Lolita: 2 or None of My Business?

I’m a very firm believer in people doing what they want with their lives and in their bedrooms, it is absolutely no one else’s business. Of course, that they must be consenting adults who are not harming anyone or anything else, goes without saying. Which is precisely why I was firmly on the fence about the Milind Soman drama.

Relationship Status: It's Complicated

Vertex

Smoke.

The hauntingly compeling memories of her swirl around me.

We grew up together - neighbours at five, friends at ten, lovers at fifteen, and soul mates at twenty five. With her by my side, I never needed much else. Struggles and sadness came and went, but nothing seemed too much to handle, for at the end of the day, I had her to go back home to. Friends flitted in and out of our lives, family was constant but distant, other suitors few and far between. Everything started and ended in the other, for us.

We weren’t physically very attached - I didn’t feel the need to intertwine my fingers with her long, sensitive ones, or feel the warmth of her skin, the slightly pepperminty breath she blew my way playfully, or twist the locks of her long tresses absently. I didn’t hug her for a second more than deemed appropriate by propriety, nor did I smile my hungry smiles at her too often. Our long, lingering kisses were always secreted away from the world. Not that we were ashamed of anything, we simply liked the comfortable niche we had made for ourselves, our world within the world where nothing, no one, marred the perfection we perfected from having eternity together.

But our souls - our souls were stitched together. Like I needed her to be able to breathe. Like my presence was her elixir of life. Like we both had one leg each and had to hold on to each other to be able to stand up straight. The benefits of knowing each other through all stages of change, I could complete her sentences and she could predict my impulsive moods. I stocked the fridge with the kale chips she loved, while she picked up Rebecca once every three months from the library, never questioning why I loved the book so much. 

There are couples in love, in relationships, in marriages. And then there was us. 

We argued over something silly - I didn’t like the cats getting inside the bed covers while she wouldn’t stop sneaking them in. For warmth, she said. For cuddles, she said. Voices were raised quickly enough, though. What started as a silly argument ended up as a splatter of questions on the blank white kitchen walls that shook the very foundations of our relationship, of our bond. She blurted out that she felt trapped. I recoiled instantly. That brought pity to her eyes which made me recoil even more. I lost control over my tongue and the words that came out aren’t words that ever will be erased, from my memory or hers. 

A week later, she kissed me one last time before she packed her owl clock and paisley-printed spoon. And she took the long meandering path out of the house, to the bus stop. And onward. 

What I applaud myself and her over, when the pain subsides for a bit, is for having known when to end things, for not having dragged it out. Like the clean swipe of a new knife that severs with medical accuracy. 

Now, I’m walking down the aisle of a church I have never been in before, in a dress that is uncomfortable and unbecoming of me, with people I have never seen before in my life surrounding me, to marry a man I do not love. The memories of her linger in my being, the taste of her full lips, the crook of her heady smile, the stubborn fringe of hair, the quiet little winter snores, the warmth of her fingers, the fart jokes only we could find funny, the love in her eyes. 

The memories lingered in my head as my lips repeated my wedding vows after the minister.

Linking to Three Word Wednesday

Iris

I lay crying for a long time. A long, long time. For the first time in years, I felt like a failure. His shirt was drenched through and yet my tears didn’t cease. 

And he spoke not a word.

Amidst my gut-wrenching sobs, I wished he wouldn’t give me any space now, I wished he would do something to cheer me up, to say that I am wrong to think such things, that I ain’t no failure. 

But he spoke not a word.

His comforting presence and the aroma of his woody soap reminded me of all that I had, all that I am. I finally found solace in the fact that even if I had nothing else, I had him. I might be a failure but for now I had him.

And that made up for a lot of things. 

He still spoke not a word. 

My sniffles died down and I cracked a reluctant smile... I’d always been this mercurial in my moods swings. One good cry and I could always put it behind and try to get back on the figurative horse. The darkness ebbed as I found courage in the flimsiness of the proof that showed I was a failure. 

