Powerless...

He was in a total mess… academically, mentally and even emotionally. The last should have been placed up front as, in a way that was the cause of the rest.

Obsessed with the pangs of unrequited… something that he thought was love, he was disturbed. This affected him completely enough to tamper with everything he was supposed to be giving priority to.

He was made to change tuition by his parents who were only aware of one field in which he was failing to cope.

By some stroke of fortune, or so he thought, his new tuition caused him to get back in touch with the object of his as yet undivided obsession. He also came to know new people whom he quite liked. They were easy to talk to… and extremely helpful in many ways when it came to dealing with his condition.

Something good finally happened.

He began to go out with her.

Somehow this news spread to his new tuition. He didn’t really care about it much. He was happy.

Time passed. Having calmed down to an extent, he began to see more around him. He got close to friends he had been previously taking for granted. He liked a few them very much on account of them being similar to him in ways. He enjoyed needling them so as to see them get all worked up. Somehow these playful fights amused him quite a lot. One friend in particular riveted his attention.

He felt his trademark in-built sarcasm mirrored in her and it amused him no end. With his love life finally ordered he opened himself up more thoroughly to others around him.

With time his new friends got to meet the mystery girl he was so engrossed with.

Their reactions to her were not really what he had been expecting.

He seemed to be the only one who saw her in the way he did. This simply angered him. He hated how blind everyone else seemed to be.

Of all the criticisms the worst came from the one who he was closest to.

He valued her opinion but didn’t dwell on it. He refused to hear her prediction that it would not… or rather, could not last.

His friends seemed to prefer to spend time with him… than with him and her. It confused him. He unwittingly began to place them… or more accurately his closest friend, over his girlfriend.

When he came to this realization, he was shocked, puzzled and scared.

He attempted to calm himself down and judge why he had begun to do something so inexplicable.

He realized that he had developed feelings for her too. He cursed himself for being so deplorably weak. He fought it… for a while.

In time he concluded that she was actually much more similar to him, nicer as a person and just a much closer companion to him than his girlfriend would ever be… than anyone else he had met till date would be either….

He stopped fighting.

Of course he didn’t do anything. He had made a commitment. He would do his best to attempt to live it through. He felt that to do otherwise would be… immoral.

He had lapses. He nearly told her of his ‘crush’ at times. But he chickened out every time.

He backed out not only because of his moral objections, but also because he valued her friendship much too highly to even consider risking losing it.

He kept telling himself that this was a mere crush and he would outgrow it soon. He waited. He kept waiting….

Shortly afterward she left for her college. Distance, he had hoped would put things right. It ended up doing the opposite.

Now desperate not to jeopardize what he had, he tried to forcibly extricate his newly strengthened feelings for his friend. He tried to shut her out. He tried to forget. He failed.

His miseries were back and worse than ever.

He went about his routine monotonically. He still tried to make his relationship work even after a break-up and subsequent reunion. He learned that his friend had begun to like someone else at her new place. He took it without any show of emotion.

He wished his own commitment had not been such a mistake.

She had now found love with the guy she had mentioned some time ago. He was happy for her.

By now he was totally used to hiding his feelings and being a good, if slightly annoying, friend to her. He was fine with it.

Some people close to him were aware of his situation. But he waved aside their sympathies and condolences saying that everything was ok.

He enjoyed talking to her. He enjoyed the verbal banter that she always dished out to him. It was ironical in the extreme and amused him quite a lot. In retrospect he later felt bad about some of the things he heard but he still smiled about it. Somehow it all seemed humorous coming from her.

On the rare occasions that she came home he loved to spend time with her. He still got her wound up over trivial things to see how animated she would become. He found it endearing.

He was completely at ease in his new role until his old, familiar, depression came swooping back.

He again tried to get over her by shutting her out… he again failed.

All the predictions she had made so long ago came to pass. He didn’t care. He just wanted the voices in his head to stop telling him things he didn’t want to hear.

He had broken up.

He resigned himself to a long sentence of humorless laughter and lonely musings… an indefinite term of pretending to be someone other than who he was.

But things changed again just when he got used to everything being the way they were.

One of the persons, who were aware of his predicament, for reasons that were comprehensible only to him-self, blurted out everything.

She was shocked and disbelieving.

He was dimly amused to realize that his scam had been perfect enough that she had never even suspected.

Now he didn’t know what would happen. It had been better when he had been trapped in his quite gloom. No one knew what he would do now… not even him.

She was still faintly bemused by what she had just learned. She still found it hard to accept this revelation.

She attempted to convince him that he did not feel what he felt. She didn’t succeed. He was amused by her attempt.

He explained that what was new to her was something he had come to terms with over the course of two years now. He asked her not to let it bother her.

As far as he himself was concerned, he figured all it would take would be a little time to get used to the now slightly changed situation… and then it would be back to the way he had spent the last couple of years…

It was simply a statement of fact; he didn’t feel anything about it.

He had finally succeeded in doing something he hadn’t been able to do before.

He had come to terms with the entire setup. All the cards had been laid down at long last. There was no more room for idle speculation, just for cold hard facts and figures.

Having realized this entire scenario he alternated between a state of anguish and a state of profound peace and understanding... sometimes both simultaneously. Both of these were, infinitely more preferable than the feeling he used to have, of having something buried in his soul.

He did not make any more efforts to push things in any direction. He decided to act purely on impulses, intuitions and feelings.

He just waited patiently for things to end… one way or the other….

Powerless to affect things anyhow....