When it ends: a note on relationships

I have not seen her nor spoke with her for months, years, and from time to time, I do miss her, or more likely, the version of her that I etched in my memory. Once upon a time, there was this one person that I loved so wholeheartedly. I believed that she would, and allowed her to, do whatever she saw fit for us. Yet the questions. What is love? What makes something love? What makes love, love? How do you know what someone loves you? How much devotion is involved? How much of a daily grind should we share? How much involvement should someone who claimed to love me have in my life? How much approval should we seek of each other? What if we disagree? Should we then strive to mend this ‘gap’?

These questions, I had never asked her openly; at least not with words anyway. But I asked them to myself on a very regular basis, and I began to use them as a framework of analysis of this mysterious thing called love. Because I felt ‘love’ was choking me. Why I had to be perpetually available whenever she called, or why could I just not say that this was not a good time to talk. She was always relentlessly insisting; it was as if I was filing not just a loneliness gap, but more like a crater in her life. She wanted involvement in every little thing. I just wanted space. I mean, really, if this was what love was all about, then I would rather pass, thanks.

She probably had never come across something similar, so it was somewhat understandable that she was ill-equipped to deal with the issue. While the battle was primarily mine, and struggle was perhaps largely in my mind, they were as real as they come, and ignoring them wouldn’t have made things easier. The sad thing was that instead of using this opportunity to engage with me on a different level, she chose to assert herself in a way that felt belittling me. To be fair, I probably deserved it since I was somewhat self-absorbed; I made it all about me (instead of us), and at the same time, there was also cluelessness in her part that she wasn’t willing to address. It is useful to remember that she is only a human being, who was, more likely than not, also experimenting with the relationship. I painfully came to the conclusion that it was not her fault that she didn’t know how to handle the situation. Equally painfully, I chose to believe that perhaps, she was trying her best.

At the end of the day, if I could put it into words, then this would be it: I have spent a very long time negotiating a relationship with her. She wasn’t exactly absent, she was simply mostly unavailable. She wanted a relationship with me, there was no doubt, but she wanted this relationship to exist in a particular way, a way that suited only her, with little regard for anyone else. She wanted me to play a certain role in her life, to fulfill a certain gap. It was this role that I was unwilling to play. In all honestly, the gap, I could probably fill, at least a little bit, but I refused to do so because I didn’t believe that it was my responsibility to fill that gap in her life. Furthermore, if having a relationship with her came with such unrealistic expectations, then it was better not to engage at all. I could never bear that burden of responsibility that was imposed on me so absent-mindedly, so selfishly. The irony is of course I ended up being the one who was labelled selfish because I refused to participate in this relationship. That also became the defining point, in my life at least, that every relationship is subject to its own terms and these terms are always open for negotiations. These negotiations are bound to happen throughout the course of the relationship because it is one way of asserting boundaries, and boundaries change with time. Without these, the relationship would be based on someone else’s terms. I think I am a little bit too independent to allow myself to participate in such an arrangement.

So, to put it bluntly, I got tired of negotiating this relationship.

She is loveable, and she definitely deserves to be loved, but maybe, not by me.

I still miss her. And I will forever miss her. I will have to live with that gap in my heart from where she used to be.