Friday, September 30, 2005

Sweet Nothings...

It seems to be the season for heartache.

Everyone around me is ending friendships or relationships. A girlfriend recently ended a 10-year association with a parasitic best friend from school. She was distraught. Somehow the loss of even a bad friend hurts more than the loss of a lover. Another guy I know, broke up with his girlfriend of 4 years because things just changed after a 6-month stint she had in the US. Proves my point that distance just makes the heart wander. Yours truly ended a marathon 4.5 years herself a couple of weeks ago. For those of you who thought I was going to become introspective and sensitive enough to write about other folks' pain, you got it all wrong. Nope, this entry is again all about me. Thank God I have my sense of humor and love for self :-)

So here I am. Single. Not really sure how to mingle. I'm not tough enough to end the friendship because it means so much. And I'm not strong enough to maintain it without hurting myself. What a paradox.

Anyway, I caught up with an old friend from school last night. Well, he was kind of my first boyfriend, at a time when I didn't quite understand what the term meant :-) We didn't even hold hands !! We were discussing how easy life was back then, when love was like Kevin and Vinny in the Wonder Years. Remember your first Valentine's day, and the time you gave your first card, first time buying someone a gift, getting harried if she came your way on Rakhi, your first fight. God its like this wave of nostalgia swept over me.

To save me from this and more, I've been put on a strict regimen by well-meaning friends to help me get over my misery. This includes -

1. Getting piss drunk with a girlfriend - Great idea to start out with but I don't have much memory of the evening, and I think I may have sent an incriminating or worse, pathetic, sms/made a call
2. Getting loads of work done, and doing overtime to impress bosses - Again a swell idea coz my value at work skyrocketed, except what if they start expecting me to do it regularly? I mean eventually, I will get a life and then I will want to live it
3. Watching porn and comparing where he fell short - Worked well for a while when combined with alcohol, but then backfired completely coz I got all hot and bothered
4. Dating other men - Sure, where are they? I realized suddenly that single women weren't joking when they said all the good ones are already taken/married/gay
5. Experiment with my sexuality - Ummm...ok I would've loved to give this a try except that the very idea of doing a horizontal tango with a woman makes me want to loose dinner. I mean if I wanted boobies, I'd just look down

There were more suggestions, but I'm tying them out first. Will keep everyone posted on how those attempts are working. I have a feeling its going to be one helluva ride.

Saturday, September 10, 2005

Nostalgia Interrupted

I've been out of action for quite some time haven't I? Have been squeezed at work of late. By squeeze I do not mean boss's squeeze, I mean I am being made to put in every single waking moment here. When my colleagues leave, I am here to bid farewell, and when they arrive back in the morning, I am here to welcome them. The only way they have of knowing I ever went back home is the fact that I am in different clothes every day, and am not smelling like rotted flesh.

Actually I quite like my new lifestyle. Its better than going out and being humiliated constantly. Something thats become quite a regular exercise for me.

A couple of weeks back I was paying my mobile bill, and was accompanied by the boyfriend, when I this guy walked up to me, and said those dreaded words, "*&&^*# is that you??" Before I could return a polite "hey whazzup", the guy says "What happened to your weight???"

Damn, I hate meeting old school mates.

It didn't help that the guy in question could have challenged Adnan Sami's girth in school, and was now about 500 pounds lighter. Yours truly on the other hand, resembles a Renaissance/Bottecilli painting (they liked their women well-built). In school, it was the proverbial "ek phool lots of malis" situation. Now ofcourse is a whole different story.

So anyway, here I am paying a monstrous phone bill, being recognized by a chap from school, whose opening comment is my body mass index. I would've tried to impress him by talking about my work and all, but the guy was really not someone who'd be impressed with my corporate career. Ofcourse, the fact that he's made his blistering comment infront of the boyfriend doesn't help. Now he knows I was thinner, he may expect me to be so again! Curses curses.

Anyway, so its about 11:15 in the night, a Friday night, and I am at work. How depressing is that? When I am like 80, my grandkids (if I find the time to have their parents), will want to know what I did as an adventurous young woman, and all I'll have to tell them is this Friday night late stay at office. How sad is that? A colleague and I made this startling discovery today, that the folks in most companies who get promoted, aren't the ones who stay late and get the job done. No sir, infact they are the ones who come to work late and leave early. They give the impression of being good managers (they manage to make me stay late and finish a project for which 4 other people are also responsible).

Ok I am officially depressed. I read this today to cheer myself up. You may like it too. Infact, tomorrow, I'm going to put up the female version of that exercise. Cheers people.