Breakup story - The Ditched

People do weird things after a breakup. Some may think that the enormity of the post breakup reaction is directly proportional to the duration of the relationship. Perhaps, but some behaviors are common to all break ups. I may be wrong since I am no shrink but this is strictly based on my observation and experience ( yes I have had my own heart broken few times due to various kinds of love ranging from one sided crush to puppy love, forbidden love, love lasting 5 yrs and last but not the least love which i had no idea existed). Since I am currently in love (not mentioned above) and have completely recovered from my personal episodes of breakup drama ( or so it seems until I come face to face with some more emotional baggage that I have yet to discover), I deem myself qualified to throw some light on the sequence of events that usually follow a breakup. I hope that people currently going through breakups(so that they feel normal) or about to undergo one ( set your expectations rights and also expect the unexpected) can benefit from this post. The first few hours of the breakup are highly liberating and make you feel free and enlightened. This feeling gives u a false sense of security that you will be alright. This feeling is probably similar to the quiet relief you feel after a hurricane has passed and you think it is over, right before you step out of the house and realise what has really happened and witness the real damage. Usually the breakup follows a period of immense drama and sadness filled with arguments, accusations or total withdrawal from one or both parties. Hence, the relief at the end of it. But like most highs, this one is followed by an ultimate low and one gets engulfed by feelings of desolation, despair and immense sadness. This is when one would reach out for ice cream, songs of heartbreak and misfortune and of course the box that contains all the tokens of love that once was. You re-read all the cards and emails, go over the pictures, watch videos, all the while crying and making yourself believe you will never be as happy as you once were with this one person. Everything seems meaningless and hopeless as you travel to new depths of self-pity and misery. This continues for sometime (lasting anywhere between a day or a month) until one day the feelings of desolation are replaced by immense anger rooted in the sense of rejection or humiliation or both. This transition and self-awareness is usually incited by some news or communication with the heart breaker's world. The form and type of communication and news can be different but the underlying message is almost always the same. The heart breaker has already moved on, feels no remorse over what he/she did, wishes you would heal (this really happened) has someone new (this after swearing the reason for the breakup is not another person). In other words the message is the real stimulus for you to transition from a blithering fool to a wannabe assassin. Armed with the new found fury and sense of vengeance, you go about destroying, hiding, removing every last item that even remotely reminds you of the person. You curse the person's very existence and make secret plans( or with friends...oh ya right about now your friends come back into the pic - PS if you have no friends...God bless your soul!!!) to destroy your ex. Of course, some people actually go through with them but this is not entirely advisable. Not long after, you start displaying few or several out of character tendencies. These can range from attending/throwing parties, to speeding, obnoxious laughing and joking, un-drunken brawls(its true you will feel so angry all the time and will get ticked off at the slightest of things and I can personally vouch it applies to females as well - sigh i will leave this out for a later post), unlady-like behaviour ( for girls/gays) too much manliness (only for guys/some girls straight or otherwise), sudden display of anger or sadness. Loved ones (of course I mean parents) cringe, moan and lament the gradual regress of your soul as you loose {or gain :( } weight, sacrifice work and other duties while neglecting health and in some cases hygiene(not autobiographical i swear). This stage lasts much longer (much to my parents despair), than the first one but not as long as stage number three. I have yet to understand what transpires the onset of stage three but one day you wake up and just don't feel like leaving the bed and face the world. To be precise Stage three is a combination of stage 1 and 2. But along with despair and anger you also have to deal with feelings of self-doubt, some degree of self loathe while trying to keep your self-esteem up. During this time the breakup suddenly becomes very serious and you start wondering if you will ever be normal again. The sinking feeling in your stomach, the heavy heart, the lack of hope, energy or desire to do anything, will these feelings ever go away? You start going through the motions of normal life in hopes of becoming just that - normal. You laugh, cry, work, eat all the while feeling sad, lonely and entirely hopeless. It seems never-ending as you bounce between self-doubt, anger, sadness and light headiness for a very long time - or so it seems. Eventually given the time, you do come out of this, hopefully stronger, better and wiser. But life as you knew it will never be the same because you change so much during this drama. The pain has given birth to virulent cynicism that may become your lifelong friend(now this is definitely directly proportional to the duration and quality of the relationship and nature of its ultimate demise, definitely autobiographical). You are skeptical and slightly disillusioned. Normal is no longer normal. It is just as distorted as you are. But the good news - you live. And you survive in the best possible way, by rediscovering yourself and by fortifying your strengths, your beliefs and your faith. Its a struggle and ultimately you prevail. Oh and the upside the cynicism makes you very funny and you learn to laugh at yourself...Makes you a bigger person I think... Coming up Breakup story - The Perpetrator

