My God, what is this salty discharge? Is this crying? This is terrible - I care!

Immediately after I woke up this morning, I burst into tears. And I felt so confused about it... I'd thought my days of random bawling were over, that I had successfully buried the past .. but no, apparently not. And this too, after my weekend had been hugely successful. Lunch with friends, shopping, good conversation, films, total unwind-o-rama!

There are of course a number of reasons why this might have happened:

1) The whole *Monday* thing. A lazy weekend gone by, a new week starting again. Too much work at office, same old jig of deadlines and deliverables etc.

2) In conversations with various friends,. it kind of emerged that I still cared for S. Yes, I did not want to talk to him or be in touch with him or ever so much as see his face again, but I did wish him well, and maybe somewhere, I still did care. I was actually showing someone my old photographs and a couple of his pictures dropped out of a brown paper envelope. I'd earlier burned all his pictures, but I never even knew these existed. So I sat and tore them up. And then burned them. Jeez, if only exorcizing the past were that simple!

3) Last night, a very old friend proposed marriage to me. He's been around for like almost 6 years now, and he put it across in a very matter-of-fact, non-romantic way. I kind of liked it. Weighing the pro-s and cons, balancing out, like it was a deal we both could benefit from.

"We've known each other for so long, and we connect mentally, and our families know each other (so there's no problem there), and there's so much we can talk about, and we're as comfortable talking to each other as we are in silence, so why don't we get married?"

There was something very mature in the whole thing, so I guess it kind of softened the blow, as well as did not get me all shaky-kneed and stuff. Of course, it isn't everyday that people say they want to marry me (heck, it's almost been never), but I thought he did it extremely well.

I did not know what to say. I tried being funny ("Marriage? Abhi to mera khelne ki umar hai"), but I knew I was kidding myself. So I just mumbled something like... "I'm glad you considered it, but I'm not really ready for marriage yet, maybe in some years or so...."

To which reply he put forth another admirable shot, saying, "Ok, I'm going to ask you again in some years, tell me then."

So yeah, all of this. And my tears in the morning. Whew. Most of you must be thinking I'm all messed up.

Which is true.

I am.


~RS
August, 2004
Used with permission