I have this crazy idea about how relationships are supposed to work. It circles honesty and every now and then bumps into loyalty. On the way the two happen upon acceptance, admiration and abiding love. They never meet agenda. That one always takes the short road.
At the best of times, a good relationship will make you feel almost transcendent. Other times, unimaginably burdened. You might not see it but all the time it is growing, this roiling mass of whispered confidences, terrible jokes you two must never ever utter to another soul, commonly held nemeses, small holidays, big calories, potent loathing, inevitable disenchantment and if you're really lucky, a weightless return to love.
It's just that once you've known this kind of exchange, it becomes the benchmark of your human experience. Any less chafes like mad. Relationships that might otherwise have managed a decent run time dissolve prematurely under the weight of its... betterness.
This post was really supposed to be about those barely tolerable enterprises. But I just can't be arsed.
Showing posts with label Regret. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Regret. Show all posts
Tuesday, 5 April 2011
Tuesday, 6 April 2010
Wriggle free.
The world we're living in, by now we should've been gloriously scaling the acme of individual courage.
Think about it. We have next to no socio-cultural restraints left to speak of, just about anything goes. We've got all sorts of technology doing our work for us, whittling down our actual physical effort to a series of finger clicks. In fact we're a generation whose biggest legacy will be its ability for The Grey Area - we've rallied against stereotypes, sometimes even when we weren't sure why - don't laugh at a sensitive, philosophical biker dude; that lady is just attached to her flannel shirts and billowing leg hair, it says nothing about her sexuality.
And only recently it has dawned on me what our other big legacy is going to be - pussyfooting. Excuse my Truck Driver.
We're going to go down in history for our sheer wealth of cowardice. For our talent for talking endlessly in circles without ever concluding with or even intending a solution. For being victims of our personal histories and for recognising that and continuing to stay that way. We've learned to say everything it takes to say nothing at all. But most importantly for turning the Appropriate Thing To Do into Whatever's Easiest.
Don't get me wrong. I will never trade the loosed leash I have today with what my mother had at 25. I love that my dark jeans can qualify as formals and sex before marriage no longer occupies a top place in Fallen Woman 101. But the things that require heart, you know? That require a strong stomach? They're gone. Buried under layers of diplomacy, suffocating self-consciousness and a misplaced sense of modernity.
Invisible mode on Gchat, silent mode on your mobile phone and accumulating lightweight, feel-good, micro relationships on Twitter are all the totems of our generation. "All touch-me-nots" says my mother, blunt, brave lady that she is and always has been.
But I don't want to end this as a rant. I want to make a choice, I want to take a decision. Any decision. I want to start saying what I really think. I want to start telling strangers they helped me without worrying that it comes off as needy. I want to tell a man I love that I'm going to be there forever without worrying that I'm overstating. I want to tell a joke and then be okay when noone gets the punchline. I want to stop scaring myself every day.
To that end I will start with one truth. Here goes. I have been meaning to write a book for four years now but have still not managed it. I have written untruthful samples that were bad. And truthful samples that were worse. And I still don't even have an outline yet. The real reason is that I am terrified that it will bomb catastrophically and that I will never recover from my own awfulness. So instead I sit and rib on Chetan Bhagat. But as of this moment, I want it to stop being my concern. I feel I have done my part and issued the world a sufficient warning. I am now free to start writing My Great Big Failure Of A Novel with reasonable abandon.
There, all better. Now you tell me something. I am a stranger and I'm asking you to tell me something. I realise you might think I'm due my stay at the funny farm, but I'm asking anyway.
Think about it. We have next to no socio-cultural restraints left to speak of, just about anything goes. We've got all sorts of technology doing our work for us, whittling down our actual physical effort to a series of finger clicks. In fact we're a generation whose biggest legacy will be its ability for The Grey Area - we've rallied against stereotypes, sometimes even when we weren't sure why - don't laugh at a sensitive, philosophical biker dude; that lady is just attached to her flannel shirts and billowing leg hair, it says nothing about her sexuality.
And only recently it has dawned on me what our other big legacy is going to be - pussyfooting. Excuse my Truck Driver.
We're going to go down in history for our sheer wealth of cowardice. For our talent for talking endlessly in circles without ever concluding with or even intending a solution. For being victims of our personal histories and for recognising that and continuing to stay that way. We've learned to say everything it takes to say nothing at all. But most importantly for turning the Appropriate Thing To Do into Whatever's Easiest.
Don't get me wrong. I will never trade the loosed leash I have today with what my mother had at 25. I love that my dark jeans can qualify as formals and sex before marriage no longer occupies a top place in Fallen Woman 101. But the things that require heart, you know? That require a strong stomach? They're gone. Buried under layers of diplomacy, suffocating self-consciousness and a misplaced sense of modernity.
Invisible mode on Gchat, silent mode on your mobile phone and accumulating lightweight, feel-good, micro relationships on Twitter are all the totems of our generation. "All touch-me-nots" says my mother, blunt, brave lady that she is and always has been.
But I don't want to end this as a rant. I want to make a choice, I want to take a decision. Any decision. I want to start saying what I really think. I want to start telling strangers they helped me without worrying that it comes off as needy. I want to tell a man I love that I'm going to be there forever without worrying that I'm overstating. I want to tell a joke and then be okay when noone gets the punchline. I want to stop scaring myself every day.