The emerald city

Day one - Seattle makes you want to cuddle in front of the fireplace with a loved one, coffee mug in hand.
Day 2 - Seattle makes you want to put on your hiking boots and explore the magnificent mountains surrounding the pretty little fairyland.
Day 3 - Seattle will make you want to put on your swim suit and head to the nearest lake and swim or go for a ferry ride.
Beautiful, Mystical and completely unpredictable. I like it here!!!!!
P.S. It is wet most of the year

Say what??

I am in a rush. I need to finish my chores for the day so I can take off at noon. I get paid by the hour which means the more i work the more i get paid. So yes I try to work as much as I can. But once in a while and I mean only once in a while do I get the opportunity to have the apartment all to myself and catch up on lost sleep, which of course is a lot considering I'm border insomniac. It also means I can watch TLC to my heart's content and maybe also work on the marketing paper due this week. So I am in a rush to get things done The door opens and I look up at the intruder. He is an unkempt teenager with a glassy look in his eyes. He seems disoriented and soon he starts this very interesting conversation:

Glassy-eyed teenage intruder (GETI): Is this the economics Department

Me: Yes GETI: Umm and where is the macro economics department

Me: aaa...here

GETI: oh OK...

Me: As well as the micro economics department

GETI: that's kool He shuffles his feet scanning his class schedule. I look at him closely and become aware that my GETI may not be all there. Perhaps he is best friends with Mary Jane just like 90% of the student body.

GETI: i was like thinking maybe you know i can like change my minor or maybe like my major

Me: which is it major or minor?

GETI: I don't know ( at this point he is looking at me but it seems he is looking through me not really focusing)

Me: Hmmm

GETI: Is this where you change it?

Me: Yes it is since it is the department office

Suddenly I see his glassy eyes become even more dreamy and he slowly turns around and exits the office. For a second I just stand there looking after him. what the hell??? After a few minutes the door reopens and the GETI returns

GETI: I cant like find this room 375. Is it around here?

Me: Well it is 375 so it must be on the third floor (common knowledge I think)

GETI: Oh OK, is this Gibbons Hall?

Me ( by now completely frustrated): Yes sweetheart it is

I consider shaking him or at least swatting his head, hoping it will wake him up, but resist the temptation.

GETI: aaa OK...umm thank you

And he is gone. I wonder if the Mary Jane is accompanying him rite this minute or he just had breakfast with her. I decide to ask him if comes back. Ten minutes later he re-enters the room. Me: Seriously?

GETI: I cant figure it out

Me: What?

GETI: So like how do you go up to the third floor? Do you have stairs or something?

