Miss N and Mr M :)

Today's post is dedicated to two people who've held me together like glue in the past 2 months--Miss N and Mr M.

Miss N is one of the most difficult people I know. She'll turn up her snooty nose at you, call you an idiot and bully you. If you survive all that intact, you've got a friend that will literally sit on people and pummel them if they hurt you, no questions asked. It's refreshing to have people like that in your life. People who will call your nemesis a 'chudail' without waiting for explanations. The other side of the coin doesn't really matter to Miss N. Unless you've committed murder or something.

I think somewhere inside, we all still cling on to our childhood need to be loved and accepted unconditionally. I have friends and acquaintances who say that every relationship is independent of every other relationship, but I don't see how that actually works. The only thing I see coming out of such an on-the-fence kind of attitude towards relationships is that you belong to no one. How can I tell you that it feels like someone drove a knife into my gut when I can't be sure that you weren't the one who handed her the knife?

With Miss N, there is no ambiguity like that. In some ways, she's the exact opposite of me. While she believes in wearing her heart on the sleeve and saying exactly what she feels, I'm more into keeping up pretences. I can't imagine expressing my feelings as openly as she does. Especially to people capable of hurting me. Any sign of pain, fear and need will be hidden under layers of assumed indifference, carelessness and, most often, a frustratingly uncommunicative attitude. In some ways, Miss N has helped me loosen up. She helps me talk about the things that hurt me instead of being vague and non-committal about them. She makes it okay to be sad. Whether it's around her or alone. And she's helping me wade through that giant, Olympic-sized pool called feelings. Thank you, N. :)

Next, Mr M. Mr M is THE most amazing man I know. Second to absolutely no one. He is uncomplicated, sweet and as strong as a rock. His feelings about things and people are as unambiguous as Miss N's. Which is probably why both of them approve of the other's role in my life so much. Mr M is just there for you. Always. Once he's decided you're important to him, there's no confusion in his mind that your happiness is his responsibility. No pain is too great, no effort too much to make. If Miss N makes it okay to feel sad, Mr M makes it okay to ask for help. I'm not someone given to seeking support and crying on shoulders, but with Mr M, it's easy to just let yourself go. It's easy to let him take care of things, and of you. Ever since he came into my life, I can't think of a time when I needed someone and he wasn't there. The only times I was alone was when I chose to be. For a life that that attracts drama the way mine has this past year, that's saying something.

But the MOST fantastic thing about Mr M is his way of dealing with changes. In the one year that I've known him this closely, we've gone from dating casually, to becoming friends, to me moving in with him, to going on a break, to getting engaged, to calling it off, to becoming friends again and finally, to him finding The Right One for himself. In a lot of ways, it was a waiting game for me. After every major shift in our relationship, I thought that this would be it, that our time was up. Left to me, our relationship would have collapsed after the very first 180-degree swing. But M is not someone who'll just leave it to you. There are few people I know who apply the 'if it's important, it's worth fighting for', rule so wholly in their lives. Long ago I'd told someone that I was the kind of girl who needed to be sought. I needed to be singled out. M understands this need of mine. So through the peaks and valleys of our relationship, he's made sure that I never question my importance in his life. He’s the only guy I’ve dated who is still on my speed dial. It isn't an ego thing for him, to be needed by a girl who is so constitutionally opposed to being needy in any way. For M, it's a friend thing.

I love the respect with which he acknowledges our relationship. It forces others around us to do the same. I wouldn’t have realised how much it matters if I hadn’t been feeling so cheap and trashy lately. Even though we didn’t work out, M’s treated me with so much grace and dignity that it’s impossible not to love him. Or feel the fierce loyalty that I’ve learnt to feel for him. I don’t know what the future will be like. I don’t know whether we’ll continue being such an active part of each other’s life in the days and changes to come. But I know we’ll always be friends. Because loyalty like that lasts forever.

Recently, I landed myself in a huge financial mess. I didn't know what I was going to do or how I was going to deal with it. I can't remember who I called first, Miss N, or Mr M. But unsurprisingly, both of them gave me the exact same advice. Today, Mr M took the whole sordid mess off my hands. And Miss N did her best to trump skankola, as we call her. Some day, I want to be a friend like these two. :)