Here We Go Again

Over the last couple of months, I've been very detached from the blog. I've preferred reading to writing, and not just out of laziness. I even mulled announcing that the blog and I are on a break, but I couldn't do something so self important and keep a straight face. It's not that I've finally run out of things I wanna say or write. It's not even that I'm too busy (it's never that. If you wanna do something you'll make the time). It's just that the 'what to say' has been overwhelmed by the 'how to say it'. I'm trying to get over that, so here it is.

We met a year and a half ago, driven by mutual curiosity elicited by somewhat deft wordplay which filled up the minutes we spent at work, glued to our screens. We read each other and wrote to each other with a level of intimacy that only very close friends share. We were both addicted to the catharsis of blogdom in a world that spun either too fast or too slow for our liking. He wrote like I wanted to write, and what I wrote gave him pleasure. We had windows into each others' minds long before we met. Of course, the real world is different, and it contains the very real possibility of turning virtual friendships into quietly shushed embarrassments of the past.

But we did meet, and it was so easy that we never noticed the shift. It was simple to be friends, simpler even to be more than friends. A relationship was forged during midnight rambles about philosophy and vada pav, the weight of family expectations and the hilarity of existential angst. We met everyday, without fail, and we never forgot to share a few laughs. I moved to a new place so he could visit without encountering the unpleasantness of a landlady. We fell into a pattern where I always got my way and he always gave in, where I bullied and he let me, where I tried to get him to read Harry Potter and realized the strength of passive resistance. Our friends started referring to the two of us as a collective noun, and we never felt any danger of losing ourselves.

Love is deceptively easy to get used to, especially when it's the kind of love you've unconsciously been holding your breath for. So I've gotten used to the smell of the skin just above his temple, the quick smile that always manages to overlook my instinct for world dominance and the voice that is meant only for me because if anyone else hears it, it'll be the joke of the century. He's gotten used to my hectoring and shrillness, my impulsive demands and my thorough conviction that I am always better and always right. Now we've gotten to a point where we're pretty much unlivable without the other. Of course, this means that he now has to move away.

It's not the most difficult thing in the world. It's not that we can't make it work, or that we 're entertaining any doubts about what we want to do with our lives. It's just that I'm tired. Tired of change announcing itself on me. I could probably get him to stay, but of course I won't. I would never grudge him the opportunity he's been waiting for all his life. But emotions are never absolute, and being happy for him would be so much easier if I could pack myself in his suitcase. I know I shouldn't be this way, but I just am. I'll stop.

Just as soon as you explain to me how to have Friday night dinner with a phone and how to get Google Chat to give me a hug on Sunday evenings.