Thursday 31 December 2009

Until I find you

2008 ended with a loud thunderous silence. Something inside me died then. That presence inside you that holds on to faith by the skin of its teeth even when you're sure it has no reason to. That presence died. In 2009 I proceeded to destroy myself completely. 365 days spent kicking myself in the ribs - it was like that beach cliche, little hopeful kid painstakingly builds a sandcastle and a bigger brutish chap comes along and cruelly kicks it down. That was me and myself all of 2009.

I forged on or atleast I thought I did. I didn't believe in anything or anyone and if I managed to give the impression that I did, it was because I started to make an exercise of suspending disbelief. 'If I can't believe it, atleast I won't disbelieve it until proven otherwise.' What that meant was I was holding my breath, waiting for something to go wrong. Which ofcourse it did because I looked at everything as potential hurt and so I willed it to become that. I did that. Noone else did that, I did it.

By the end of 2009, I was struggling. I was barely there anymore. It was someone I didn't recognise. It was someone I'd set out not to be. The worst night came, dramatically enough, last night. The last night of the year. I had been hanging on to someone for dear life and realised he was already gone. And I slumped to the floor. Those many tears shouldn't be biologically possible. This time there was no silence, there was only screaming. "Love me love ME LOVE ME LOVE ME LOVE ME LOVE ME PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE" I begged at the darkness. I begged... of myself.

This was new. I thought I was crying for him but I wasn't. I hadn't realised up until then how badly I missed me, how much I wanted to feel like a living breathing emotional person again. I don't remember how I got to bed, when I changed into my nightclothes and snuggled upto my dog. But that's how I found myself this morning.

And so here I am, nothingness except a thin pinhole of hope, suddenly and very very slowly making the darkness lighter. I had banana milkshake this morning. And it was wonderful.

Happy New Year. I hope you find your truest self too.

Saturday 5 December 2009

Waiting in line

When I was really young, my idea of perfect love was straight out of the pages of my aunt’s meticulous collection of Mill & Boon books. A man (and oh what a man he was) and a woman met in imperfect circumstances and waded through their disdain for each other inspite of their initial attraction. Eventually they fell so deeply in love that they were alright with losing those parts of themselves that had been most vital to their earlier identities. Yes there were the bits where they compromised on self respect and addressed each others’ genitals quite a lot more florally than feels right - but those were the bits you appreciated because you hadn’t yet been introduced to the internet and its vast reserves of porn.

Years later, when I had graduated to more important literature (and had internet access), I too scoffed along with everyone else at ‘those crappy softcore porn books’ but somewhere I knew it was still the kind of romance I longed for. Then I met a man (and oh what a man he was), disdain inspite of attraction happened, and eventually…well I fell in love. I have to believe he did too, just not like in the Harlequin romances.That was the first time I felt faith falter.

I realised that love is not as easy as just waking up from a coma after 2 years to find yourself in the arms of the woman who put you there in the first place. Or taking over a multinational conglomerate only to fall hard for your archrival’s disreputable lawyer. Love takes time, and effort and bus tickets and cold dinners and clipped conversations and did you pay the bill because I didn’t and if we have to bathe in icy water one more time I’m leaving you.

That was when I met another man. Make that boy, I met a boy. There wasn’t initial disdain or attraction. But the conversations were refreshing, the jokes original, the comfort unbelievable. And I wondered if those M&B writers weren’t being too single-minded – uneventful romances can be just as exhilarating. Here there were embarrassingly floral descriptions too. Only not out of passion, or even lust. But because we both knew a lot of different words. In the end, they were the death of us, especially since he was saying all those words to someone else too. And faith took a tumble good and proper.

I gave up on even tidy romances. I started taking solace in being left to my own devices because while they made for ennui sometimes, they never hurt. Then I met another boy. Our conversations were stilted, just like me he was smarting from his previous relationships, our interests couldn’t be more diverse and he was…vegetarian. Still we co-existed, enjoyed each others' unfamiliarity and I’ll say it: if this were indeed a Mills & Boon, I’d want to very badly skip to the unholy parts. But it never caught and I don’t know why. With each passing day, I saw our potential for being the love of each others’ lives dim.

And so here I am once more. Come full circle you might say. Wondering if Harlequin romances do happen and if I just need to wait it out. On the other hand, and not to put too fine a point on it, my aunt did die a spinster.