Conversations Are Not That Safe, Not Always

It begins safe enough.

You may be colleagues, or neighbours, or workout buddies. You get along.

You can be sarcastic with each other. You mutually despise Tina the arrogant co-worker (or Maya — the horrible woman on the fourth floor, or Adil — the man who lives in the gym to make everyone else feel bad).

You make each other laugh, and share some sort of tips and tricks to life in amusing anecdotes about your day.

“We barely qualify as friends!”

You say, when discussing him with your best bud over coffee.

“Maybe that is the problem,” she says.

“There IS no problem,” you insist. “I am not attracted to him.”

Let’s call him Ron, okay? No one besides your best friend has a problem with Ron being a part of your life. Well, you haven’t exactly mentioned him to your other friends. And your boyfriend doesn’t know much about Ron either. But then again, neither do you. Why would you talk about someone to your boyfriend whom you barely know yourself?

Everything was alright until Ron said something the other day. Something that sounded a bit like it could have been flirting. That was when you realized that Ron had no idea that you were in a relationship. It would be awkward to drop the bomb out of nowhere, right? So you ignore his could-be-flirtatious comment altogether.

This was when you had to tell your best friend about what transpired. And she thinks that she is the Sherlock Holmes of romantic discord. So she starts asking unpleasant, ridiculous questions that you do not want to answer.

But you know that not answering them would only make her more suspicious.

“I’m sorry I brought this up,” you say, exasperated.

“Is it because you are afraid that you may like Ron a bit more than you should?” she asks.

“No, it’s because you seem to be so sure that I do!”

She looks at you for a long moment.

“Are things okay with your boyfriend?” she asks.

“Yes?”

“Are you sure there’s nothing you want to talk about?” she presses.

You feel as though the entire Destiny’s Child is at your coffee table singing “Girl” and coaxing Kelly Rowland to come clean about her relationship troubles. You can’t take the heat.

“Well..” you begin.

There’s always SOME boyfriend problem

(But people who aren’t Beyonce and Kelly don’t really discuss these things, do they?)

You speak about how your boyfriend has been very irritable of late. He says he is busy, and you are sure he is, but you wish that he had just a little more time. Or at least, the time that he did have, he didn’t seem so snappy and distant.

It’s not a big deal, you insist, it’s not like everything is always going to be perfect, right? It’s only a phase.

Wait.. what happened at the end of the “Girl” song again?

Your best friend seems to be saying something. She looks like she is trying to be understanding, she’s doing that “I understand you” head nod. But all you can think of is that Destiny’s Child song. Kelly’s boyfriend was cheating on her in it, wasn’t he? Is your boyfriend.. Nah. Don’t get carried away.

You leave the cafe dazed.

So you have troubles with your boyfriend. He is probably not cheating on you, but there are definitely problems. Aren’t there? Or were you overthinking it? And then there is Ron. Was there Ron? Did it matter?

Your mind feels like someone placed a rock inside it.

I know mine did.

So What Exactly Happened?

(Let me tell you how it happened with me)

On days we remember each other fondly, you will hear him say he should have been kinder, and I’ll be talking about how I needed to have had more realistic expectations.

But on most days, if someone asks us about our relationship, we will both say, “It ended when my heart was broken.”

You see, it wasn’t as though one of us did something so drastic that killed our four-year-long relationship. We both did things. We took turns breaking each other’s hearts in a cycle. And when both our hearts were damaged beyond repair, we each left the relationship, begrudgingly.

There are so many versions of our story, his and mine, thrown together in a box that we choose to lock and keep away. But there are some days when I listen to our song playing on the radio. It makes my hand reach into that box of how-did-we-end-up-like-this and pull out a card.

Today, the card I pulled out was a black one. Which means it was my fault. It read something that I seldom say out loud: Emotional Affair.

Neither of us cheated on each other although we were in a long distance for years. At least, that’s the party line. But if I were to be honest, I know that there are things I did that has landed me this card in my hand.

A black card. Guilty.

I loved him very much, don’t get me wrong. In fact, I loved him too much. With a kind of psychotic love that was hard for him to understand. I put him on a pedestal and then threw stones at him for not knowing what to do up there.

He wanted me to accept him as he was. I didn’t know what he meant. I thought he was PERFECT. At least, I thought I thought that. But I wanted so many things from him that he wasn’t.

He had a clear head for the most part and tried to explain this incongruence to me. But when love, sorrow, self-pittance, and misery cloud your head, you don’t understand things as well.

So the fights began, and oh boy were they aplenty! We were hardly a year in when it happened. We had plummeted into nasty arguments for days, which ended with me promising to keep my love (read turbulence) at bay.

That was when I made a new friend, Ron.

Enter Ron

(There really was a Ron!)

It started innocently enough. My boyfriend had asked me to not disturb him after a certain hour in the night. Ron kept owl timings like I did, so we began talking quite a bit.

We spoke about silly things at first, he teased me about being bad at the online games we played. And then we began to talk about things that were a bit more real. How chicken pox made him lose his final year in school, our talents that we hoped the world would someday appreciate, and the ways we loved and despised our families.

My boyfriend was finally happy. I seemed to want less out of him. I now laughed more at his jokes that I claimed to never understand before. I didn’t want more time from him when he said he was busy. In fact, I hardly seemed to want anything from him.

When I wanted to talk, or feel special, Ron was always a call or a text away. I eventually told him that I had a boyfriend, and it upset him. I know I led him on. The worst part is that I didn’t accept it back then. I didn’t accept it when my best friend suggested it, or even when my conscience pricked, asking me what the hell I was doing.

My boyfriend began to notice Ron’s presence in my life too. He wasn’t a fan of it and made sure I knew that. But he knew that he didn’t have anything to worry about. So even though he was unhappy, he didn’t press me for more on that front.

Over time, Ron and I fell apart. There was something that our friendship lacked, a foundation. We tried to keep in touch for a long while but we both knew that every word we said to each other meant something else altogether. So one day, we let it go.

My relationship went on for another couple of years, but that ended too. For many reasons, which you will find in a box I have chosen to lock and keep away.

Final Verdict?

The cards I pull out on most days are white. Blameless. Not guilty.

We didn’t break up because of Ron and me! There was nothing for me to feel guilty about.

But then there are days like today when I pull out a whole other part of the story and have to accept that a relationship’s end was because of everything that happened within it. Not only because of one act, or the last month, or the last conversation.

It was a lot of little things that seeped into the foundation and cracked it at the very root. That’s how something strong, tall and majestic falls apart.

I don’t have that old friend or the boyfriend to worry about any longer. But I have myself, and I have a box with black and white cards that have my name on it. I have a truth that I need to accept and want to accept. Because I believe that despite it all, there are some foundations that I can mend.