Relationships take work. Sometimes a lot of effort, much more than you think you’ll have signed up for sometimes.
It’s even more taxing when you’re the only one in the relationship and there is a one-sided story to it all. Not because of the famous or infamous concept of ‘ek tarfa pyaar’ solidified by Karan Johar in one of his films, but because you found love in someone who simply wasn’t at the same place as you at the same time, or someone you thought was in love with you, until the day realization dawned and your heart does a somersault and results in Crash! Boom! Bang!
So now that it’s done, the heart’s been broken or maybe just scratched a bit, depending on how deeply you were invested in your significant other, a whole new challenge begins on how to nurse the wound. Sometimes you find a balm, sometimes a bandaid and sometimes even a safety pin to hold it all together. It’s not the best solution, but it helps you find the strength you need to move on, instead of the need to go flitting from one SO (accepted abbreviation for significant other) to another. It always helps to know and thereby acknowledge how you’re your own SO before anyone else comes along yet again with the promise of a proverbial FeviKwik when all there actually is, is the sparkle glue which glitters and shines but can’t stick anything long enough, including a glaze paper on a chart paper. (Read Refinery29’s science-backed theory on broken heart syndrome)
Dil-phenkh aashiq yet again:
In a post sometime last year, I wrote about the perils of being a dil-phenkh aashiq and what it entails. But the pertinent question that arises is, what did we learn from the last experience? In most of our cases and realities, nearly nothing. As age advances, societal needs to find a partner or a companion bears down on you so much that settling seems like the only available option. It also leads you to wear your vulnerability as a weakness that might open up more avenues for disappointment and then some. Being vulnerable is never a bad thing and anyone who has you believe otherwise is not your well-wisher. That is the ultimate truth.
However, controlling one’s emotions and their overflow or underwhelming responses to anything lies within. It seems easy but is a task to fine tune the instrument so your internal dialogue sounds like you’re bringing your A-game out whenever there is a conversation of any kind. And so, celebrate those wins, however small they seem. Maybe your life that is running like clockwork inspires someone to unclog their muddy path so the wheel never stops turning.
What about that thing called love?
Regardless of what our filmy education tells us, it’s perfectly alright to not have a partner whatever stage of life you’re in, whether ‘you want all those things’ or not. We are a byproduct of every other marketing gimmick the world has known and so, and mostly unknowingly, our conditioned brains react to the ‘special days’ and weeks (case in point: Valentine’s Day and week) and more just so some brand finds its customers, or retains them, depending on whichever stage of life they find you in.
Love is a feeling that, by design, makes you feel all warm and fuzzy or gives you butterflies in your stomach. I say ‘by design’ because of my chick-lit/chick-flick exposure over the years that makes me want to believe in a fairytale romance even though year-on-year, cynicism grows and proves why it’s a wasted pursuit. But pursue we do.
Here’s an animated lesson by TED-Ed on the philosophy behind why we love and things philosophers have said about love and what it does to us in the process:
He loves me, he loves me not:
Recent experiences (and the stories I hear) have proven that he does not actually love, luuurrvvee, luff you but is only emotionally and physically charged at the time of this statement. I strongly believe saying I love you to someone is a responsibility that most of us want to shirk off as fast as we can. Keep the carnal desires intact? Probably. But if you can’t deal with it, choose a different path lest your prospective SO looks for reasons to begin hating you, including a chapter on vanity about how you lack personality or have no idea about what to wear where you go, so and so forth.
Societal pressures also force us to follow a mould and stick to its set design, but vanity or not, please don’t wear a bralet or boxers or lesser clothes at an artsy place which is meant to respect art, artists and more. Fashion murder is valid and even the most carefree person will want to agree with that. You know how they say that the ‘no makeup/no effort look’ takes the most effort and time? For the uninitiated, there’s a legit fashion term for that. It’s called Sprezzaturra. Even though it began with men’s fashion, the term and its essence is real across all types of fashion and the statements they make.
And what about my heartbreak then?
At the risk of sounding dramatic, I almost quoted the Bigg Boss meme about Tommy and did a little jig too. Heartbreak or that scratch we spoke about is no ‘pawri’ (get the ref?), but maybe you’re confusing a scratch for crack or more. A friend who I consider my mentor explained the journey of a soul and how it travels across time and space, while we, people are just happening to it in a particular moment and nothing else. Maybe then, what we think is love and the quest for finding a soulmate is just a perennial journey of all souls who meet or not through a tryst with destiny and the karwaan just carries on as is.
Love and other attachments does cause an emotional stirring and everyone process it differently. Media and other channels tell us what it is like to find someone to love – physically and spiritually – but they don’t tell us the parallel story that runs in its underbelly. It is, as they say, for us to discover and then make it our own to add to the many stories we live in the life we have. It is a quest. Sometimes adventurous, sometimes a struggle. But a quest it is and we’ll find answers and more stories everywhere we look.
MasakaliBytes | Saumya Sharma 