Saira

When I was young i dreamed of being a writer. A widely published, world-renowned, best-selling writer. It was a dream i secretly harbored for years as I spend endless nights blackening piles and piles of papers of what I hoped one day would be a masterpiece of my generation. But until I was ready I did not want to share any of it. Naturally shy I could not bear to be humiliated by my evil siblings (They eventually grew up) or ridiculed by my parents with some below-par story telling so I practiced day and night, getting little sleep or rest. To avoid being caught breaking the 8 o' clock lights out curfew I would hide in my bath tub reading and writing, away from the scrutiny of the world. It was my special time. I would slip away into my special world of imagination and fantasy and create characters, baptizing them, living their lives, feeling their love and pain and giving them a lifetime of happiness. I was the happiest during those nights cocooned in the cold hard ceramic confines of that bath tub. I was just a lonely kid and the pen was my best friend i.e. until saira came in my life. I was twelve and at the peak of my literary glory when we moved to Quetta, a small city near the western border of Pakistan. In the house next door lived a Persian speaking hazara family with a daughter perhaps a year younger than me. She was everything I was not. Confident, friendly and extremely direct. One evening she came over and declared herself to be my best-friend. Irritated though I was, but I couldn't bear to break her heart and tell her otherwise. That would have been extremely rude, right? what I didn't know at the time was that my good manners will reward me with a lifelong relentless, unwavering and extraordinary friendship. To cut a long story short, she and I were inseparable soon thereafter. She would come over every afternoon and leave only when her parents send their servant for her. We would spend hours talking, playing and dreaming. One such afternoon she discovered my valuable box of manuscripts. How? well that is material for another post, a rather funny story. Anyway, she looked at the box and then at a rather stunned me. without saying a word she picked up the papers and started reading. I sat down quietly watching her skim through page after page. Suddenly, my heart sank as she started to shake her head. I was too afraid to move or talk or ask her anything. She looked up from the paper she was holding and said, " You should buy a typewriter, your handwriting sucks". With that she handed me the box and demanded I read to her. That day onwards I had a reader, well a listener anyway, and a fan. She would actually come over just to see if I had written the next chapter and wanted to know what happened. Soon, I would write and she would read at parallel. To say the least, I was ecstatic to finally have someone appreciate my work. But, like all great things, this arrangement came to an abrupt halt when one day ami(my mother) raided my room!!!!!!!! Well technically it was my fault since the room was a mess and my mom came to clean while I was at school. That afternoon, I came home to find my room spotlessly clean except three garbage cans filled with what once had been my master piece, but now was mere confetti. My heart dropped at my feet. I felt somebody had snatched my dream and crushed it under her feet. I was pretty sure these feet belonged to a woman, knowing my father hardly ever entered my room. Never the challenging kind i just sat down on my bed staring at the pieces of paper wondering if I could ever salvage any of it. Suddenly the door opened and my mom came in. I looked up at her with eyes filled with tears. She was not impressed. She demanded to know who had written this filth. OK in my defence my stories were strictly PG 13 and can in no way be classified as filth. At the same time the material was definitely more advanced than what an average 12 yr old brain would usually produce. What can I say I had been exposed to literature at a young age and I also had a very active imagination. I was smart. She should have been happy. But happy she was not. She blamed the writing to be the cause of everything wrong on the face of the earth, my average grades, my moodiness, my dark circles ( actually all these were true), my lack of social skills, my perverted mind (i resented that), my lack of need to be friends with my siblings ( excuse me?? my sister was a nerd and my brother was a teenager, THEY hated ME) and last but not the least, the cause of me ultimately ending up in HELL ( I didn't buy that for a minute - after all I was such a sweet kid and oh soooo smart). Anyway, after this ugly incident i was under constant supervision and could no longer write at my discretion. They even monitored my secret writing place, the bath tub. I guess it wasn't such a secret after all. I was broken hearted and felt so sad and lost. I was such an inhibited soul those days that I could not even muster up the courage to challenge them or tell them about my secret dream. I forgot to mention during this time of crisis, Saira was visiting her relatives. I cant remember where but she was gone for a few days. upon her return she demanded to read(listen) the next chapter of the book and so I told her what had happened. I showed her the pieces of paper with tear-filled eyes. As always she said nothing. But we did spend the next 5 hours trying to match all the pieces of paper and sticking together some three hundred pages ( God awful huge handwriting) of my valuable story book. Afterwards she took my manuscripts and hid them at her house. Few nights later while we were playing meaningless game of rummy she looked at me and said, "you are really good, you should not stop. Auntie will eventually realise she is wrong". For a second i thought she was referring to the game. But since I had lost every single game of rummy i had ever played, I realised she was referring to my writing. I just nodded at her and we continued to play. I don't remember if I was any good since I mostly wrote to escape and mostly cause it came so naturally and of course it is hard to take the word of a 10 yr old kid whose reference point was Enid Blyton's "Mr. Twiddle goes to the park". It was not these words or any other she ever spoke to me over the years. It was her confidence in me, her never-ending faith that slowly pushed me on the path to becoming who I am today. Over the years we helped each other out so many times always unknowingly it seems. We saw our lives and worlds change so many times and always found each other when the times were the hardest without ever calling out for the other. Today, our friendship turned 20. We haven't seen each other in 5 yrs and haven't talked in 2. Our lives are poles apart, our world separated by seas and continents. But I know that the next time my world is hit by a meteoroid, I will find her standing right behind me, not saying anything but slowly taking the pain away. I miss you Saira, you were my sister when i had not found mine. I never said this to you ever but thank you for always knowing my pain.