I continue to narrate the brief yet weighty story of being caught off guard by a man, having my heart & mind genuinely open up after a decade to the possibility of love – only to have it shut back down with a painful quiet lingering thud.
It remains difficult to keep writing about this due to the mix of confusing feelings the act of reliving this story illicits in me, but i have to do so for the sake of ‘letting it go’ finally – 4 months after it all transpired. I also cannot strictly follow chronological consistencies here, since I am writing from memory, having deleted all our correspondence.
when we ‘fought’ for the first time, after my embarrassing freak out upon feeling intense feelings of joy/ heart-opening/ vulnerability, i had said to him, ‘do not ignite a woman’s fire, if you’re going to abandon it’ (hiding-my-face emoji) – to which he replied, ‘am i not right here!?’ – and for that i wanted to reach out through the phone and pounce on him, smooch him. haha. yes, he was right there. talking it out with a hysterical dramatic me.
i felt good about this man, because i liked that he was there – talking it out. not rudely, not meanly, not sarcastically, no silent treatment, just talking it out. also, he didn’t just talk it out, he actually was taking ownership of his side of the whole thing. that was nice.
in that conversation it felt to me like if we did have arguments or disagreements (which any 2 people new to each other were bound to have countless times), we would talk. and isn’t talking (respectfully) a must-have feature of any friendship/ relationship? yep. i liked him very much in those moments. promising dude, i thought. i was getting more smitten by the day. excited.
i want to state here, for my own ego’s sake – Amit had been intense from the first text he sent me. i had not reciprocated till a couple of days, re: intensity, since i wasn’t hooked at first. he was sounding juvenile initially. it was a bit foggy, how i perceived him at first. but then from the third day on, when i started liking our conversation & him (the idea of him), i gradually reciprocated his intensity and madness. he was being quite the romeo. and i was entertained at first, then i swooned, and then i leaned the fuck in – reciprocated with my own cuteness (which i honestly thought i had run out of after the divorce- or had buried it deep within, never planning on revealing it to a man ever again re: hyper-jadedness and self-preservation mode – but i had leaned into being child-like or like a crazy teenager who hasn’t ever been romantically hurt before – basically my hopeful lovergirl avatar).
when i said to him, i want us to say good morning and good night to each other every day, i was obviously declaring my brand of consistency in romance or keeping the conversation going with a new person. he didn’t say anything in response, but i think that ask freaked him out. he had mentioned early on, when i had asked him about his love life after divorce/ on dating apps – it was a concise list of his ‘activities’ (haha) comically presented (list of ‘flings’ he had had and the reasons why they had all ‘flung’ so to speak). one of the women he had talked about – he had made it clear that he had to end it coz she had become clingy, and he hadn’t liked her that way, he was there for the sex only. i had made a note of this, mentally.
there is this term he used for her behavior, which i had never heard in my life before, but i guess you can think of it as a brand of clinginess, where one person becomes more invested in a fling that the other. lets call it ‘xyz’.
when he first said it to me i had laughed about it a lot, because it (the term he had used in his colloquial lingo) had sounded completely made-up – i giggled and giggled about it at him. but of course, that term remained at the back of my mind.
in fact, we joked about it a bit too. it was damn funny and fun. i would ask him – having said the autocorrected ‘i live you‘ to each other so soon – are we being ‘xyz‘? and he would say, ‘we are far beyond that‘. we giggled about it. (awwwwww)
when i said, ‘this is seeming too intense, too cute, too good, too soon‘. and that i feel too vulnerable and open, despite my better judgment, explaining what had made me cry all morning – in response he seemed genuinely confused and had said, ‘why would falling in love with something beautiful be a bad thing/ make you cry?’ or some such. he had asked me, ‘can you just be in the moment with me!?’
do you see how this man seemed so lovely? by the way, i am not implying that Amit is some deviant asshole who was fucking with me in that moment. i’d like to believe that it was all genuine. in the moment. i refuse to live in a reality where people would say such lovely assuring things to me and not mean it.
i only say what i mean, so i believe that people are the same with me.
