5 or 6...

I've lost track of the years now. Its just here as if it's always been. Or at least should have been. So now as another B'day rolls on by, i don't even feel like offering a wish since it would be insincere, at best, anyway.

So instead, I will do an obituary. Or at least chronicle the achievements and failures like obituaries of the great usually do, in an attempt to offer my gratitude.

I was fucked over by love. Like properly. Driven insane to the point that i not only contemplated suicide but held a gun in one hand and rat poison in another even as the cigarette dangled precariously between my lips and the noxious fumes of petrol i had sprinkled half-halfheartedly across my one room apartment filled my nostrils. and wondered which would be more poetic. Poetic. Not more painful, not more grotesque, but poetic. That's how far gone i was. Clearly, the blog did help fix that little problem.
But why did i react in such an extreme manner? Because my understanding of love was derived from... absolutely nothing. Personal 'feeling'. Indian movies. English books. Hardy and Keats and Gulzar. It took me turning into a writer to understand how full of shit writers are. We lie. and we do it well. Sometimes so well that we end up believing the lies we tell. And you know, if you are going to lie, you should be that good at it. Also if you are going to write. Because you can not write the truth. It sucks you dry of your very essence. Like this blog did to me. It just sat there, like a sponge, waiting to absorb all the blood i could bleed on to it to let me purge myself, to let me empty out the wound off all its puss and hopefully avoid the permanent infection. I did not avoid the permanent infection. I could not, and now I know why.
We assume, when we are children, that love will set us free. Free of what? Everything, actually. But primarily responsibility. We believe that once we find love, once we have managed to find love, all else falls into place automatically. The universe on the whole becomes 'tuned' in to us and our desires and just up and quits all its duties to pave our way with roses and candles.
It don't quite work that way and it takes the loss of love to make us realize that. But even so the love itself, the intensity of it, the madness of it, the sheer bravado with which it completely conquers us, never quite goes away. There are many reasons for this but the most important one is that love is a need. Its not an affliction, its not salvation, its a need, like sex and a warm bed in December. Its a need and we tend to take our sweet time in realizing this. It has to be managed, lies have to be told, dates have to be remembered because love as it actually exists in the world is like a job. The most rewarding job you will ever have but a job nonetheless.
So i wonder now what if i had realized all of this back when the one i loved still loved me. The answer is a funny one. Nothing. Because if i had realized all of this back then i would not have been in love to the desperate extent that the loss of it made me want to kill myself. And if i hadn't been that far gone i never would have come to understand how integral, how important and how unpoetic love really is. Its a closed loop paradox: you must get fucked to realize that what you got fucked over really wasn't worth getting fucked over in the first place.
Similarly i wonder what if i hadn't started this blog to help me heal back when i was too stupid to realize that its not love that drives you to kill yourself but a weak constitution and borderline schizophrenia. There's the obvious I wouldn't have come to know all the truly wonderful people i came to know through this blog (nod to: Naveen, Zainab, Sadaf, Sadaf, Mahwash, Neha, Ozzy, dear old Luci and many, many more). But that's not enough.
Catharsis then? Definitely! But not to the extent that justifies the existence of this blog, had I slept around enough i would have gotten over it eventually anyway and had a lot more fun doing it (not to mentions STDs).
So then what is it that justifies the creation of this blog, the pouring of my most honest truths for the world to see and laugh at?
Closure, baby. Closure. The closure that my beloved could not have provided even if she had tried because no matter what she said it would not have been enough. I had to muddle through the mess in my head to draw the conclusions which were right for me and the blog gave me the space i needed to store all those uncontainable feelings which if left in my head would surely have led to a debacle of bollywood proportions.
So how is it now? How do i feel? So many years and words later, am I over IT? Her? Us?
Not by a long shot. And here's the kicker: I don't want to be. I've been toeing that line ever since i started this blog and that could lead me to conclude that its all been for naught but if i drew that conclusion i would be ignoring the ease with which i am able to say that now. Its no longer a desperate attempt to hold on to something thats up and left the building. Its more an acknowledgment, an understanding of how integral that whole 'thang' was to my growth as a human being.
So then what is the conclusion? I will never be able to love as abundantly as I loved her and i will never be able to forget those days and nights. And that is how it ought to be because she is the only one i will ever love without knowing why.