So I set down to write something for Chay for the upcoming issue on Heart and wonder what should I write? Should I write about how I tend to always fall for the wrong guys, or should I write about how after each disastrous date, I vow not to go out for any more dates, and yet, the very next day can be found online searching for future dates? Amidst all this turmoil, a part of my brain still wants to analyse my last relationship and I finally decide to write about it.
So what exactly did go wrong? Before I go into dissecting the relation, a brief description about how it all began would be helpful I suppose. He was an excellent writer and would send me his articles for the magazine. And it didn’t take long for the two of us to hit it along. Before we knew, we were constantly texting each other and discussing virtually every single moment of our life via text. It goes without mentioning that we were soon the best of friends. After about a month of texting and chatting, we finally met for the first time at a film festival we were attending in Kolkata. It was only after another three months, when I had finished my college and was waiting for the joining dates to arrive that I first realised he had fallen for me. I kept enjoying all the attention that I received for the first time in my life and kept flirting, without getting committal about anything. It was only when the time had come to leave the city to go to my city of work, that I began contemplating is it time to take our relation to a next level. He had all the qualities I had ever dreamt of having in my ideal boy friend. He was intelligent, was a student of biology, was internet savvy, and was an excellent writer and poet. Yet, I knew I didn’t feel that spark for him, that physical attraction towards him. I thought to myself, “Does love has to be defined by physical attraction?” So, even after being advised against it, I decided to go ahead.
So, a day before I was to leave for Gurgaon, we met at one of the most romantic spots in my birth place, beside the river Hooghly in the evening, in the backdrop of a setting Sun. For most part of it, we kept quiet, looked at each other and laughed. I was waiting for him to say something, and he probably expected the same. Then it was time for us to leave and we took a bus for our destinations. In the bus, just before he was to get down, he handed me a gift and blabbered something that it has an LED and it will glow. As soon as he got down, I opened it to find a lovely white rose of glass. A parting gift just as delicate as a heart, a little carelessness and it shall break forever. I reached back home and asked him why he didn’t say to me what he wanted to; and he said he didn’t know what my response would be and he didn’t want to spoil the friendship that had developed between the two of us. And I retorted back how foolish he was not to have asked me. He was the most romantic and caring person I had ever met. We promised to make our long distance relation work with the best of our efforts. And with that promise, I left the very next day.
The next few days(rather weeks) were hectic. Moving from the comforts of a college life to a corporate life was taking a bit more than usual for me to adjust. I would come back tired at night, and then have little energy left to chat. He would be waiting for me to come online and talk to me, but many a times I wouldn’t respond back. Because if ever I did, the chat would stretch for hours, eating away all the time; and the time after office was the time I would generally get to work on Gaylaxy. I had also stopped responding to his sms in the day, when I would be in office. As if my silence wasn’t enough, the only time I would text him was when I would spot some hot guy, or some other guy would make a pass at me. The pain I was inflicting on him was getting reflected from the poems that he would write. Then one day he wrote to me:
I know u r really busy. Ever since u had been to GGN i came to terms with the fact that u have increased responsibilities, office, Gaylaxy, a lot to manage and have very little time to spare. I waited for my turn.....i never complained.
Of late i felt neglected, i am sure it was not intentional, but that does not change it. For about 20 days now we have not even talked properly, neither on sms nor on chat. However i always find that u talk to others as usual (call this a product of my selfish mind, but its true). You have the time to talk to people on FB, or sms chat with people, but never ever drop in a simple "Hi" or "Hello" on my inbox. You only seem to share ur experience on the ggn roads or some chat u had with someone (not that u shud not share these.....but restricting most communications to just these.......i am sorry!)
May be i expect a lot from relationships. May be its just the way we look at a relationship are different. For me my man gets the first priority in my life. Never do i spend a moment without sparing a thought for him, and also make it a point to drive home that point. I believe the person who has the first right to know whats happening in my life is my beau, and vice versa. Time is the biggest investment in a relationship. Specially so with LDR.
I am sure u will put an end to my silent suffering. i know u have a story to tell too. But i dont know, are you serious about me? Or am i eating up your personal space?
This mail was the first indication that nothing was going right in this relation. I should have broken up probably there and then itself. But, then, I got defensive. Why exactly? Because suddenly I realized that I was being dumped!! So I wrote back on how things had changed on my end and it wasn’t the way it used to be where I could chat with him all day long. Of course, I was saying the truth, but deep inside, I was also hiding the truth that “it wasn’t working out”. That wasn’t the only mail that I received. There were a couple more in the next few weeks, and then there would be his extremely pain filled poems. But I kept mum in all this. I wanted the relation to “die a natural death”, where instead of asking me all the reasons he would simply say that it isn’t working out.
to be contd...
