?"

I was hanging by the thread of trust. I hoped to be pulled back. To be saved. We were bent, not broken.

Then he answered. "Yes. They were both there."

Philip held his head low, his clutched palms begging in silence for forgiveness.

I wasn't a messiah. I didn't have a heart of gold. I was just a girl who loved a man without vision. Who set aside her hopes of being adorned by him, who knew in her heart her love would conquer all.

I was a bloody fool to believe love took care of the rest. That the world revolved around love. Nope.

I was an immature woman who hoped for fairy tales. That her Prince Charming might not sing laurels about her beauty or ogle at her when she dressed a certain way but loved her nonetheless. Content with the fact that her love came true.

What I didn't realize was that masked in the form of love, I encountered lies and deceit.

"Daisy," I heard a heave, wheezing from the chest of the decoy who resembled Philip. "Please let me tell you the reason-"

"You said enough, Philip. Enough lies for me to last a decade."

I was holding onto myself, soothing and crying in parallel. Every passing moment became heavier with the night growing darker and sliding inside the apartment from the crack in the window.

The whole place haunted me. I didn't feel a sense of belonging here.

"I need to go." I wanted to leave and run into the night. To cry on a bench where nobody would recognize me or try to comfort me.

I wanted to cry for me, for the girl of eighteen who loved Philip with all her heart and who worshipped him like a perfect being. I wanted to hold onto the ashes of her and weep to the sadness that grew from the void in my chest and spread across, branching its way into bloodstreams and engulfing me into the frigid state where I felt nothing.

"Wait," Philip held up the door, his eyes peering at me, lips trembling with unsaid words.

Tell me something. Hold me and tell me you lied for us. Tell me all this and bring me back to life. Resuscitate me.

But it was too good to be true. Too good to dream.

Philip nodded sidewise, wiping his tears. "I don't think this is what I should have said to start with but I am sorry for what I did. I never meant to hurt you and I will never, I promise. I never wanted to see you cry. Of all the ways I wanted to see you, darling, crying was never in the picture." Philip held my elbow and turned me to face him. Every time I looked into his eyes, I was reminded of the lie. "Please don't go. You can yell and scream. You can throw things. Tell me what you want and I will give you."

Remember, I told you about defining moments.

This was my defining moment when I took a step back to adore and hate the same man I had watched for so long, dipped in love. Only now, I stood and watched him as a man, only a man with flaws like me.

Philip was not perfect. Philip was just a normal man whom I elevated on a pedestal.

And my defining moment was when the love tainted glass shattered, piercing me back to reality with the shards embedded into my heart, jolting me up from my reverie.

"I want time. Time away from us, Philip."

It killed me, I wouldn't lie. But more so, I killed the girl in me who somehow still believed there was more to Philip than a mere lie. Only this time, I murdered her with the knife of my decision.

His hand dropped from me onto his sides. He held the door, staring at the knob for long before holding it in his hand. Every passing minute, I was afraid to fall back into the charming world he created. I placed my hand over his, turning the knob.

It was the last time we would touch. The last time we would see each other.

Philip's training was coming up and he was leaving. Only now, I packed up and left before.

As the elevator chimed up, I stood at the threshold, holding the cold metal doors apart. The automated voice asked me to get in or fuck off but I was too caught up to look one last time at the man who now could see me. And my pain.

Some sadistic part of me wanted him to see what he did me.

I stood at the door, choking back on my tears. "When were you planning on telling me, Philip?"

My question wasn't really mine. It was the struggles of the hopeless romantic girl who refused to give up on Philip. She struggled with my decision and wanted some way to get him to answer it.

Little did she know, grown-ups didn't work like that.

Philip sighed, tears welling in his eyes when he looked up with pursed lips and a trembling jaw. My Philip was hurt.

But so was I. And I moved away from what gave me solace.

I moved away from the one I considered my home.

~

And with that, the foundation crumbles...

Do you think Philip was right in hiding this information or do you think there are things in play, much more than what he confessed?

Let me know your thoughts...