D - Been thinking of you. I guess I miss you.
Me - As much as I like you, I can't spend my life in a cave.
D - Too bad ! Because I like you a lot and not in a platonic way.
Me - I did not mean "like" in the platonic sense either.
D - That's a real tragedy right there.
Me - You could say that again or come live in a house like a real person.
D - Shut up moron ! You know as well as I do that I live in a house.
Me - Mentally you live in a cave.
D - I have no home because I'm alone. The wide world is home.
Me - Get in the "together" state of mind and a home will follow.
D - Wish you were here, baby. We would make love.
Me - That would be very nice. It's a cold day here too.
D - Ah ! To have had a woman like you to marry, love and cherish !
Me - The best things in life demand a significant sacrifice.
D - Wish life were simpler.
D and I have known each other close to a year now and have yet to meet in person. It has not happened because we have asked ourselves the question "What's the point ?" and have found no compelling reason.
A year ago when I said, this is not going to work out, D snapped at me "Don't be daft. You know we'd be fab together. You gotta give us a chance. Don't walk away from a chance of real happiness"
I stayed on unable to resist the lure of real happiness - God knows I have missed that for a very long time. In time, we became close friends but our paths still don't converge. We can't even meet half the way without giving up on what is most fundamental to us. We can talk all day about everything under the sun, I can be my most natural self with D and know he likes it that way. In times of trouble, I have instinctively called him and he has been there for me.
He has a voice to die for - specially when he calls me still sleepy late on Sunday mornings. It can make the heart lurch. I tease him that he looks like a popular Indian actor and he says "I used to hear that a lot ten years ago - but not lately" I like it that he knows I find him physically attractive but does not make a big deal out of it.
Sometimes in life you come approximately close to finding "the one" and you still second guess yourself. You can't believe this could be for real. You seek contrary evidence. You know deep inside if you both rearranged your lives in almost torturous ways - it would bring you together and you would never once regret anything you did to make it work out.
Neither D nor I have done that. We have instead sought the path of lesser resistance and sought out "others" instead of giving in to "the one". Its no surprise then that we keep coming back to each other, tired angry, hurt and unhappy with our experiences elsewhere and wish a magic wand would do for us what we are not willing or perhaps able to do for ourselves.
An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
Comments
Very true. Especially after one bad experience (if a person married despite parental opposition), the tendency to second-guess becomes second nature.
Hope you and D can work it out.
Priya.