A Few Random Thoughts On This Topic

Ah well. So here we are. Twenty-seven years on this planet. Four years of working with the bank. Two years and nine months of being single.

What’s been happening since I last wrote on this blog? Nothing very much, to be honest.

Things are much the same. I spend too much time at the office. I don’t do very much outside office. And I don’t meet new people. Not that I don’t want to, of course, but I don’t get to.

And of course, I see Alice and her husband at work almost every day.

Funny thing is, it doesn’t make me feel anything very much anymore. My eye is still drawn to her, but that’s half out of curiosity. And a good bit out  of schadenfraude. You see, she’s put on rather a lot of weight lately. Her butt, which was always generously proportioned for her frame, has surpassed itself in recent times. Literally!

I suspect she’s expecting. And it’s a tiny bit odd, because it reminds me of the fact that we’re all getting older. Growing up. Definitely past the stage where we could behave like giddy sixteen-year-olds.

But yeah, most of the time now, seeing her (or her hubby) doesn’t make me hurt, or feel bad. Sure, I do cheerfully curse him inwardly most of the time. And yeah, on the inside, I grin an evil grin and thank my stars for having saved me from a fat wife whenever I see her. But even though I still feel a tad wistful from time to time, I’m not hurting very much, at work.

But since nothing seems to ever really come without its price, this too might have a downside. I think I’m becoming rather numb on the inside, to matters of the heart.

This is going to sound terribly melodramatic, but I’m not sure I can really open myself up to someone else, or give myself as completely to someone else as I could before, anymore.

Alright, on second thoughts, maybe I can. But I’m quite sure that I’ve completely forgotten how to, so I surmise it’ll take a bit of remembering.

This is because I’ve become awfully used to being with myself. Not having anyone to talk to about what I’m really feeling, not really opening up to anyone, not having anyone to hold when I fall asleep. Just being wholly and completely by myself.

After a point of time, I think you just put up these really high walls around you. High, and thick. I mean, how much can you let yourself get hurt? Even if you’re not making a conscious effort, maybe somewhere your psychological immune system is working overtime to get your strengthen your defenses against the  world. And maybe sometimes it works too well.

So I’ve met a bunch of girls; seven, if my memory serves me correctly (I’m a tad buzzed, hence the uncertainty. Else I’d know for sure.) I’m shortlisting profiles suggested by this matrimonial agency that my parents went and signed up with. I’ll probably be getting in touch with girls on matrimonial websites too, soon.

But I really don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m not sure I’ll feel even a moderate amount of attraction towards any of the girls whom I meet through this arranged marriage process. I might just end up marrying a girl whom I don’t feel particularly strongly about, but who ticks all the right boxes. Purely because that’ll be better than the alternative; which is dying alone. And not having very much sex. If at all. 

Ah well.

 

Crap!

This whole arranged marriage thing is starting to scare the living daylights out of me. :-|

My parents seem to be merrily digging up girls all over the place. I'm being asked to call girls and hang out with girls more often than I ever thought I'd be. Today morning, I was told about a certain girl someone had spoken to my mom about... And then today evening, I was on the phone with her dad. 

This is scaring the bejesus out of me! I don't know what to do or how to behave in such situations!

Good grief, this is NOT the way it's supposed to happen! This is not what's supposed to happen with me! I'm supposed to meet a girl, be attracted to her, woo her, hang out with her, tell her I like her, have her tell me she likes me, get into a relationship with her, fall in love with her, get down on one knew and propose to her, and THEN marry her. 

I am NOT supposed to start the journey towards marrying a girl by talking to her father! No!!!

Sigh. No fair. Where is the line of girls maaroing lines on me that I was promised all through my education? :-| 

More and more often nowadays, I'm starting to feel I made the biggest mistake of my life by letting the ex walk away. 

 

Fun Friday... Not.

So here I am, spending another Friday evening at home. Or rather, I spent most of the evening at work, and now I'm spending Friday night at home. 

I was at work till about 9.45 today. I could've left earlier; I could've worked more efficiently and with more enthusiasm, but I simply didn't have the motivation too. It's not like I had anywhere to go, or anyone to meet. 

Being single is really starting to get to me. I have no enthusiasm for going out and meeting friends. And seeing the ex leave work, and knowing that she's probably going to be sleeping with her boyfriend later tonight (they might be in bed together right now, in fact) doesn't help. 

I don't see any point in meeting up with friends in my free time when it doesn't help me meet new people (that is, girls). Which is why I've become quite the recluse in life lately. Hanging out with the b-school gang is alright, they're a nice bunch of people, but it's not a huge amount of fun either. Quant God is busy with the preparations for his marriage, and I hardly meet him nowadays. That doesn't leave anyone else. 

Oh, and my parents are starting to get into the act with the whole Arranged Marriage thing. They're telling me about eligible girls that they're hearing about from other people, and they're even trying to figure out the scene with matrimonial websites. Needless to say, this isn't doing very much for my state of mind in life. 

