The day a child died

A friend of mine believes that to be able to experience happiness in its purest form, you need to retain a part of you that brings out your inner child. And no matter how hard you have to fight to keep that light burning, it must be done. It could be their ability to see the the light at the end of the darkest tunnel, their ability to laugh at the silliest things in life, the simplistic way they look at the world… It could be anything.

When he asked me what was childlike about me, it took me a while to figure out the answer. I don’t remember how I found it, but I realised that my idea of friendship was exactly the way it used to be two decades ago. Was, because a few days ago, the last of my childhood was snatched away from me.

When I was a child, my world used to be black and white. There were colours, but no shades. No permutations and combinations. And definitely no greys. It used to be simple, and I used to be happy. I’ve always thought that relationships are like colours. Some are red—bright, unforgettable and hard to miss. Others are brown—dull, uninspiring and insipid. As you grow up, your understanding of relationships changes... Just like your understanding of colours does. Categories start expanding and we begin to slot colours, and people, into smaller and smaller boxes. So there’s no longer just a purple; there are violets, indigos, lavenders and lilacs. Similarly, the blanket called friendship begins to shrink, or perhaps our requirements increase as we grow. What once used to encompass the whole spectrum of people that we liked outside our family, begins to be divided into frenemies, acquaintances, friends with benefits, colleagues and whatnot.

Very few people escape the categorisation in our heads. Fewer still become our confidantes…people that we choose to share our lives, hopes and fears with. Understandable. The world we live in demands that we do it. Our instinct for self-preservation demands that we do it. I believe our expectations from people are directly proportional to the tightness of the categories that we slot people into. Just like we know exactly how we’ll look in a particular shade of pink, we have very specific expectations from people once we’ve assigned them a category.

My friend says that our world is more accepting, less judgemental, accommodating and all those supposedly nice things. I think we call these qualities ‘nice’ simply because we don’t have a choice. We can’t hold onto our childlike assumptions because we’re scared that we’ll find ourselves alone if we do. Are we more accommodating out of love, or because we're scared to ask for better? Because somewhere, we can't fathom why anyone would want to give us more...? We’re convinced that if given the chance, people will hurt us. And so we start all relationships expecting to be hurt. Is that acceptance or settling?

I do it too. I have incredibly little faith in people and their goodness. I’m suspicious, wary and a little autistic when it comes to forming close bonds. I expect people to fail. Most of them live upto that expectation. Except my friends. I set very high standards for them. And so far, I’ve been mostly lucky. There had been bumps along the road, but my car had never crashed.

I call few people friends, but when I do, I believe it will last forever and ever. All other relationships come with a shelf-life, a sell-by date, but not friendships. Sure, sometimes things turn sour… Close friends start to get on my nerves and it sometimes takes months for the feeling to pass. But eventually, it always does. Friendship doesn’t come with the guarantee that you’ll never be hurt, but I honestly believed that friends don’t hurt friends unless they can help it… That if they could, they would protect our hearts from feeling pain. I believed the natural instinct was to protect, to shield, to help your soul to heal… Not destroy whatever is left of it after the world is done sawing through it… It never occured to me to think otherwise. There was only this one definition… As timeless and unquestionable as E=MC² .

I live in a ‘me first’ world… A world where the selfish gene always overpowers the giving one. In all other aspects of my life, I’ve learnt to accept, even imbibe, the rule. But not when it comes to my friends. The birthday parties might have been replaced by bachelorettes, but I’d still do everything in my power to make an important day that much more special. It’s as much for me as for them, because there’s no better feeling than knowing that I put that smile on my friend’s face. That joy is pure.. Undiluted and unadulterated. You don't want anything from it but for your friend to be the happiest in the world for that one moment. That's how I felt as a child and that's how I feel even now.

I thought I was well within my rights to ask for presents and expect to get them… That if I want a hug, I should be able to demand it… I truly believed that friendship was the only relationship that came without games… That there was no artifice, no subtexts, no reading between the lines. It was the only part of my life that was still black and white… And the colours were all solid and dependable… No shadows or shades lurking to catch me unawares.

But now I’ve realised that it’s time to let those beliefs go. That the blacks and whites were only a spectre of my imagination. People like that don’t exist. Even friends, given the right reason, will abandon you without a warning. I know now, because it has happened. Through all the warnings, all the doubts and all the inconsistencies, I refused to give in to the grown-up in me. I kept thinking that I’d given up on all relationships, I couldn’t give up on this one as well. And now I’m left feeling like a fool. And a trail of ‘I told you sos’ behind me. And questions that I’d never imagined I’d have to find answers for.

Right now, I feel raw, naked and exposed. And I feel a pain that I’ve never felt before… Because so far, this part of my heart had been protected by bubble-wrap. But now I know that friends don’t always protect you… That they’re not incapable of doing bad things to you… That if the stakes were made high enough, they would be okay with putting tears in your eyes.

In the last couple of days, I feel like my world has come crashing around my ears. I’d tried so hard, fought so hard to hold onto one part of me… I’d thought that if I could hold onto this one belief, stay true to one part of my old self, I’d be okay… That I’d be able to find my way back if I ever wanted to. But I guess it’s time to grow up. I guess it’s time to bury the child in me. Goodbyes always upset me… No many how many times I say it, it doesn’t get easier. But it’s only been this tough once before. How do you accept the death of the most treasured part of yourself?

