Lost Connection.

“I miss you, a lot. Please call me. I’m sorry.”

Late afternoon, tenth of December, a message on my Facebook says this. It was from someone who was least on my mind. I would probably not even have said a hello bumping into him somewhere; I would have pretended not to remember him. But that very moment, I don’t know why, I simply don’t, I text messaged him, from my phone.

Me: There?

Him: Who’s this?

Me: You left me a message on facebook. How are you?

Him: I’m fine. How are you? Where have you been so long? No replies? What happened?

Me: I’ve been very busy with college life. Top-notch DU keeps you on your toes. I don’t think I owe you an explanation of why I didn’t reply. Your sister had my changed number all the time, we’ve been in touch. Anyway, how is your family?

I don’t even have the slightest idea of why was I even having this conversation. I had sworn to myself I would never. I had been hurt, badly, at least that is what I had felt then. The hurt faded with time, very fast, or mostly I changed, grew up, as they call it. I changed, very much, thus things changed, and I, now conversing with him, hope he changed too.

Him: Everyone is okay. University of Delhi, congratulations! What are you pursuing there?

I felt a weird sensation run down my nervous system. No reaction to the “explanation”-line. Why the hell did I even get into this conversation? What was I thinking? Was I even thinking?

Me: Thanks. I doing honors in English Literature. What about you?

Him: Chartered Accountancy.

Chartered Accountancy, well, calculative, mind job. Pray he can keep his mind stable enough.

Me: hmm…! So why did you ping me today?

Him: I have been calling your other number since last two years, wasn’t able to get through, I guess. You were a good friend of mine, a little rudeness from my side ruined It all. I wanted to apologize.

WOAH! The person I knew wouldn’t say that ever. He wouldn’t apologize. He won’t even get near the word, as if it were toxic. I don’t know what I’m getting into; I feel the anger, the urge to talk, and the feeling of strange sympathy. I feel like one of Milan Kundera’s characters, feeling his “litost”.

Me: It’s good to see you realize it. And, it’s okay. Do you want to be friends?

Him: Sure. Tell me about you. The last two years, you seem to have changed.

Me: Well, I don’t know. I’ve become quieter. I know my passion, and I know what to do. That makes all the difference, I guess. You seem to have changed too, tell me.

Him: Started many new things, started cooking, changed music choices, changed my company. Not all the good changes though, became homesick for a while, tired of life, off and on.

Me: What about your friends?

His friends had always annoyed me. Besides, it seemed like a good topic to get into small talk over. I didn’t want to take on too much right now. Broken heart matters, especially when you’re a teenage girl. It makes everything in the world seem terrible, and generates a lot of hatred and destructive behavior, as I analyze it now. I had gone through it, three years ago, and didn’t want to recall the feeling because it hurt, even now to think of how it hurt then,  but mostly because it felt stupid, really foolish, when I think about it now.

So, I made small talk, about friends, about music, movies, everything that could come to my mind, until I could not stop my fingers from doing this:

Me: Any girls in life?

Him: No. It felt better to be single. Had only one relationship, and no more attraction towards anyone else. Had met amny, but it didn’t work out. I moved out of that mind a long time ago.

Me: Had only one relationship? What was that one relationship? Who? When?

Him: You.

Oh My God! This is not happening. I have a boyfriend I’m very happy with. I don’t want to mess it up, at least not for a lost teenage love. What is he here for? What does he want? Does he really miss me? Ego Boost Alert: Yes! But I’m not here for this, there is simply no way for him to come back to my life. I’ve moved on. Yes, there are happy memories, there are sad ones too, but I don’t want to go back to him, to my bad, anytime, ever.

Me: Feels good to see you saying it. I did value it too. Bygones are bygones. We can talk about it sometime though, just to know what happened, and why. I was curious until a while ago.

And, then I jumped to some small talk again. “What’s with him, her, them?”, of all the common friends we ever had. Why am I avoiding the confrontation?

Me: Did you miss me, in any way, ever, even for a single minute, even as a friend?

Him: Every time I talked to a girl, wherever I tried to share something with any one, even when I stared at my cell phone searching for your number.

Me: What did you miss about me? Why did you not try harder to contact me:

Him: I had no courage to confront you. It’s life which went on and on and when I realizes I should try, two and a half years had gone by.

Him: You were always on my mind.

Me: WHAT HAPPENED? AND WHY?

Him: Don’t be angry please. A lot was going wrong between me and my mom, and I started yelling at her furiously the noon you called. I still remember I was very rude. You kept on asking me what happened, and I kept on yelling at you. When you finally asked me if I consider you a friend, I made the bloody mistake of saying no, because of my frustration. You went away, just like that, but the memories are fresh. The date was 23rd May, 2010, ad I disconnected the phone at 2:33 p.m.

Ohkay… this is getting too serious now, too much to hear. I never knew the person who could talk like that. Was it real retrospection? I don’t think I’ll ever know.

Now that everything is done, happened long ago, I’ve moved on, very well, and am very happy; I know even if this was for real, the most I can offer is to be friends, to keep acquainted, and to keep in touch. I don’t owe it to him, no way, but the way I think of myself, I should be able to do that. 

I was fifteen then, and he was my second boyfriend, ever. The first one had been a tragic story of some duration. The second one had been short, not really hugely tragic, but enough to shake me up then.

Being the badass A grader that I was, I always had a lot of friends, or so-called friends, the ones that one has but can not really share stuff with. He had been a so-called good friend for almost six months then, when his father became a victim of the Swine Flu epidemic and passed away. He was broken, ahd a family of two siblings, a mother, and grandparents, and he had to be their emotional support. Without realizing, I became his emotional support system, and then when I, or he realized it, we were almost in a relationship which both of us knew in t=our heads but never acknowledged through out lips.

Broken out of it in a jilt of a phone call, I had never called back; broken all ties of communication, at least with him, changed my city and made my life heaven.

Two years later, or two and a half actually, I am happy, super happy, and at the top of my life. I’m strong, I decide. I can reply, there is nothing he can do anymore to hurt me because my emotions don’t lie on his shoulders anymore.

Me: OMG! This feels like the usual romantic tale right now. Haha! It’s alright. We can be friends. I’m over all of it.

Him: I understand you, very well. I loved you baby… and still do. It is okay to be just friends, because it hurts a lot when someone leaves you, and that too when that someone is very special to you. I know that.

And, thus started a new weird connection, totally platonic. I never wanted to kill him, never in my life was I that angry or furious. I had been hurt, and turns out it played a role in making me better. Plan is good, as they say it. True that there comes a time when you get over everything, no matter how much it had hurt you at a point of time, and no matter how bad It had felt, you get over it, and you become a better version of you, stronger.