I don't want to have an arranged marriage. The thought scares me. I don't want to marry a girl if both of us don't really really like each other. 

I often wonder nowadays, did I make the biggest mistake of my life by letting the ex get away from me? I could've tried to hold her back, I might even have succeeded... But I was afraid, I didn't see myself marrying her, marrying into her hardcore Christian family. So I let her walk away. 

And now here I am, two years later, still alone, desperately lonely. I don't like looking at myself in the mirror very much nowadays, because I always look unhappy. My eyes are twin pools of sorrow, and I wonder how my unhappiness isn't obvious to everyone around me. But then, clearly most people are much less empathetic than I am. 

Whatever will happen to me? What if I end up in a loveless marriage, where I'll forever regret having let go of the one time in my life when I had the chance to be with someone I really wanted to be with, and who wanted to be with me too?

Sigh. :-|

A Rather Terrible State Of Mind

For the past couple of weeks now, I've not only been rather terribly unhappy in life, but also on an awfully short fuse. I seem to be losing my cool at the drop of a hat. 

I can understand why, though... As if having the ex sitting fifteen feet in front of me wasn't bad enough, her boyfriend has now moved to the row right behind me. So I've been pretty much surrounded by them. 

They usually leave work between 7 and 7.30 pm, within ten minutes of each other. Of course, I know that they're surreptitiously meeting up in the lane near our office where people park their cars, and that she gets into his car there and goes back with him. I know because that's exactly what she and I used to do when we were seeing each other. And then I stay there at work, till past 9 or 10 pm. 

You can probably imagine what it feels like to see your ex and her significant other leave work at an hour when most other people leave, and then stay there working away for another few hours yourself. It makes you feel like an absolutely hopeless loser, without even the semblance of a life. It deeply rubs in the fact that you're alone and lonely in life, and that you have nothing but an empty room to go back to at night. 

Oh, and I've been brutally overworked at the office, lately. Something or the other keeps coming up, and everything is always urgent, so I've been having to work terribly long hours, over the past few months.

The work is stressful, I'm spending far too long at the office, I'm alone, I'm desperately lonely, and having to see (and now hear) the ex and her boyfriend every day at work is just rubbing the salt with a vengeance into my wounds. 

I don't get out of the house much nowadays either, because I suddenly don't seem to have very many friends in Bombay to hang out with. Quant God's busy sorting out his marriage scene, Tigger has her own set of friends whom she hangs out with, spending a weekend evening with Papa Bear and Football Fan hugely depresses me (because spending a Saturday night with two men makes me feel like an absolute loser), and I don't have much enthu to meet up with the b-school gang any more, because it's always the same old people, and I never meet anyone new, and they aren't exactly close friends of mine to begin with. 

Sigh. I think I'm more stressed out than I've ever been in my life. I'm on an emotional rollercoaster, I get angry really easily, and I'm terribly lonely. My hair's started falling out at a scary rate again, and I'm spotting a lot of white hairs too, lately. 

What do I need to do to be happy again? :-|

The Story So Far

Where do I start? Well, I suppose the beginning is as good a place to begin as any other...

The first time I had a proper crush on a girl happened back in class 7 or 8. There was this girl whom I thought was awfully cute; she was this petite little thing, soft-spoken and demure, and I developed quite a thing for her. There's one thing I particularly remember about her... Back then, this TV series called Due South had just started being shown on Star World. One of the central characters on the show was a Canadian Mountie (a policeman in the Royal Canadian Mounted Force), who was delightfully old-fashioned in all the best ways - he was unfailingly polite, brave in a completely unassuming way, and inherently chivalrous. I was hugely impressed by him; and tried to take after him in whatever ways I could. One of his oft-repeated phrases was 'Thank you kindly', which he used to use in place of a regular 'Thanks'. So I started saying this too, whenever I wanted to thank someone. There was one time at school when I said 'Thank you kindly' to this girl, and then she very earnestly said 'You're welcome kindly' back to me. She most probably had no idea why on earth I was saying that, but she still tried to reply in kind, and I found that terribly cute... :-)

I was never able to muster up the courage to tell her that I liked her, though, and I was moved to a different section the next year, after which I saw much less of her at school. It was just a crush, though, so it passed fairly quickly.

The next time I really liked a girl happened in class 11. Our sections were shaken up again at the start of the year, as per the streams we had chosen, and I ended up in the Commerce section, as did this girl. In just a few months, I managed to develop a fairly serious crush on her. I did ask this one out soon after, but in a rather ham-fisted way. Of course, that crashed and burnt, and I spent the next two years wistfully thinking about her every time I felt lonely in life.