seriously, i mean this with every inch of my heart. and no, i will not be called naive. i am not. i am ayahuasca’s baby. in my world, the people i choose to trust are genuine people. or at least what they say, when i engage with them sincerely, is sincere.
anyway…
after a couple of days, i did feel that Amit’s energy was feeling off. he wasn’t trying to communicate much. he seemed to be struggling with something privately. i could even feel him trying to not like me (just a feeling i can’t explain, but my intuition doesn’t fail in these ways – don’t we all sense that someone is pulling away or retreating back into themselves/ their darkness when they do?).
i should’ve asked him about it, but didn’t.
one morning i sent him a video of me, with my dog Koko, me trying to get Koko to get out of bed for his morning walk. each typical morning with Koko is similarly cute in this way – i come back from my morning workout and wake him up, while he is still lazying in my bed, and coax him for about 40 minutes to go for our first walk of the day. its always the same – he keeps laying there, and manoeuvres his body in myriad ways to get me to pet him all over nis tiny chubby body. he keeps closing his eyes to every touch, i give him loads of kisses and keep asking intermittently, ‘do you want to go for a walk?’, to which he gives me zero indication that he consents. haha. its adorable. so one morning, i decided to send Amit a video of this. mind you, this man hadn’t yet even sent me a voice note longer than 4 seconds. he hadn’t shared any bit of himself yet. i understood he is an introvert. i wasn’t going to push him.
oh my god – i have pen this down here – fuck. he was lightheartedly telling me about being aggressive in bed, wanting to dominate his woman, to manhandle, throw her around (to which i said – all the best buddy, that can’t happen with Me – i’m short, but round and heavy, very heavy – but he refused to believe me – moron!) (when does a woman ever overstate how heavy she is – aren’t potential partners always trying to be petite, ultra-feminine, feather-light fairies!?) (i am the opposite of this in life – i’m wary of posturing to be who i am not and hellbent on not misleading anyone, even if that means that i will scream ‘ i am faaaaaaaaaatttttt‘ till pigs start to fly)
ANYWAY – he sent me this picture of his hand holding his dog Sparrow’s toy, a dick-pic so to speak – a 7-inch-ish vertical toy. i lost my fucking mind over this – i laughed and giggled and laughed and giggled. (i think that was my first deep moment of brain shoer-circuiting for him, or at least one of the big ones)
(with me, if you are a man and you make me laugh – the seduction job is half-done – i am hooked)
no man has yet sent me an unsolicited dick pic. they have always asked me my permission first. and other times i have asked for one.
never have i received a comical one, like the one Amit sent. a dog’y toy. 7 inches. hahahahahahahaaha – i fell in love with this dude just for that. do you get what i see in that dog-toy dickpic? humour, sexiness, classiness, a naughty introvert, modest yet devious, fucking genius.
(here, of course i have to state that its highly possible that Amit wasn’t sending me that pic as some sort of genius-master-anjuri-seducer. i cannot know what he was thinking, and in fact our senses of humour might be as different as apples and chicken, but in that moment i thought we were gold – made for each other. sue me. haha)
(oh god. i still go cuckoo-bananas happy and giddy when i think about that picture. hahahahaa) (i love him) (i still have that picture by the way) (even though i have deleted everything else – our chats, that one video he sent me of training his dog Sparrow, even his contact number – but that dog-toy dickpic remains in my photo library as a proud souvenir from a lost ‘potential love’.)
coming back to what i was narrating earlier – i was smitten, i sent him a ‘hey take a peek into my daily life’ video with my lazy ‘refusing to get up for his morning walk’ dog. I am a no make-up girl in general, i was in my workout clothes, face unwashed, looking tired, giggling my ass off as my dog did his doggie dance, belly up, whilst sticking to one side of my body.
honestly, i felt a bit nervous about it all. the quickness of this ‘smittenness’. the speed of our ‘beyond xyz madness’, the uneven sharing of media between us. ‘after a few hours Amit replied with a tone that was polite, maybe too polite as opposed to our naughty-charged-xyz-horny-cute manner of banter. ‘koko is looking for good his age (8 years), and good to see your cute face‘.
