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I know I know...I haven't been writing in here at all. I is sorry :( But..I have been positively swamped! Writing, getting paid for it a little bit, trying to decide on that big step of moving out of home....and trying on a new relationship for size.
Now, most of you already know about this since I am pathologically incapable of keeping such big news to myself! In fact, there are at least five people I have to tell right away when something Big Deal happens.
The truth is that it is big news for me. I am taking an old friendship off the shelf, dusting it off and looking at it anew. And I have been wonderfully surprised at what I am seeing. What is even more surprising, and leading to palpable irritability, is that it is happening long-distance. Trust me to respond to somebody only after they move to the southern hemisphere! But, truth be told, it could not have happened sooner. We both needed to go through a lot of brick walls in order to become the girl who can respond, and the guy she could respond to.
I freak out over these happenings periodically, but despite this, and the distance, we are managing to communicate a LOT. The good thing about the distance is that it means the going is slow. We have time to savour, to think (in my case, to obsess.) Oh, it drives me crazy a lot of times, but it is forcing me not to rush, to actually cultivate patience. (Aren't you proud of me Boss??!!)
For now, I am hummingly happy, enjoying being showered with liking and affection and silly arguments. I will get sordid and cry buckets and have nasty doubts clouding this light, but you know what, I think I can pull this off. I think we can pull this off.
Amen.

Someone like you

When I was in the ninth standard many moons ago, a fellow scholar did ask of me the reason for my lack of a gentleman-friend.
'Liquifier my dear,' she said, 'it is IMPOSSIBLE that you are alone. Someone like you! '

Someone like you!

This sentiment was repeated many times through the next few years, pausing briefly during the J-months, resuming, and pausing again during S. The weird part is that nobody ever asks me my relationship-status when I'm actually in a relationship.
So anyway, the most recent 'someone like you!' sentiment came from Sameer when we met last month. And it's got me thinking. Why can't 'someone like me!' (yes it has to be italicized and exclamation-marked) not have a guy in my life?
I'd like to think that it refers to my vivacity and lusty love for life, my irreverent charm or maybe my oh-so-cuteness but well....it could just be that my biological clock has been pointing to 'TOO LATE' since ninth std.
Let's be honest. I love those relationship-status-type relationships. I love flirting and over-analyzing every word, every gesture with Weed and RS and P and M and Shibs and Boss and..well...whoever happens to be around and is nice enough not to have me committed (heh!).

I even enjoy the raw terror that springs up in my throat when the relationship status actually reads 'in a relationship.'
'Someone like me' is a lot of boogeymen. A lot of 'go away, this is my book-and chips time!'
It means you're gonna materialize in every poem I read or write. That some place on my body will remember you for a pretty long time. And it especially means that you will be deconstructed extensively by all my girlfriends and me.
It's pressure, baby!

I'm a hopeful romantic! One who's seen divorce and bitterness and the hard, hard work that goes into making relationships work. J and I had a hard-driven, almost painfully bright romance. The kind where you haven't a clue what you're doing, but just hurtling on desperately hoping it will work out. With S, it was a softening and a toughening. But neither of us were ready to give as much as was needed. If a splitting apart can be tender, ours was. I think we gave each other more during our break-up than during our romance.

Technically, I've been single for the last two years.
I have been lonely a few times, wistful a few times more. With the abysmally long time I take to get over relationships, the first year and half of the second was spent teary and obsessive. In fact, till January this year, I was in 'getting over phase.' Then the Mars Bar came along, and I woke up to the fact that there were still men out there who could make me smile by waving their hands around and telling the class that 'St. Augustine was a sensually fulfilled man.' I came back to Singletonhood with a vengeance which simply means that my battle-worn emotional self was ready to play again.
The thing is, almost all those people who asked That Significant Question knew a little bit of me. They saw the bad jokes, the good writing, the perpetual normalcy. They didn't know about the boogeymen. Didn't know how much it takes to make a tie with me. Or how much it is worth.

' Someone like me.' Are you listening, Universe?