A side note, here: I think class 11 was when I first understood what loneliness really meant. I'd never been in a relationship with a girl, and I'm not sure I even knew what it was like to be in one, but somehow, I was convinced that I needed to be in one. I had this terribly strong need for companionship; and an awfully strong tendency to feel lonely.

Gosh, this is getting awfully long-winded, isn't it? Alright, let me try and go over the rest of the story in brief.

There was this other girl who'd joined my school in class 11; whom I guess I could call a friend of mine by the time we finished school. I didn't think we'd stay in touch afterward, but somehow, not only did we end up doing that, but we also ended up becoming rather good friends.

In the second year of college, there was one time when we ended up making out. After it happened for the second time, I felt rather guilty about it; it felt wrong to be making out with a girl (and a good friend, at that), without us officially seeing each other. So I 'asked her out', as the phrase goes, and we were suddenly in a relationship.

It was nice while it lasted, but then we both got into our respective bschools, and then things got really hard. We were fighting a lot, and one day, in the middle of a particularly bad one, she said, "Maybe we should just break up." And I replied, "Yes, maybe we should."

So that was that, then. I like to think that it was a mutual breakup, but I rather think I hurt the girl, which is something I regret till this day.

Then in the first year of bschool, I started talking to this girl in the senior batch. She was smart, empathetic, expressive, and had a great sense of humour. She was very well-read, had a blog on which she wrote really well, and was kinda cute, too. We starting hanging out a lot, and before I knew it, I was in a state where I liked her.

We ended up having this conversation where I told her I liked her, and she told me she liked me too. Till this day, I think that was one of the nicest things I've ever heard... *wry smile* In all honesty, this was the first time I'd really liked someone who liked me back, so it was pretty awesome for me... So we were officially seeing each other, then.

...And then she broke up with me, precisely 19 days later. Why? There was this ex of hers, someone she'd referred to a number of times. I knew deep down that she wasn't over him, but did that stop me from pursuing her? No, the lovestruck male is a particularly dumb creature. So she said that wasn't ready for another relationship, and that was the end of that.

Or so I thought.

After a few weeks of awkwardness and not talking very much, we slowly starting talking and hanging out again... Her final placements were drawing near, and I was quite a support for her, even though I say so myself. I was there for her at a time when not too many other people were, and I did help her deal with the stress she was going through.

On the night the placements ended, I drove her and some of her friends back to her PG. She stayed back in the car after they went inside, and we sat there and talked for about half an hour. I hadn't slept much in the past four days, and I was awfully tired; even holding my head up seemed hard. And she was smiling this heart-breakingly pretty smile at me. After a point, I couldn't take it anymore; so I leaned across and kissed her.

She responded slowly at first, and then passionately; clearly, she had been waiting for me to make that move. We kissed for what seemed like forever, and I was lost in her. Even today, that's the best kiss I've ever had.

Over the next few days, things were awkward between us again. Then we went for a music concert, and she came back to my place at night, and we ended up making out again. After that, we were pretty much back together.

The next few months passed in one happy blur, even though our semester-end exams happened towards the end of that time. Then on the day the exams got over, she told me she didn't see a future for us, and broke up with me again.

This time, it was for good; and after two months, she was back with her ex. They eventually married each other, a year later. And that was really the end of that.

I spent the next year and half hurting, in the process of getting over her. I discovered that I was rather awful at breakups, and that it takes me forever to get over someone.

The second year of my MBA passed, and I ended up coming to Bombay to to work here. I was still unhappy and lonely, and convinced I would never find anyone like her again.

Then after a few months, I noticed this pretty girl at my office. Initially, I just thought she was cute, and left it at that. But I soon became more interested in her. Out of sheer serendipity, we ended up getting more than once chance to interact, and I soon developed a solid crush on her.

I wooed her with enthusiasm, and it so happened that I found out after a few months that she liked me too. We spent some time together, but then had to stop, because she was Christian, and we didn't think anything could have worked out between us. She had this good friend, a Christian boy, who was based in the US, but who was coming to India for a month, and they had apparently decided to give a relationship a shot, so she and I stopped talking and hanging out when he arrived in India.

I spent the next two months being miserable again. But we couldn't stay away from each other, and she soon broke up with him, though for reasons other than the equation she and I had - or so she said, which I like to believe.

Of course, we started going out with each other again. And we lasted six months, which was the longest I've ever been in a relationship. It was awesome, while it lasted, and I was happy.

And then she broke up with me.

Six weeks later, she started hanging out with this other guy from my office, who had been pursuing her. Two months later, they were officially seeing each other. Today, a year and a half later, they're still seeing each other.

I'm unhappy, and terribly lonely, and I hate being single and alone. I have to see the ex at work every day, and it's like salt in my wounds, a painful reminder of the fact that I'm alone and unhappy.

I've been single for a year and eight months now, but I've met very few new girls in that time, none of whom anything happened with.

So that's the story, so far.

Hello World

Testing: the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.