Imaginary Conversations with You

I went by your house last night again. It become a habit now passing by your place, drunk. Like it's some typical Bollywood movie. only it's not because I know what I am doing. I am in control and I'll never lose it. I looked up the window I used to always look up at. I saw me. Sixteen year old me. Patiently looking down from your window. There was a calm in her I know wasn't in her when I was sixteen. My breath grew shallow and paced up. There isn't anything the same in the both of us. You were right. I camouflage really easily and before I could know, I became this person. I think I gave in to the lifestyle; the parties booze and boys caught up to me and it's okay. I am not complaining. I won't say that that I detest the woman I have become. I absolutely do not think I should have been the way I was when I met you; fragile and easy to love. I don't want to be easy. 

I don't want to love the way I loved you, like a traveller in a desert loves a mirage. I don't want to believe that we are special. That god's divine intervention allowed us to meet and all the bullshit crap you read about in cheap novels. Because we are not. We are not the best, we are in fact just like the rest(sorry to burst your bubble, folks). Normal, boring people trying to figure life out forgetting ourselves in the journey. We are not unique because when push comes to shove, we shall fight like mink rats and gobble each other up in the quest of getting it right. W are not special because we forget we are important to each other, we take each other for granted and we blame it on understanding. We are not special because in a couple of years, that fire of passion dies down and we get so used to each other that love becomes a mere habit. A habit like brushing your teeth, you do it every day but you barely care about why you're doing it and you definitely do not have any gratitude towards the brush cleaning your teeth, as you won't for the partner cleaning your life. Then you forget birthdays and you blame it on work. Then you prioritize things over us and you know your relationship is just a habit by now, a habit you are too afraid to change. So you stay and you stay and you know love will never have a place in your life anymore. 

This society will rather let people die in stinking shitholes of relationships than change its standard to something bolder and letting them out, set them free.

But the fun part to me is, I already know this. And I know my life will be a testament to this journey and I am not afraid of the consequence because I have decided not to depend on it. I have decided not to give it any undue importance that I might later regret. I have decided to be so stoic and indifferent that I can't be hurt, well for most of the parts. That allows me hope, don't get me wrong. it just doesn't give me room to expect.

Love is a strange feeling. It comes and stays and morphs itself into all the other emotions we know of - anger, betrayal, hatred and pain. It never goes away. It just changes its state in a way that we think it's gone. I believe as we keep meeting people and falling in love with them, we never unlove the former. We just morph love into something else, something that would give more meaning to our monogamous society- the society that binds us to love one. But do we love one and one only? Is love to be held love only if it's romantic? What about all the other kinds? The kinds that have not got a name for themselves. My English teacher once told me and I quote - "Romantic love is the cheapest form of love". I add it's the easiest. It is an amalgamation of desires, passions, attractions and compassion which is to be brutally chemical, the play of two hormones: dopamine and oxytocin for the first three parts. 

The soul of love is compassion. 

It's what makes humans eternally foolish to fall in love and get their hearts broken over and over again. But that's just romantic love and there's enough already on it. Let's talk about friendship, chance encounters with exceptional nobodies and others. Are they not to be counted as love? I had a penfriend for three years and he was a shoulder to grieve on. He was a symbol of peace in my life and although his existence is not that prominent in my life anymore, I cannot nullify the effect he had when we did talk. I met a man on a train from Vellore to Chennai once. In one hour, he changed my opinion of talking with strangers. We had the most productive conversation and he even invited me home, all without sounding creepy for a moment. It takes diligence to do that and I loved him for showing me the way and I wished I meet him again on some other train for a longer time so that we could talk more. I met another man on another train and he talked about the mountains with such passion that I wanted to run to the hills literally and live that shepherd-life for a moment. Do these make me a cheater? Because if it does, I am afraid, I have cheated more than once.

In my head, I always have these conversations - conversations I could not have in reality, conversations that did not go my way, conversations I never had the chance to have and never will and in those conversations, I talk to you. No silent kisses, no making out but I talk and I talk to one and all. It gets to such a loud cacophony in my head with the constant rantings of everyone I met, the gazes, the kudos, the advice. I go to bed with these noises and even when I am asleep, they visit me in my dreams. I wish I could stop them from judging me, apprehending convulsions and jittery sidegazes but I can't. So, I let them chat with me. I let them discuss the unborn foetus of my future, the direction things never went in. I imagine with absolute objectivity, the road that I did not take. And in the end, when everything has been looked into and the last stone has been turned, I throw that foetus into the sea of fire and let it burn. It's like I am the Devil with all these purged souls inside me and my mind is my personal Hell.

But again, what is cheating? Feeling a sense of protection and loyalty towards someone who is not your partner? Felling responsible to friends? Striking a chord harmonious to someone else's thoughts? Enjoying one's time with someone else? That's for you to let me know.