First Love

As I lie down in the same bed you spent nights with your now wife, after your wedding, I am just tickled by the ironies of life. Isn’t it wonderfully morose that you were the first boy, yes boy because you were only 9 years old then, whoever professed his love for me and here I am lying down on your bed, spending so much time in your bedroom, going through your wedding pictures on your desktop and even looking through your personal files in those carefully arranged folders. I do feel guilty sometimes when I see those pictures because some part of me feels I am violating your privacy and you have no idea as you sit far far away living your picture perfect life. But some pictures are meant to be broken and those cracks have already appeared in my mind. I never intended for it to be like this but I had no other place to take shelter after my broken engagement and your folks were generous enough to let me stay at their place for a couple of weeks. So here I am committing a breach of your privacy every single day. I never wanted it this way. I never wanted to have anything to do with you or the likes of you after the only time we passed by each other after we grew up. We did recognize each other that night, 3 years back at that bar in CP and we looked through each other so beautifully. You looking like a GQ model while drinking your bottle of beer, sitting with your fragile, China doll of a girlfriend, who effortlessly emanates bohemian chic, with your arm casually draped around her and me with my then customary Bloody Mary, smoking a cigarette and blowing smoke rings in the air, in defiance of all I was not and couldn’t care to be.I would have been married this coming Friday to an ugly, fat and dark, obnoxious man and what a perfect nightmare it would have been. There you go I am entirely too honest. But the fact of the matter being this had nothing to do with him being ugly and everything to do with all that he could never be. He could never be tall, thin and gorgeus like you. Now I know why I almost always like tall, thin men because in my head the first boy I ever truly liked grew up to be tall, skinny, nerdy, dreamy. As for me, well on my good days you could call me charming and on my bad days I am neurotic and irrational and the rest of the days I am just plain cold. How different it would have been making love with you as opposed to being in bed with someone I was never in love with and almost got married to. I shudder even when I think of that possibility.The truth also is that all this time that I am spending in your room, amidst your books, your music, your writings, well I haven’t been this much at peace with myself in years now. The truth also is I am not feeling lonely at all and there is isn’t an ounce of envy left in me. I am also no psychotic stalker and you might have been my childhood sweetheart but that is that and we grew up to be different people or so I thought. Apparently we aren’t as different as I thought we were. We could have been friends, yeah we definitely could have been friends. Hahah! Another time, another life maybe.

Dearest World,
I don’t feel like coming back to full time life. I need some time to recover or some time just to sit around and enjoy the nothing to worry about feeling and I don’t think I am gonna be allowed to do that. Hmmphhhhhhhh! And I am not down in the dumps but I do wanna take time off. Work seems so lifeless and looks like there is so much to be done. I wanna be hibernating for a bit. I don’t wanna feel scared all the time. I know I don’t have to be scared but I do feel scared every now and then especially when the doorbell rings or my phone rings. I don’t wanna see any one of those familiar numbers flashing and nor do I wanna see any unwelcome person standing outside my door at an ungodly hour at night. That is the reason I wanna go away and vanish and be incommunicado for a while.
Love,
A Disgruntled Me

Damn it I just read this not so old post of mine and realized that being all committed and about to get hitched has also meant that all of a sudden over the last 3 months or so I have become oh so sane and calm. That is the good part, one of the best bits. Not that I don’t worry. I still worry about a million things but these things are so much more tangible and has nothing to do with my bouts of insanity. Sigh! I am growing older and wiser and is the impending marriage doing this to me. I should have a separate series called the Wedding Diaries whereby I chronicle the daily happenings and believe you me it would have a fair share of drama. Real life is like that. We ourselves don’t realize that our own stories in some way or the other could have that epic like quality and sometimes even some fairy dust scattered all over it. Though there are days when all it feels like is like an ordinary paperback novel and I have been told that the scariest days are those when our life is a reflection of some ekta kapoor sitcom and that is when one just wants to run away and hide and wait till the serial gets over and forget it like it was just a bad dream.

