Tag: dating

Heartbreak – At 28

Life can be surprising, even scandalous, but somehow we manage to surprise ourselves more.

I am aware that as an single unmarried woman I should wait until marriage to write this, or to share anything related to love for that matter, like all good girls do. Now that all of us are over it, let’s move on.

The first thing you do after a heartbreak is remove all of what were your songs from your current playlist. Otherwise you run the risk of Spotify selecting it randomly from your list, and you breaking into a fit of crying while driving on Interstate 20 at 8.30AM on your way to work. If you don’t want to lose the songs, move them to a non-current playlist so you can play them at a future time when your heart is mended, the memories have been overwritten and the songs don’t poke you anymore.

Today morning I woke up and was watching a video on Insta, as you do on Sunday mornings, and somebody mentioned something about drooling. It hit a nerve and reminded me of the time J once drooled on me, and both of us broke into laughter. For a moment my still-foggy and freshly heartbroken brain couldn’t place when it had happened on our timeline.

It struck me that it’s only been a couple of weeks since then and I’m already forgetting details. We had such a short time together, and if I don’t want to “lose” these memories I should probably write them down. At some point. But do I want to “keep” them?

I’m a huge believer that we all have only a short while in each other’s lives (well, ideally more than a couple months which was the case with J, but anyway), so I tend to keep my love close and my memories closer. This time, I don’t know if I want to keep them, let alone keep them close, which is very, very unlike me.

I remember once going to Pious Achan and telling him I’d learnt something about myself. Pious Achan had replied, We’re always discovering new things about ourselves. That was five years ago.
Life can be surprising, even scandalous, but somehow we manage to surprise ourselves more.

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#24 Postcard – Spring 2022 : PARADISE LOST.

Ugh, that word. When did she start using it? Virtually. For all practical purposes. Bottomline.

It was the later part of the shower and there was hair stuck between the butt. Long even when curled up – definitely came from the head. Add Get a trim to a new list maybe?

It feels so weird to not keep a list after so long. Maybe a visit to Portland would be nice, Portlandia was a good show and Fred Armisen is awesome. Come to think of it, even that guy is a sex addict and a cheater. People lose it when celebrities ask to be treated as humans, unless it’s Mithila Palkar.

Sunday loomed over her to the point that even Saturday shower turned dull. Of course it was still fun if she was out and about. But that was part of the problem. What about the inside? She was now one of those people she always had suspicions about – is there too much or too little going on in your head that you either can’t nor need to sit down with your thoughts?
Why didn’t the therapist hear about this?

There were two guys she was meeting, they didn’t know about each other but it didn’t matter. In this age of parents owning up to occasionally despising their little monsters and of loyal spouses that keep mind-whores, this was allowed right? RIGHT? They all begin with the same Any luck on the app? (nobody has met anyone nice ever, where are all the good folks?). Each one ends differently. That should be a writeup – a hundred ends to the same beginning. But really they all had the same abysmal end. Virtually.

Ugh, that word. When did she start using it? Virtually. For all practical purposes. Bottomline. Favored by ends-justify-means folks, invalidating experiences and events. Used often to draw comparisons, oftener to talk business, or to close with a ruthless fact. Virtually needs better contexts.
Why is the adverb so different from the adjective anyway?

There is a bit in John Mulaney’s standup – the one good thing coming to Texas this March – where he says I don’t even know what my body is for at this point, other than to carry my head from place to place.
Sounds about right. All the scrubbing, peeling, moisturizing, epilating and washing up only to carry a head from place to place seems absurd yet almost true. For dancers the body is their device so that would make sense. What was it to her at this point, anyway? And the body definitely couldn’t keep up with her mind.

Mulaney was 35 (and married) when that comedy special came out. 35 year old men regardless of their marital status shouldn’t be treated to an audience for their chaos, unless you’re Mulaney and/or funny. At least virtually.

Modern Love – What’s the catch?

So the roommates from his stories turned out to be his parents. On which date does the cat turn out to be his child?

For what feels like the first time, I am not thrilled by when Blinding Lights starts playing – just as he tells me he’s recently divorced after a five year marriage. As recently as in the last 6 months.

I see, I say, quick to add a not-too-intrusive follow up question after registering that I see’s are my go-to in Zoom meetings precisely because they are too plain, too matter-of-fact and definitely too insensitive for this first-date exchange. I am glad the lights at “the grill place” aren’t too bright, yet our faces were fixated on each other’s and one couldn’t miss it if I so much as slightly grimaced, which I didn’t.

It’s not an off-putting detail. It’s probably just something you might want to mention on your Tinder bio, or at least reveal in the early conversations.

Okay, I guess this is in fact early. He did get that right.

I’m over it already as we talk about the books we left unfinished growing up, and at length about our Harry Potter houses (he was definitely Ravenclaw). Yet in the 4-second pause before we resumed talking about our families, the skepticism bounced back briefly.

Yes it’s early, it’s theoretically the safest spot in the early spectrum to introduce the fact – I can now imagine upvoted Reddit answers to the thread When should I tell my date … ? Yet it’s a bit disenchanting when it follows another reveal of his roommates, whose lifestyles he had elaborated within the walls of Tinder, turning out to be his parents. On which date would the cat turn out to be his child? Too harsh perhaps but there’s a reason that stuff is usually on a bio.

But of course one had to meet to really find out : dress up, delight in fussing over whether to wear sneakers or light heels, change outfits since it says it’s going to be chilly at night, change outfits again to not appear too dressy yet not too casual.

We talk about prints and Tokyo and it’s genuinely fun. Once in a while my thoughts drifted further than my eyes did, as did his I’m sure.

I caught the father and kids sipping drinks from their tall straws at the table behind him, and I had the inevitable thought of whether I had a similar piece to compare to his –

What was my catch, then?

And was this the mirage of all dating apps? That everyone told each other How else do you meet people during the pandemic, but really nobody on there was pursuing good old love as they claimed they were? That all the seeming effort on real talk was in fact devoted to changing the narrative of real-life stories and setting stage for slipping in disclosures at the perfect time?
I am not an accomplice in all of this, surely?

For a brief moment I saw a fleeting image of myself as the protagonist in Modern Love’s Doorman episode. Except there was no Guzmin to disapprove of the guys, only me, ending up reading all day on park benches with my legs curled up and riding my bike to cozy cafes – alone.

The thought was more amusing than unpleasant, and I tried to grace a full smile to mask any other emotion. I think we were onto discussing the strangeness of allergies of freshly-cut grass and strawberries at that point.

I later wondered, as one must I assume, if there was something about my profile that conveyed to emotionally unavailable men that I’d serve as an accessory to their early healing/moving-on journeys (because this wasn’t the first time). I’m open-minded and we all have our own deals going on, but I’m not sure any of us want to mess with it unless it were worth everyone’s time.

It suffices to say we had a great evening, and for that I’m glad. I really should’ve asked about the cat. Too late.

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