Acquaintance, Friend or a perception of Love

 I see him and all I know is that I want him. I manage to get his telephone number from my friend who happens to be a close relative of his.

I call. He is busy. It is Christmas Eve. We decide to talk after he is done with his party. He calls.  We start talking. In no time I realize I am in love. ‘Love at second voice’ something similar to ‘love at first sight’. We speak for 4 hours. The clock strikes 1:00. It is indeed late. We decide to discontinue our conversation. He says  he will call me back. 

I am waiting. It is a week, and I am still waiting. I decide to call him. He does not answer the call. In a few minutes time I get a text ‘busy, will call you later.’ 

I wait. Days pass. It is weekend time. I decide to call him again. He does not answer the call again. After sometime I get a text ‘busy, will call you later.’

What the heck does this ‘later’ mean? I hate the English language. Words such as friends, sorry and later are misused all across.

Days pass. I can think of him and nothing else. I want to call him again. This time something stops me. It is ego. I think  – if he does not want to talk to me I can’t force him to do so.

In a few seconds I am enlightened – ego is bad for health. With a desire to remain in good health I call him. He disconnects the call. There comes a text ‘busy, will call you later.’

One fine day my phone rings. I jump out of joy. We start talking. I say – what happened, you thought of me after such a long time. (What a silly girlish question). He says he was busy. He tells me all that he did with his friends who had come over from USA, Europe and Somalia. Well! Who cares? All I know is that you did not talk to me. 

In our conversation I catch a very nice statement.  He says ‘we are friends’.  I am glad to know that he considers me his friend. I am yet to figure out if I considered him my friend or not. All I knew then was that I loved him. 

The conversation lasts for a few minutes and that is it. We are running short of words. 

A few days later I text him. No response. I text him again after a few days. Again no response. Well the messages I had sent had no content per se. They were all silly forwards.  Ideally there was nothing to respond, but I was expecting one. I guess I was being unrealistic. I don’t know why. I call him again after a few days. He answers the call and says that he is going out for a party and will call me later. I reply  that I am also out for a party and I might get late. He says that we will check at night if we are free to talk. I agree. I am done with my party. I text him. He does not respond. 

Such series of incomplete conversations and text messages continue for quite some time. It is very obvious that I am desperately trying to talk to him and he is very politely avoiding me.  Either he does  not understand or he chooses to pretend not to understand. 

One fine day he adds me to g talk. I am thrilled. He then sends me one of the silly forwards. I dance. I am happy.

I decide to call him. Well! He answers. I am pleasantly surprised. He answers my call without sending a routine text message. During our conversation he ensures that he reminds me at least once that we are friends. 

Within a few days time we start talking to each other almost 2 or 3 times a week. Needless to say every conversation has the word ‘friends’ in it. 

One day I tell him – hey I think we should meet.  He says ‘yes we should.’ I sense that he is just not serious. After a few days I repeat my statement. He is the same. 

Our periodic calls continue, and as always he reminds me that we are friends. 

One fine day he tells me – hey we should meet, long time.

Hurray!!!

We decide a time and a place and just 3 hours before our meeting he calls me and tells me that he has work. He says he will try his best to finish work soon so that we could meet if not for lunch at least for coffee. I am  disturbed. Here I plan to take the relation forward, and there he is hell bent upon avoiding me, my calls, my messages and our meetings. 

 We could neither meet for lunch nor for coffee. His work took the better of him.

I am truly disappointed. I just do not know how I can tell him how much I want to be with him. 

Finally I decide to leave things to time. I force myself to divert my mind from him. With great difficulty I manage to succeed. 

One day:

‘hey, what are you doing this weekend’

‘nothing planned so far’

‘coffee’

My! Finally!! Looks like my 14 years of exile is over.  He decides to meet his friend. Good! I mean something to him at least. It is a different story that he meant something much more to me. 

The D day arrives. We meet. A good meeting; time flew. I could not believe that I was waiting for this moment for months together. 

Time up, meeting over. Back home.

He finds me online. He pings. He asks me about our coffee meeting. I said that I enjoyed it. He says that he hardly gets along this well with anyone. I am one of his special friends, and I am his best female friend. I knew he was honest.

 After a few days he confronts. He says that he thinks that we get along very well and we could be great partners. 

I sigh. I am yet to figure out the meaning of the sigh. Was it a sense of victory or achievement? Something which I so desperately wanted? Was it his attention that I seeked? Which I finally got. Was it an unfulfilled desire? Which  finally got fulfilled after months of trial. Or was it stubbornness? Stubbornness to get him.

I tell him – though when I met you for the first time I had different intentions, today I think we are better off as friends.

 

I am walking on the terrace.

My friend and my mother ask me a very nice question. ‘if you liked him so much why are you refusing his proposal now.’

Why did I do so? Why did I backfire with the same word – friends. 

Did I sub consciously give him what he asked for? All these months I tried to take things forward while he cut me off by calling me his friend. He might not have realized what his avoidance could do to me. In fact, I myself did not know the impact of the avoidance till I did not face his confrontation. 

It made him my ‘friend.’

Now and then he kept asking me about us. I always comfortably choose to use the magical word –friends. 

He still talks to me, pings me, emails me and at times we meet; however we are just friends.

His avoidance had changed my love to friendship, which surprisingly I was not aware of. It was his confrontation which made me realize this. I do not know how this happened and when did this happen.

 I also realize another thing -- I never called him my friend. I never considered him my  friend. It is always he who chose to call me a "friend". Yes, I chose to remain mum whenever I was addressed as a friend. But being mum does not mean consensus.  And, yes! I also chose to use the same word 'friend' as a defense. I don't know why. I guess it was the safest then.

Today as I think about him I realize that it might not have been love at all. It might have been something which I perceived as love.