My madness, the futility of it hit me last evening when everyone from that party were uploading pictures and I wasn’t in a single one of them. It was like I did not exist. Like I hadn’t been a part of that afternoon based solely on the fact that I behaved the way I did. I got drunk, I behaved like a complete idiot, found some random random guy cute because we struck up some vague conversation about the army which also got me sentimental about Dad so I went out and shed a few tears and got back to my conversation with this guy who I’ll probably never meet again. I drank some more mojitos, felt even more out of control and all I wanted was to meet that random cute boy again. The party spilled over to Noon Wines and so did my madness and this time it was in full force. I have such vague memories about that evening and strangely I do not remember my best friend screaming at me. All I remember is that excruciating feeling of wanting to spend some more time with this stupid boy before he headed back home. I spoilt the entire party for that period of time and my reputation is obviously in tatters. I doubt I shall ever be able to meet these same people again until years and years have passed and I am at a more peaceful place in life. These people who never lose control, who lead these perfect lives on paper and these are the very people I wanna be. Yes I do not wanna be this mad, wild thing that I become once in a blue moon when my insecurity is written all over me, when the alcohol gets the better of me.
This madness is me too. This insanity is me too. I can’t deny that. It leaves me feeling ashamed but this is a part of me too. I am told that I need reassurance all the time. Do I? I think you’ll have to come and live in my shoes for you to realize why I do so. Everything seems to be a struggle sometimes. My stammering gets bigger and bigger when I am not feeling good about myself. I hateeeeeeeeeeee it when I stammer. I loathe myself just for the stammer. I wish I wasn’t ever ever afflicted with this. A large part of my insecurity stems from this speech deficiency of mine. And you know what everything cannot be worked upon and sorted out. Everything doesn’t have a cure. Most times one just has to learn how to lump it and live with it. So I live with this stammering even as I am asked question by my so called might be in-laws when they ask me “Beta can this be cured?” They wanna know if I suffered from some childhood trauma that triggered this off and I have no answer to that. I had a very happy childhood and I do not remember any such incident that could have possibly resulted in this speech impediment.
So I take my leave from these people whose standards of propriety I cannot not live upto until the day I do and I will darn well do. I know and then I shall be back fitting into such company effortlessly and holding my own be it personally or professionally.

Hang on, my love, and grow big and strong

Dearest Pri,
Thank you for your gorgeous and charming letter, you brighten up my dim life. I read the whole fucking thing, dear. Of course, I'd love to see you doing fabulously well in life and in immaculate suits walking out of meetings. But most of all I want to see you take a deep breath and do whatever you must to survive and find something to be that you can love. You're obviously a bright fucking chick, with a big heart too and I want to wish you a (advanced) HAPPY HAPPY 28th birthday and happy spirit. It's gonna be a long long road ahead, but pressure never ends in this life. 'Perforation problems' by the way means to me also the holes that will always exist in any story we try to make of our lives. So hang on, my love, and grow big and strong and take your hits and keep going.

All my love to a really beautiful girl, that's you Pri.

God

And I am having a bad day. Dear God please please take this feeling away. I don’t wanna feel bad about J at all. I am sorry for everything and sorry that I got involved with him but please take this feeling away. I beg of you. I can’t stand to see him every day and not be with him. It fickin hurts man and what have I done to deserve this? Pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee I am tired of feeling bad. Its been three months nowwwwwwwwww and I need to move on. They say ask and so shall receive and so I am asking pleaseeee I wanna be free and happy and not miserable that I feel every now and then and no expectations pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Just let me be happy pleaseeeeee. Dear God pleaseeeeeeeeeeeee I want this pining to go awayyyyyyyy Gawddddddddd. I don’t wanna feel anything. If I knew it would hurt so much I never would have. I am begging you to make me feel normal again. I thought everything was alright until yesterday when I broke down again. There seems to be no solution but to move on. I can’t run away. I have to stay right here alone and see him each day so pleaseeeeee make me stronger and help me. God I ask you for your help. Please help me. Please please help me.

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."
--Howard Zinn

I have never ever written a happy post on this blog. This blog always seems to be the blog where I write unspeakable things. Like how tired am I off waiting and how cranky I get everytime I am the recepient of unwanted attention and how the most random people seem to be interested in me except the two people I would genuinely be happy about.
You know J I keep waiting for that one day when I wake up in the morning and do not feel the way I do. It'll be gone like wooooossshhhhhhhh gone and I'll be free and happy. Either that or you'll wake up one day and realise that damn it she is the one and I am in love with her. Neither of that seems to be happening and I continue to feel as miserable as I have been feeling for the last two months but for 3 weeks in the middle.
Double A I don't even know what happened. Where did I go wrong? I was soooooooooo wrong about our chemistry or am I an idiot to think there was more to it than there was. Was it not worth a shot? I don't know and I never will know. All I know is I miss your presence in my life and I miss that voice of yours and your texts and our long conversations late into the night and your driving to work and back from work calls, your silly and not so silly questions and I am plain lonely without someone like you in my life.

Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.
Steve JobsUS computer engineer & industrialist (1955 - )

My biggest revenge will be when I am over this. Yeah that is all. When I don't feel as shitty and rejected as I do right now. I want this feeling to go away. I really do. I am tired of feeling sad.

And I refuse to centre everything around this one thing. No I shall not do so. I am gonna move ahead. I am not up for something this vague yet again. Do you wanna stick it out or part ways is your call.