Crushed...

Are you… or have you in the past been a ‘young adult’?

If the answer is yes… here’s a piece you’ll thoroughly be able to connect to. If no… well should make a funny non-personal read anyway…. So here I am, writing about my own phase of ‘being torn’ in a situation of doubt and all consuming heartaches…

It was the year 2005… and still being a round faced 'do-gooder', too short and unimpressive to make an impression on the ladies… my life was good.

I had my entire day free to myself, and spent it playing ‘counter-strike’ or reading novels. The lack of attraction to bikes, movies or any particular female… effectively rendered me a complacent and steady middle bencher of my class… thankfully without any sort of yearning that might keep me awake through the long nights.

Sadly this beauty of my uneventful existence did not last….

After being made to join a coaching center, in preparation of my upcoming board examinations (still years away but who could argue with fanatic parents…)… my life took a downward path. I was instantly and typically attracted to a girl….

Please don’t get me wrong for using the word ‘typically’. It is not that the romance in my soul has been surgically removed… or that I am a modern version of Davy Jones, with my heart locked in a chest somewhere at the bottom of the sea… but frankly, I find all the emotions that we generally feel at the particular age I was back then to be childish. Like a vague rendering of the deeper things that we see portrayed by experts on the silver screen… a worse analogy I could not have chosen….

Anyway, so I was in… ahem… love.

It felt totally normal to me, to arrive for the classes an hour in advance and await the object of my fascination. To stay back talking to her long after the class was dismissed, before being shooed away by an irritated teacher. To lie awake till the wee hours of the night with my mind blissfully filled with thoughts of one person… one person who of course had no clue as to what I thought I felt for her….

Still, my days were more or less good. Until, trouble began to grow on the dark horizon… excuse the poetry inspired by my first set of misguided and misinterpreted feelings of infatuation.

A new student joined my class… and I was… again… instantly enamored by her. I found her to be charming, cute, and funny… and frankly every positive adjective that Webster can provide….

I felt lost without a map or compass in a dry desert, looking to moisten my thirsty lips with a single drop of affection… yes I know, I really am no good at poetry, am I?

My underdeveloped… at least in matters of emotions… mind told me I was being unfaithful to my first crush, and that I had to choose between the two dames that split my mind in two.

For the record… it was all bollocks. The person I used to be back then was pretty much considered a universal brother by all girls everywhere… including the two that this blog post focuses on… something I learned much later…. However, being less worldly wise at the time of these occurrences… I overlooked this fairly obvious reality….

Anyway my immature self convinced the child I used to be to choose between the two… and caused me days of anguish as I battled with my own psyche. Eventually I chose one… the girl I had known for a longer while than the newcomer… and did nothing…!

It’s ok for you to groan (or if you derive a sadistic pleasure from others miseries… to laugh) seeing as I myself sometimes openly wonder at what on earth I got up to those days… but it’s the truth.

So I continued to be the insufferable dork… and soon both of the girls I had thought I was in love with were in relationships with studs from senior classes.

The only effect this had on me was making me feel like a tragic hero from a low budget Hindi movie. I so wish it had made me grow up a bit instead….

Only after a few more years of basking in the light of golden sarcasm, could I really see this whole scenario from the light I am sure you perceive it… extremely lame and stupid.

Once the realization set in… that ‘crushed’ was always the future tense of every ‘crush’… I was no longer a kid… and my life could finally begin to flow.

I managed to derive all the lessons from my feeble stabs at romance that I had failed to grasp earlier… and was firmly set on the playing field with a fair advantage over my fellows in terms of avoiding some of the dumber mistakes.

In a way being a really late bloomer, certainly paid off for me….