something felt off, so i said, ‘what a lukewarm response‘. once again, here i was making a big move, being the first one to be candid, un-postured, showing him my everyday ordinaryness, it felt quite intimate to me. and he said what he said in that semi-formal way. (to set the context, he had lost his marbles at a picture of my legs or feet earlier, and had gushed at my whatsapp profile picture -which wasn’t even one of the ‘good’ ones)
he admitted, ‘yeah, i can feel my replies to you becoming weirder and weirder.’
my brain went into a ‘freak out’ yet again. what was he saying? what did he mean?
he confusingly explained, ‘my life is going through many upheavals at the moment. also, ever since i took that drug from my friend I have been feeling quite off. i have too much to deal with. I am not certain about anything right now – have to change career, dad’s health is bad, tons of legal troubles (he didn’t elaborate on this – for all i know it could be a lingering divorce matter or he could have killed someone – somewhere along that wide spectrum might lay his legal troubles). very confused about everything.’ i fucking lost it, internally.
‘confused about me?‘, is what i heard. also, what the fuck. how did this suddenly occur? if these are ongoing troubles, how did he forget about them whilst he was being adoring romeo with me these past 10 odd days? etc.
i am sure i am not doing a great job of explaining that i am not crazy. haha. i may sound like i am overreacting, but that’s also okay i suppose. you may think what you may like. but to me, a woman who had opened up and this deeply after literally ages, the stakes were too high. i had gotten smitten with a man who was confusing me, seemed confused about himself, me and us, suddenly, out of the blue.
wtf. the one thing that raises my alarm-bells is inconsistency. i am consistent in my friendships, affection, attention etc. so i expect the same. i want the same. and as a highly intuitive person i can perceive fast when something’s off.
after a little back and forth, i told him that maybe ‘we should stop. this is too tough on me. it was nice knowing you.’ of course i said this with the expectation that he’ll fight for me for us. (and of course i did not want it to end between us, whatever it was, i wanted it to go on and come to its natural conclusion, whatever that would be. this seemed so abrupt. this change of tone, change of heart, change of reciprocity. it was terrible. it felt terrible. made me so sad, and also angry) but he said nothing. i think maybe he said, ‘sorry’ or some such.
that evening i cried, because i felt the familiar sense of ‘being rejected’ or ‘being led on’. and i haven’t really had that happen to me in the recent past, so i don’t know where that familiarity came from. i guess it played into my cynical skeptical alter ego, the jaded side of me, the ‘defeated’ part of me.
why did i feel the exhaustion of a person who has had their heart bruised by a ton of men? because i haven’t. i have had small and big crushes as a kid/ teen, i have had a big love in school (best friend turned romeo turned boyfriend turned first big love who eventually told me i was too good for him and asked me to break with me – it took me 3.5 years to get over that idiot). i have had a big love in college – postgrad (started out as someone i thought was cute, a senior, then he asked me out, i started dating him only to dump him within a week coz i wasn’t feeling ‘it’, went back to him within a day and gradually fell in love, then lived in with him post-college, then he went down on one knee and asked me to marry him, then got married, realised it had been a mistake despite being best friends & like family, then he broke my heart, then we fell out of love over the years, then we could ignore the chasm-between-us and the dead-end-relationship no longer and one of us asked to split up and then the other one agreed out of emotional exhaustion). in the middle of that facade of a marriage i fell in limerence with an ex-boss/ good friend who happened to kiss me one drunken lunch (i kissed him back, and all hell broke loose between us – eventually destroying our beautiful quirky offbeat friendship) (he acted rather coldly towards me in the aftermath) (it took a long time for me to get past that) (my heart was doubly broken within the heartbreak of a broken marriage) i had a couple of insignificant crushes, post separation/ break up with ex-husband. also had one particular sensational thrilling flirtation and sexting and phone sex with a new york comedian briefly in 2018. felt like a bigger deal than it was at the time – it is virtually inconsequential. then in 2023 i had another episode of stupid limerence with this idiot who is a certified moron now (sorry for the vagueness). then i felt a quite intrigued by a ayahuasca-and-meditation-community-stranger, long story short – we are lovely friends now – kinda like siblings. brother from another mother etc. then i went on dating apps with the clear intent of exploring my horniness and alleviating my loneliness and boredom, but no intent of being in love. got close enough to start having feelings for one idiot, but halted in my tracks after one frank conversation which revealed what a nonchalant idiot he was. continued to have successful fleeting flirty engagements with quite a lot of complying men, made out with a few, was in bed with one, someone i enjoyed – but that’t about it.
