I reckon I’m one of the few fortunate girls that can say that their last relationship was amazing. We understood each other, our issues with wanting space and we religiously abided by the rules we set out right in the beginning (no hanging up, no name calling, u get the drift). After a year when I shifted to UK, we even tried the whole long distance business. Safe to assume, that didn’t work and we called it quits. However, we stayed on excellent terms and we had the perfect “mutual break up”. However, our break up never quite meant the end of things.
Right from the beginning, our relationship had been about the chase. At no given time in our 1 year together were we ever just us, we chased, teased – our way, possibly, of keeping the boredom away. During my 2 year stint abroad, this behaviour continued. I must’ve come home thrice during which either he was chasing me around or I was. Safe to say the chemistry lingered and somewhere, I guess, so did our feelings. Or maybe it was just that we were so used to each other that it just fit.
The last time I left Bombay for UK, in September, we had already started questioning what remained between us and then I didn’t see him for a year. I returned back in September, next year and obviously, it was amazing seeing him again. But something was amiss. We had dragged ‘us’ out for two years and there was an anticipation, a knot in my stomach I couldn’t deny. No, it wasn’t that for 2 years I had pined after him, we both had our separate lives which included us dating other people but both of us being back in Bombay, for good, presented itself with the inevitable question – what if? Our meetings had been quite normal – we met, we talked, we laughed but there was nothing suggestive about these meets but the realisation didn’t set in until we were left to our own accord and realised we were happy just talking and being idiots – no moves made, nothing tried. The chemistry was gone, all that remained was a familiarity, a comfort and a bond that can only be forged with an understanding of the people we were, are and hopefully will be around each other.
We are obviously still friends, the fact that we broke up doesn’t take away from us that we still understand each other really well and want to spend time with each other talking about the randomest topics. I’m sure in the future, I’m going to have my own little wrestles, moments where there will be a flash of doubt, a stab of regret, a sigh of relief and the heartbreak of finding out that he’s with someone else, but I guess its all a part of growing up, of accepting that now we are nothing but friends. I know, I mentioned we broke up 2 years back, but its only now, when I see him sitting across me, shamelessly asking me to be his wing(wo)man that I realise, its finally over.
