Getting Over T

Can you un-love just like you un-friend on Facebook? My priority right now is to get over what I can call my freedom in exile period and truly enjoy my sense of bliss…. I can almost taste the unadulterated sense of bliss. If only I could step into that zone even as I write this. So, what’s stopping me? Me. Writing, I can see, is like talking to myself, being the kind of friend my friends wouldn’t recommend at this point — allowing self-indulgence, an almost self-destructive urge to not end my term in exile. Not letting go would be a more apt term, but, can you blame me? Yes, obviously you can, but in this self-indulgent mood, I tend to cut myself slack, although knowing it may not be good for me.

In fact, I have been in exile for pretty much of my ‘relationship’ with T. A lot of time spent with myself, wallowing, being self-indulgent… being destructive, being cheerful. So, is it just a part of me I don’t want to let go of? And, does this mean that I let go of T at some point, unknown to myself? Or maybe I haven’t really… I don’t know, honestly! One thing I do know (besides knowing what I don’t know!) is that there’s not much choice in the matter really — it just doesn’t make sense to stay depressed, even if for a moment — because, simply, it’s over!

Anyway, easier said than done. What’s so hard to let go of? Even though T and I went on and off for a good part of 20 years, this feels like my first real break-up. This is the first time I know there’s no going back and that he’s not coming back. And, all I can feel is that I want him back. For one last time, I can feel like he’s still mine, mine to rail against, mine to complain about, mine to love, critique and analyse.

As T himself put it, many years ago, even before I had realized it myself, that wherever he went, whatever he did, I felt he was mine. He articulated a feeling I hadn’t realized myself. And, now I wonder if he remembers… And, I know he thought I was his, or rather, I can’t really ‘know’. But, there were days when I knew he would rather talk to someone on the phone for hours even as he felt he didn’t have much to say to me or hear from me… Towards the end, I knew I had to just wait for it to touch bottom, the downslide had already begun in steady fall… I just had to wait it out. I did and I was rewarded with news of T’s wedding… and now, as I wait for my own free fall to freedom, I can feel the excitement of revisiting my carefree 20s… I enjoy the sun, the wind, a long auto ride, find joy in the mundane. I find an eclipse has lifted and the loneliness has left. I’m falling in love, but with the world around me. It’s beautiful. It will take some time to fall in love with myself again, much as I have been criticized for, well, pretty much everything.

Yet, I find myself wanting to get over and yet wanting to cling on. I don’t want to forget little things he said, little things he did… good or bad. He was my top priority, my one passion in life — forgetting would be like developing amnesia, losing a part of myself, a lobotomy? I don’t know… I’m sure I don’t want to exchange another word with him, it’s over, but does expunging a person from your life mean expunging yourself? How do I separate the two, when I never learnt to do that all these years?

I don’t know… maybe the answer lies in the mundane. One day, I will just have forgotten. I just hope I will not be a stranger to myself then.

Till then clichés will have to do… as they say, it’s never over till it’s over, and this time, it really is!