To that end I will start with one truth. Here goes. I have been meaning to write a book for four years now but have still not managed it. I have written untruthful samples that were bad. And truthful samples that were worse. And I still don't even have an outline yet. The real reason is that I am terrified that it will bomb catastrophically and that I will never recover from my own awfulness. So instead I sit and rib on Chetan Bhagat. But as of this moment, I want it to stop being my concern. I feel I have done my part and issued the world a sufficient warning. I am now free to start writing My Great Big Failure Of A Novel with reasonable abandon.
There, all better. Now you tell me something. I am a stranger and I'm asking you to tell me something. I realise you might think I'm due my stay at the funny farm, but I'm asking anyway.
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
You live, you learn
"You have ugly fingers for a girl. Actually for a human being."
"Your brain is ugly."
"Anyway what's your mom's maiden name?"
"D'Silva."
"And your dad's?"
"My dad's not a maiden."
"Sorry."
"You're weird."
"I'm falling for you."
"You're really weird."
"Slut."
"I hate you."
There's stranger relationships to be in than the one you're currently in.
"Your brain is ugly."
"Anyway what's your mom's maiden name?"
"D'Silva."
"And your dad's?"
"My dad's not a maiden."
"Sorry."
"You're weird."
"I'm falling for you."
"You're really weird."
"Slut."
"I hate you."
There's stranger relationships to be in than the one you're currently in.
Thursday, 7 January 2010
My rebound relationship
I've realised that every time I'm really happy and occupied in my life, I stop updating this blog.
When I'm happy I have this feeling inside me of being very near the edge - a little too much goodness and I could keel over. It's this breathless, excited rush - I'm grinning all the time, letting all those doubts and niggles fall by the wayside. I am much too busy handling that happy explosion to get my thoughts in one line.
And when things fall apart, I come back here, tail between my legs, slightly sheepish and more than willing to spill my woes.
To come to it actually, I write most when I'm feeling badly which inhabits that cliche I've been shrinking away from years - I do not want to feel creative or expressive only when I'm miserable. Because I like writing and if the atmosphere that best brings that from me is maudlin, then I am doomed to be a very, very lonesome unhappy person indeed.
So to that end, the next time I feel euphoric, this blog is going to be my first stop. This is the year for breaking old cycles after all.
When I'm happy I have this feeling inside me of being very near the edge - a little too much goodness and I could keel over. It's this breathless, excited rush - I'm grinning all the time, letting all those doubts and niggles fall by the wayside. I am much too busy handling that happy explosion to get my thoughts in one line.
And when things fall apart, I come back here, tail between my legs, slightly sheepish and more than willing to spill my woes.
To come to it actually, I write most when I'm feeling badly which inhabits that cliche I've been shrinking away from years - I do not want to feel creative or expressive only when I'm miserable. Because I like writing and if the atmosphere that best brings that from me is maudlin, then I am doomed to be a very, very lonesome unhappy person indeed.
So to that end, the next time I feel euphoric, this blog is going to be my first stop. This is the year for breaking old cycles after all.
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.
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.
Thursday, 12 November 2009
Woulda coulda shoulda
Soon I will start my new job and I did a test run today, to see how long it'd take me to get to it. Considering I live outside Mumbai city, I should have known that it would take me either long or if there wasn't too much traffic, long.
I didn't mind it too much because I had my headphones on, my book slid comfortingly from one side to the other in my bag and watching the world go by on mute does really have it's own very special charm. In times like these I find I experience a silence that has very little to do with the absence of sound. It's a stillness that feels almost unbearable and sometimes quite frightening to experience. Especially because it lets me be absent from what is happening around me and invariably is the time the mind uses to say 'Okay you're here, shall we do some cleaning today? You really mustn't put it off any longer.'
Today I thought about regret. About the countless times I've heard people say 'if I had done things differently, I wouldn't be here today.' Heck, I've said it a few times and I thought today, well what's so special about here? Am I just afraid to let my mind even imagine the way my life might have played itself out had I done the things I most wish I had?
Years ago an easy decision I didn't make could have saved somebody's life.
Years ago just a little kindness might have made a man feel less wretched.
Years ago a little self forgiveness might have saved the best friendship I've ever known and never had again.
'Tch, why look back at what you cannot change?' chides the part of me that hates these unnerving processes. But to me these regrets aren't a way of berating myself any longer. They're my way of, on some really non-human level, letting those people know I still think about them, that they alone can allow me to visit those parts of myself that I can't stand to consider for more than a few minutes at a time. It's my way of letting them know I am becoming the person they had needed me to be all those times.
I didn't mind it too much because I had my headphones on, my book slid comfortingly from one side to the other in my bag and watching the world go by on mute does really have it's own very special charm. In times like these I find I experience a silence that has very little to do with the absence of sound. It's a stillness that feels almost unbearable and sometimes quite frightening to experience. Especially because it lets me be absent from what is happening around me and invariably is the time the mind uses to say 'Okay you're here, shall we do some cleaning today? You really mustn't put it off any longer.'
Today I thought about regret. About the countless times I've heard people say 'if I had done things differently, I wouldn't be here today.' Heck, I've said it a few times and I thought today, well what's so special about here? Am I just afraid to let my mind even imagine the way my life might have played itself out had I done the things I most wish I had?
Years ago an easy decision I didn't make could have saved somebody's life.
Years ago just a little kindness might have made a man feel less wretched.
Years ago a little self forgiveness might have saved the best friendship I've ever known and never had again.
'Tch, why look back at what you cannot change?' chides the part of me that hates these unnerving processes. But to me these regrets aren't a way of berating myself any longer. They're my way of, on some really non-human level, letting those people know I still think about them, that they alone can allow me to visit those parts of myself that I can't stand to consider for more than a few minutes at a time. It's my way of letting them know I am becoming the person they had needed me to be all those times.
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