When memories beckon

I haven’t blogged in a really long time; well there is a reason for it. For a while everything seemed to have lost its significance and time and again I wondered why. It’s not like I didn’t have anything to write about well I did, a lot, but nothing truly, really mattered anymore. I hate when I get into one of these ‘life doesn’t make any sense, what’s the point of it all?!’ phases in my life. It leads to more complacency than I want and have bargained for. I slowly but surely seep into a personal hell hole where all my dreams, thoughts, contemplations and musings lead to an utmost state of self-pity followed by deep personal loathing for daring to once again go into the same mental and emotional state that I told myself time and again I will not go into.
A semi-famous friend once wrote that every day she wakes up in the morning hoping, wishing and praying that something truly wonderful and magical would invade her world, opening a chasm of never ending delightful possibilities, making life once again truly worth living, but shit nothing really ever happens, then you crawl into bed at the end of exhausting day filled with the same monotony that make it well just that, another exhausting day, bitterly disappointed, sad and well alone.
The loneliness sadly doesn’t bother me anymore, I take solace and comfort in it, and I have managed to make a demon into a friend. Only in my weakest moments to I really truly wistfully and desperately long for the warmth and comfort of someone else, not friends and mates and people that understand and get me, well thank God I at least I have that much, which I am most eternally grateful for, no I am talking about the innate knowledge that at the end of the day, in spite of all my eccentricities and imperfections there is someone waiting for me curled up under the sheets warm and welcoming, who loves me anyways, just for who I am. I miss that feeling of belonging for better or for worse, I am okay most of the time, but sometimes in this crazy, awful, wonderful, mad, fast-paced city, when I catch a small glimpse of the things that I secretly long for, I can’t but help but feel both wonderful and terribly sad. Everywhere I look around me, there is a great sadness, none the less, it isn’t all despair, tears and sorrow, this I am most certain off. Every once in a while I catch that small glimpse of hope, whether it is a middle aged couple, harrowed and harassed by the burdens of matrimony and parenthood sharing an all knowing, warm and cherishing smile as the cart their noisy annoying spawns into an auto or a young couple lip-locked in a passionate embrace in a club somewhere, that’s when I know, that well shit, there is love, somewhere.
I’m twenty four years old, yes I turned a year older almost two months ago, yes I suppose you could have called it a significant moment of my life, except the fact that there was nothing significant about it, I had a grand boozed out weekend with close friends, followed by a quick, wild, again boozed filled trip to Goa, but all of it seems so far away now, locked in some unknown memory bank in the recesses of my mind, waiting for me to reminisce fondly on some latter day, while I work on creating new memories. I know that I shall look back upon it fondly, as I do often of the great wonderful memories that I have stored, on the darkest of days, while I desperately work on creating many such fond moments that will comfort me through lives many tumultuous times ahead.
Memories are really truly a wonderful entity; they probably are in my top five favorite things in life. They remind of the great times gone by, which are important, but more importantly, they remind me of the person that I was, what I was capable of and of who I am. They reassure me of things that I may or may not have forgotten about myself in my crazy attempt to just be and also of the truth that nothing ever will be the same anymore. Things always change, they will, they must, they have to and I must learn to accept it, even if it well hurts a lot.
My best friend from high-school moved back to Bombay at the beginning of the week, I have seen her for all of twenty minutes for a quick snack at a cheap fast-food restaurant, which later gave me a stomach ache. Between her trips to the doctor and mother care and my erratic work schedule we have found very little time for each other. I could have called her over the long holiday weekend, but somehow I just couldn’t get myself to reach for the phone and press ‘Call’. The life that we once shared has become a memory of the past and it depresses me to no end. All the crazy promises that we once made to each other as young wide eyed girls seem just that, promises. Life worked out so differently for us, it’s not suppose to be this way I thought to myself, what happened to always being there for each other and being a significant part of each other existence and that solitary moment on Carter Road all those years ago where we promised to each other that we will let nothing get in between us ever? Now I desperately try to understand her but I can’t, our existences are so vastly different; I don’t know what it’s like to have a husband that is alone back in some alien country, while she is here scared shit-less about having a baby. I just feel like I missed that train a long time ago. This is not how things are suppose to work out, what happened to all those promises that we had made to each other? How we would get married together someday, preferably in the same alter, how our gorgeous children would someday fall desperately, madly in love with each other and we would become sisters by marriage. We shared the most significant moments of our youth we each other, she was the first person that I called when I got my shiny new bicycle on my twelfth birthday that I so desperately wanted. The first person I confessed to about how madly I was in love with ‘H’ when I was sixteen and how bitterly disappointed I was when my first real kiss, with my first real boyfriend was so, well wet and clammy.
I helped her buy candles when she decided it was time she lost her virginity, we poured over the Kamasutra together turning to left, right, up and down figuring out what the hell they were really doing, giggling endlessly like the little school girls we were, while we ignored the stern disapproving looks for the adults in the store. I was the first person she called when things didn’t go according to how we had both imagined it would be and sex was then well just that, sex.
We easily assimilated each others experiences into our own sphere of knowledge, learning and vicariously living through each other, promising and knowing that this is how it would always be, until now. Why is it so difficult for us to share the most significant moment of our adulthood, just like we once did as children? Are we oh, so different right now as we once were, and will our friendship be stored in the back of my mind someday, in the memory box labeled ‘X-my best friend from high school’ its importance faded with time?