Prose before hos

One man off the street is worth 15 from an app;

I believe you're cautious and not avoidant, I don't like when you call yourself that; 

I have no intention of meeting the men again;

Why am I being accosted by men who met me a lifetime and three personalities ago? It's cute to be vulnerable but heartbreaking when you've written them off and they attempt to look back. No, stay gone. You sang to me, held my hand and showed me off, but you didn't do enough. Okay fine, you also showed up again when I needed you and when I was down in the dumps but also, was that enough? You were doing things for yourself and now it's my turn to stay gone because I'm choosing to be with me. Perhaps in an alternate universe, you'd have a 13-year-old daughter and some feelings for me and I'd be the one who loses you because I don't want to go down that road. 

I came full circle in Gurgaon a few days ago when I was taken to the same party spot where it started from. If I could go back in time and tell myself one thing, I wouldn't. Instead, I would just hug myself and tell her to be strong and do it. Sometimes you need to live through the heartbreak to see yourself look like the best version of yourself.

I want to be worshipped, and adored, and admired and if you can't step up then goodbye. 

I'm sorry, I didn't respond to your photo in bed and then another one. Instead, I went back to touching up my make-up and thinking about the pasta I'd eat for dinner. I am sorry that I didn't particularly flirt back when you came out of woodworks months later, when you promised to make things work with me and move to be with me. You did no such thing and yet, had no courtesy to apologise for painting a picture. I had men who paint with words. 'Label them, name them,' my friend said earlier on the call today. You need to spell things out and call them out on it, you don't have to live with it in your heart. He is after all a mid low-life, bore and you are a goddamn star. 

Yeah, it's okay to put down people. They get what they deserve. 

Perhaps next year, I'll make fresh, new mistakes. I'll do new quarterly personality shifts and consider climbing ambitious ladders over climbing on men and demanding equal rights in raising my unborn children with them. Honestly, what the fuck was that temporary baby fever? I don't understand. I keep revisiting the time when I was a woman possessed wondering if I'd be single in a few weeks or be prepping to have a man's baby and it puts the fear of god in me because was I willing to trade my precious life in exchange of what I believed was a safe space when it wasn't looking out for me. 

Maybe, it's us. We give people enough chances to prove us wrong, for people to be unavailable so we can fully fawn over them when all we want is a good reset. Instead of just asking for the same, we go for a man, an excuse to let us down so we can turn things around. Every time I have made a breakthrough professionally, it has been followed by something tremendously soul-crushing in my personal life. Maybe, at this point I just know, when I need a change in scenery, I need to look for an excuse to get my heart crushed and achieve another goal. 

One of the few constants since the pandemic began, or rather pre-pandemic has been around the weather. For all the chatter in the world around climate change and how we can witness the effects trickling into our day-to-day, I raise you my familiar winter cycle, that's neither a day late nor early. 

Period-0, Weather in Delhi-1.

Winter officially sets in Delhi (for me) from November 14, when the fan on the top speed feels chilly but no fan feels stuffy. You don't need the air conditioner for the workout (even though you feel like death in the last 1 minute of your jumping jacks in the intense training program) and you no longer want to prance around in cotton shorts. You start window shopping for faux leather bombers and wonder if this will be the year when you invest in a Shacket (if I ever do, please feel free to ban my blog and never come back, I need a reality check). 

Winter also runs out fairly quickly (something under 100-105 days) by February 18. You feel the need to retire the tight sweaters and stuffy body-hugging polos. While the rest of the country takes another month, I am usually done by February 16 and bring back the air conditioning from Feb 24 for workouts. 

Three years ago, we marked Winter with the new season of the Crown at a public parking lot where I spent more time than I'd like to admit. Earlier today, when the winter breeze slapped my face in the same spot, I felt deja vu, like I was about to go through the same cycle again. However, there's one notable difference. 

I'm a lot calmer. 

It's like, the person I imagine consoling my younger self to be better and strive to be, I'm there. I spend all my waking hours walking towards my goals, tending to make life fulfilling and in pursuit of that, I find even writing tedious. This is probably the longest writing break I've had when I'm productive otherwise. I spend my time reading, watching and occasionally flirting with the man of the season (I've found a marvelous heartbreak for Fall-Winter '23). I catch up on things low-key, retire to my cocoon and find everything I need there. For the most part, peace lies in the predictability of movement. I've got my back; I've warded every single element out which I felt wouldn't align with my expectations and I've constantly tried to face my fears while doing that. I found myself in a familiar place where entering the apartment complex choked me but not without support. There were dogs, friends and friends like family to handhold me through moments I never thought I'd survive or live to try. 

I'm getting distracted by texts midway (and I'd never tolerate this shit, but it's Winter and we all need someone to hold on to and cuddle with), but everything about the days to follow will be predictable. Days will get shorter, my calm self will get pissed and by January, I'll be so unhinged that I'll intersperse crying with saying yes to all possible events and styling my hair in more ways than I can probably count, that is if situations remain predictable. 

The way in which our world moves and lives are shaped is not inherently controlled by us. The apolitical bunch on dating apps wouldn't know but for those of us who do, we are one inflammatory remark or action away from a full-blown crisis at all given times and 100+ days are a lot to challenge for predictability if the world is unkind to infants on the basis of their geographical location and passport details. 

What I'm saying is, I'm not looking forward to the Winter and I definitely don't want to write. I want to hide in my bedroom with my book and park myself to only respond to 5 people (including my employer because we all need capital). 

I know Adam Levine sang that Summer's gonna hurt like a motherfucker, but man, did he not take into account the Winter that will suck balls? 