He finally pulled my face to his and forced me to look at him. 

Fresh tears threatened to brim out at the weight of his unrelenting, almost harsh, gaze when he firmly said…

“That is enough. You’re perfect. And you’re mine.”

The problems weren’t solved, the darkness still remained, I was still afraid of the ghosts that haunted me but I knew I was not alone. That someone had faith in me. 

“When everything is made to be broken, I just want you to know who I am”

Lucky are those who have someone that has such unshakeable faith in you, especially in those moments when you doubt yourself.  

P.S: Fiction after a long, long time. Not perfect, not even close. But I’m glad I tried. 
What can I say, the Goo Goo Dolls are inspirational.

When The Dust Settles...

You know that period when all the initial excitement in a relationship has faded?

You are past bending over backwards for his every little need, you get over daydreaming of various scenarios of the future, you get over marveling the way his melting brown eyes seem to twinkle at one of your inside jokes?

When he’s done wearing crisp shirts and reverts back to his grunge look, when he’s past centering you in his world and starts becoming vague during one of your endless yakking sessions?

The seemingly endless hours on the phone starts dwindling to just an hour at night?

That’s when the real mettle of the relationship is tested.

You feel he’s changed.

Earlier all he needed was you. Now he’s finding a way to balance his social life with you. Earlier he used to be supportive of every little thing you do, even painting your nails black. Now he questions the sanity of getting that fourth piercing you always wanted. Earlier he never felt the need to talk to other girls, not even friends. Now he justifies his need to have female friends just as you do.

Earlier he loved every dress you put on, his eyes shone when you twirl around after spending hours dressing up for him.

 Now you neither feel the need to dress up nor does he notice.

Masks come off.

Faults become apparent, ones that you previously saw but conveniently chose to ignore.

Fights become the order of the day. Not the cute ones, the ones where you ‘roothify’ and he ‘manaofies’. The real, bitter fights.

Monotonous patterns of conversations set in.

Egos start clashing.

Somewhere between all the name-calling, crying, hating and tentative making up, you reach a point where you question the meaning of your relationship.

You drag on with all the doubts in your head, first trying to recapture the magic swearing to yourself that it’s just a phase and you’ll get over the rough patch, later resign to the fact that it’ll never be the same again.

You wonder what you are doing wrong. What he’s doing wrong.

Then one chilly day, your world is knocked over. You are rudely awakened to the fact that your world is not cozy and all people are not angels like you believe them to be. You get the worst end of a crappy deal, you lose friends and your family very nearly disowns you. You realize that pain can sap the life out of you, that you can feel your insides dying slowly.

You go through the worst nightmare of your life and come out the other end, fragile and shaken to your very roots.

He sees you at your worst, sees you make mistakes and stumble, sees you broken and curled up into a tight ball of hurt and he stood by, holding you, saying nothing. 

You gave him the option of walking away, he chose not to take it.

Instead he stuck like a burr to your side.

And you realize that the only hand that held on tight to yours and never let go, was his. The only shoulder you leant in on without having to worry about betrayal, was his. The only person who even listened to what you had to say, was him. The only one who defended you, like a tiger protecting his pride from the hyenas, was him.

And he says, we’ll get through this. We will.

Not ‘you’. But ‘we’.

That’s when you know that it’s not the rosy tinted glasses and the eternally mushy blog posts that make up love. It’s not the sweet-nothings or the wild want that makes up love. It’s not the talking on the phone 24x7 and knowing where the other is all the time that makes up love. It’s not even the frequent ‘I love you’s’, the diminishing numbers of which had you worried. 

Nope, all that might be part of what makes it beautiful but it's most certainly not love.

Love is that when you know it’s much more.

Love is when you go through fire and emerge as two halves of a whole.

P.S: I'm not going through any dark pain, unless you count a nagging headache and this is not my personal story or anything:P This was supposed to be a mushy love story, just ended up veering a bit to the dark side.