I can’t remember the exact words, but Mark Twain once s aid something to the effect that as a child, I could remember anything… even the things that didn’t happen. As I grew older, I could only remember the things that did. Because they come with proof… I need proof too, now. There’s no blind faith anymore. No closing my eyes and jumping off the cliff, unless I’ve packed in the parachute myself…

It’s time to open up the door to let the greys in.

This is my last blog post… The last time I’ll let anyone peep into my heart and see exactly what’s in it… You’re one of the five people who will ever read this post. Because I think I owe you an explanation. And I know I’d never be able to say the words… Thankyou for living up to my sky-high expectations of you. I must’ve been a difficult friend, with all the dos and don’ts… Thankyou for everything you’ve done for me… It meant the world to me.

What do I want to be when I grow up?

I used to ponder over this question a lot while growing up. The problem was not that I didn’t know. The problem was that I knew too well. I’ve known from the time I was 13 that writing was all I really wanted to do. Even as mum tried to get me to pursue a degree in fine art and papa piled brochures of economics and MBA classes on my writing table, I always just knew.

I thought I’d stop asking myself the question after I landed my first job. It would be ridiculous not to, right? Because I’d managed to battle my way into the industry I’d wanted to be a part of. Small victory, but it mattered. And yet, the questions didn’t stop. Instead, their decibel levels just became higher.

Today, the sound of that question is deafening.

Because suddenly, I don’t want any of the things I thought I wanted. Suddenly, the definitions all seemed to have changed.

I’ve often been told, by people who claim to understand me, that I’m a very emotional person. The definition always makes me uneasy, but I’ve learnt to live with it. Because deep down, buried beneath the niceties, I think I’m a rather cold-hearted person. Because I find it extremely easy to detach myself from people—friends, colleagues, boyfriends, lovers…

There comes a point in every relationship when you throw in the towel. Decide that this is it, the person is not worth my time, energy and investment anymore. For some people that point comes after being repeatedly hurt by someone, after giving the person one chance too many, forgiving the person one time too many… For me, that point comes when the person starts to bore me. Emotionally or intellectually. And I think I reach that point too quickly, too easily and, a lot of the times, too painlessly. It’s frightening when you can immediately disassociate from people and your feelings for them. Out of sight and out of mind. It really is that easy. Which is why the definition bothers me… because THIS is NOT what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I wanted to be a good writer, good daughter, good sister, good girlfriend and eventually, a good wife even. But recently I’ve learned that it’s not easy being all these things, when inside, all you really care about is yourself and what you want from life for yourself. Not what your parents dream about for you, not what you think are the right aspirations to have, and certainly not what you’ve been told is the path to a successful, happy life is.

When you’re in an all-girls school, it takes you a while to understand that not all guys are like the SRK from the movies. It takes a while before you find out that most guys, are, well, assholes, to resort to cliches. But before you catch on, you go through the process of pointless discussions Love, or at least your idiotic idea of what it supposedly feels like, is a big part of all these many dreams and discussions. I went through the routine as well. At 16, I was convinced that I would marry my then boyfriend, make babies with him and live happily ever after.

Somewhere down the road, those convictions lost their grip. And I don’t say that bitterly, because I’ve realised that those convictions were never really my own. These were just the done things to want, to aspire to. Which is why, by the time I found out what really I wanted to be when I grow up, the question began to worry, and even scare me a little. Because the answer was not something that I expected.

I’ve been in a lot of semi-relationships. Lots of people meant lots of breakups. Predictably, at first it hurt terribly and I thought I’d never get over it. But then I learnt to be circumspect. I realised that I was only hurt because the person had taken away my idea of what a relationship should be like. I understood that the hurt was only about my ego, about the self-absorbed belief that every person I’m with should love me, that the universe owed me that. But most of us don’t understand that love isn’t an inalienable right, that it’s perfectly normal to go through life without ever truly being ‘in love’ with someone. And without having someone be ‘in love’ with us.

The fuckup happens when what you don’t have begins to completely eclipse what you do. How many of us can truly, and without a flicker of doubt, put love above all other things in life? I know I can’t. I’ve realised that unlike my mum, I couldn’t care less about finding the guy who I could make a marriage work with, that unlike my sister, I didn’t want a man who can take care of me, and unlike many of my friends, I couldn’t care less about signing and sealing the deal. I don’t care about the three big Ms in a single girl’s life: marriage, monogamy and money. The order might be interchangeable, but eventually, it generally boils down to this.

The things is, I like the rustle of money, but only when I’ve made it myself. I like the feel of power, but only when it’s mine. And I like being in love, but only when it’s convenient. This is NOT what I thought I’d be like when I grow up. I didn’t think running my show would matter so much to me, I didn’t know it would be so easy for me to dismiss people so completely and I definitely didn’t think I would be such a single girl—in my head and my heart.

And then last week, an out-of-the-blue conversation with a dear friend made me realise that self-discovery shouldn’t bother me so much. Because so what if the world taught you to live, speak and want a certain kind of things, so what if you now want the things you never thought of before, at least now you know what was going to make you happy. Imagine following dreams that were never yours. Imagine the crushing disappointment when you realise that after all the tradeoffs and tax deductions, you’re still nowhere close to finding fulfilment.