Let me explain. 

It's gone on for so long that I've had a break-up, a rebound, a whole misunderstanding when I realized the rebound was not required and the break-up wasn't a break-up cause were we even official? It's gone on long enough for me to adjust working on a smaller screen and hammer out 8 different pitches in a day. It's for another time that 7 of those got rejected and I am currently dragging the only accepted pitch to as a sliver of Sun in these gloomy days. I'm putting in more work than I need to and hurting my sentiments when my brain has to process the beautiful relationship stories I'm offered. "Did you guys have arguments at that stage when you weren't official?" "no, we never had arguments." 

V tells me we need to meet and pounce on each other so we know it's just frustration. We should plan a vacation. Does he even want to meet? Am I wasting my time with someone who cares too little but claims he cares too much? I won't know until we see each other and feel the blood rush to different parts and dull our brain. I think we should pull the band-aid and get it out. It's hard and it's gonna hurt but we are hurting even now and who's to say we won't get better. The bleeding stops, eventually and the blood clots for us to reflect on the wounds. 

The Winter's gone on for too long. I can't remember the last time I was happy with him. I only remember the bits of intimacy. "I'll be busy through November with work and then there's the death anniversary. I'll need space. Will you be okay with that?" was once a deal-breaker for me in my head when I assumed he would flip if I disappear without any intimation. He said he'd be there throughout and the response freaked me out. I had hoped for a violent reaction to my sentiments of needing space but he stood strong through it. 

A week later, I went as far as saying I'm out of love and I feel nothing just so he'd understand it's not him and give me the space and the hate for us to get out of it. I can't believe that was something I did. Reflecting back, I wish I'd stuck my ground over those months when I knew this would end badly. Of course, we got back and we got back stronger than ever. Now, it is ending badly cause we could hold our stance. But not the Winter. This Winter isn't ending. For a season with shorter days, the whole fucking lifeform is moving so damn slowly, that it feels like I've lived a lifetime in the last two weeks. It really does. Is this how it feels like when you are forced out of your comfort zone? I've lived without it for so long that this brief support felt like a lifetime of love and I can't seem to wrap my head around the trick that oxytocin's pulling on me. 

I stare at the bed blankly, nearly three times a day, and wonder each time if I felt the same in the Winter of 2019 when I'd returned after losing my savings or in Winter 2020, after a freak medical episode followed by a family wedding followed by a grand disaster in a different city followed by getting out of full-time employment. It's that same sight, the same angle of the bed and the same question. How was Winter of 2021? I don't remember much. There were restless periods of grief and lots of silence. We didn't talk and whatever social interactions we were forced to carry out were all as a family, another reality I had to cope up with. What was a family going to be in the light of death? None of us knew. There was uncertainty and silence. It feels unbelievably similar this time around, except it's my personal weight. This is why I hate the winter. It brings out everything from backburner— emotions, grief, neediness and stench of moth balls in our clothes. 

Honestly, this should be no big deal. I've hammered my emotions out. Tried to make sense of my grief and what he brought and what he's taking away and all that. It's as good as over barring the intermittent contacts we've made with each other in our moments of weakness. I should be done with this. Winter's what, another month? My grief should outlast the Winter but in the current situation, neither is working. One of them needs to halt and reflect on the damage they're causing. 

We've been talking again. Nothing serious most of the times, but enough to leave me miserable for the remainder of time. Almost, every weekend or every 3rd day after the weekend when one of us feels like our head will explode if we don't reach out, we share a meme that the other will "like". That heart react on a meme, that double click of validation and hoping they smiled looking at it, that is such an upper, man. It's mad. 

I've devised a way out of it, where I send everything to V and tell him it's not for him since he knows exactly who it's for. Except, my brilliant idea forgot that V and I have a certain equation, the one that doesn't involve kink sharing and opening up our lives like partners or anything. I succumbed horribly and ended up sending some in an exchange over the last two days. "Have you made a decision or is this a moment of weakness?" I asked and it was, indeed, a moment of weakness.  

Moments of weakness add to hourly mental damage. Whatever progress I'd have made over 7 days, goes in the trash the minute my phone shows a notification. Yeah, yeah, I know I can mute/unfollow/block, and believe me, I've done each of those, across all platforms and done things I'm not proud of, only for us to go back to it and get hurt all over again. Maybe I'm addicted to my own toxic behaviour. 

We did ask each other if we're toxic. That was exactly the first conversation in probably weeks of being cut-off and I knew at that moment, the ice had thawed. We were willing to look at each other as concerned adults about our own behaviour towards each other and ourselves. Usually, the telltale sign of normalcy is when I'm told it's us against the world. There was none of that this time. It was all different. We take two dialogues seriously, and none of those were uttered this time. That did break my heart a little but mostly it felt like we had it coming. Again, it was unexpected but I guess life happens when we are least expecting it. He says it often, "when we are good, we are very good." 

It's true. The oxytocin that flows in my body knows it's like I'm floating on a cloud and anything is possible. In the last few weeks, I've not been able to do anything. I don't feel like eating and that's the biggest sign of things not working. My system is broken. Winter needs to end. He needs to leave so I can move on with my life and he can focus on his life that he intends on making big. We have no room for each other and dragging each other along like Winter is dragging my bones is truly the worst thing you can do to someone. That's not it. I need to stop clinging on when we've made a decision. I can't go back and have a cry and restart this again. It's more on me than on him. But some problems are out of my control. Like, the Winter. I can't control it. It needs to stop clinging on to me like I cling to him.