Old Yellow Pages ✓

8. symptoms

29th october, monday, 2018

dear diary,

When I used to go for basketball coaching, there was this guy there, Prateek, whom I really liked. He was on a gap year and hadn't started college yet, so he was happy all the time. He would joke around with a goofy smile on his face, and he would mess with the coach. I liked him, and even then I knew that I didn't like him for him, I liked him because he was much like Kush. I missed Kush, even though we had been nothing more than friends. He was a beautiful soul, and I had loved him for a year without ever gathering the courage to tell him. Wait — I think I had decided not to tell him, since he was dating someone else, someone who was of his age.

See, I was in class 9 and he in class 12. I was literally a 14-yr-old child compared to him, a 17-yr-old, even though most people tell me I'm very mature for my age. And with teenagers, a gap of even one year matters.

I remember feeling like I didn't deserve him, and when I told this to my best friend Mikki, she asked what I would do if he asked me out. I said I would say no. Now I know that it was because I had zero self confidence. I thought I would be a boring girlfriend, because we had this age gap and even as his friend, I could never think of anything interesting to say to him. Now though, I've grown up into a sensitive, thoughtful, interesting person who likes herself and I can easily imagine dating him. I've become mature.

He graduated from school and we lost touch, and I had missed him since.

Prateek was much like Kush. We started talking when he asked for my water bottle for a drink. Pretty soon, we started hanging out at the canteen after basketball, and I enjoyed being his friend. He was fun. I wasn't romantically interested. I was content with how things were. He usually didn't interact with other kids from coaching, especially on social media, so being his facebook friend flattered me. Soon enough he was telling me the stuff he had never told anyone else.

Today Sherry told me that I have this ability to connect with people quickly, and I think he's right. People often tell me those things that they won't ever tell to anyone else. I do get them to open up.

Then Prateek started college. A mediocre one it was, one that didn't have a very intelligent student crowd. Its effects started showing on him. He was often tired and talked little about anything else but his assignments. He tried to talk in English  — though broken — because it made him feel grown up. He didn't tell me this; I just knew.

I was in class 10 now. I stopped going for the coaching, because of studies having suddenly become important, and he stopped coming too. Surprisingly, I didn't think of him often and didn't miss him as much as I thought I would. Once in a blue moon, we would chat on the phone, but the conversation was never very engaging.

We finally met a year later on my birthday. It was awkward. He talked about his girlfriend as we strolled outside, but he was talking softly and the blowing wind carried away half of his words. Initially I struggled to listen, but then I tuned him out and said, "Mm-hm," at the right moments to make him feel as though I were listening. How, I wondered, had our friendship come to this? There was a time when I was dying to be his friend, yet on my birthday, I found myself wishing that he would go soon. I felt like one of those bitches who like people only when they're in their happy phase and abandons them when they change. I felt like I'd used him to fill the hole in my heart.

But now that I think about it, it was probably because we had grown apart so much, we had nothing in common anymore. Add to that our age gap. I wasn't interested in listening about his engineering college.

Since then, we have scheduled many meetings, but I have always cancelled them later, with some excuse. The thought of meeting him doesn't excite me, and if the meeting causes even a slight inconvenience to my (unplanned) schedule, I cancel it. I don't feel like working hard to finish up other things quickly to make time for him. I don't understand what we'll do together if we do meet.

I don't have the heart to directly tell him that I don't want to meet him. That's just not right. I don't end friendships like that. I have always maintained contact with friends.

Symptoms of losing interest in people:

1. You don't think about them often.
2. The thought of meeting them makes you awkward, and not excited.
3. You tell them you're busy and you'll talk/meet later.
4. You forget important things about them.
5. You tune them out.
6. Short replies while chatting.

I have noticed a pattern in myself: if I stay away from a thing for long enough by busying myself with something else, I can almost forget about it. I become detached.

I was addicted to Instagram. I opened it every hour to check on my schoolmates. Then I decided to take a break. I deactivated my account and didn't visit the app for another week. Sherry and I talked via Hangouts, so half of my need to visit Insta was eradicated. I started feeling happier.

So. Stay away from something for long enough, engage yourself in something else, and you'll lose it.

This is probably why I am so afraid of putting my hobbies aside and focusing only on studying, even though it's my class 12 now. If I stop singing or writing, I will lose who I am. And I'm not sure if I'll be able to get it back.

On the other hand, even if I'm not interested in something but spend time doing it regularly, I begin to develop interest (like, I had stopped visiting wattpad because I was caught up in the other social media sites, but now I've started visiting wattpad regularly and regained my interest). I'm much happier   :)

 ❄