so why was i so hurt? why was this confusion created by Amit so hurtful, so painful?
i don’t know.
to be clear, when Amit behaved inconsistently, after being romeo-like in the beginning – i assumed he has changed his mind about liking me. my reaction was to protect myself – hence halt. but in all frankness, i did not really want to – i was hooked, i wanted him to fight for this connection that he had sworn was ‘so different’ / special for him as well.
that night, late at night, i wrote angry messages to him and sent them. those messages conveyed how this was the worst dating app story in my experience now. how no man had ever done this to me, pretended to like me and say insane loving things, and then confuse me. i am a grown woman who does not want to deal with this sort of clichéd nonsense. etc.
i woke up very early and deleted those texts, and apparently he did not see them. i felt relieved somehow. no matter what, i liked him enough to not expose him to my wrath. what is i had misunderstood something? what if he felt bad upon reading my words? what if what if. (he did not respond in any way to my deleted texts)
in afternoon i was sheepishly telling my bestie that the connection/ man i had gushed over had seemingly gone to hell (am i cursed? am i stupid? am i juvenile? etc.). i couldn’t help myself and texted Amit, ‘i miss you‘ but deleted that within 5 minutes of sending it.
then obviously i lost the plot entirely (ever since i have processed my divorce, ‘healed’ with ayahuasca, oriented to a spiritual pov in life – i cannot seem to stay angry at people, i want to quickly forgive and move on) and texted him, ‘hey did you read the angry texts i sent you last night?’ to which he said he hadn’t gotten the chance to before i deleted them. (phew, i thought) and then somehow a conversation began.
in that conversation a few difficult and wonderful things surfaced. in no particular order, Amit said, ‘you’ve been quite impatient with me Anjuri’. ‘i can communicate well with ALMOST ANYONE, but not with a sword hanging over my head.’ this was difficult for me to read.
yes i had been impatient. its hard to admit mistakes/ bad behaviors. i had been impatient or rather super fucking excited to hear from him each day BECAUSE I WAS FUCKING SMITTEN. i felt a bit annoyed that he had conveniently forgotten about his own excitement/ clinginess/ impatience (which i didn’t mind at all – i thought it was cute). initially when i would say, ‘ok, i’m saying goodnight now, early morning workout tomorrow‘, he would (i thought, cutely) say, ‘noooo… don’t goooo‘. or he would send me a text while he knew i was at pottery class, ‘are you done?’ i genuinely thought that was cute. that’s my style of love/ being into someone – when you can’t wait to talk to someone, when you can’t wait for the next morning, the next text. sigh.
what raised an alarm bell was the ‘a sword hanging over my head‘ – that gave me the ‘ick’. i hated being talked to that way. i hated someone perceiving me that way. and it felt like this person was perceiving me as someone who is forcing them to give me attention. fuck. yuck.
sword – why because i expected him to reply to my texts in normal human time? because in keeping with the theme of our ‘beyond xyz’ ‘clinginess‘ i asked for goodnight good morning texts? because i expected a decent enough ‘intimate’/ playful response to a video i shared of myself with my dog? wtf dude. ewww. why would those be swords hanging over your head? whatever happened to the loverboy who was texting with me all day just a few days ago?
that ‘sword’ thing – i did not like at all. (and of course once again it was clear that this was 2 strangers miscommunicating/ misunderstanding each other)
he mentioned again the enormous stressers in his life at the moment, and how he is confused/ uncertain about everything.
so finally i asked, ‘what are you uncertain about?‘ and then it dawned upon me and i asked, ‘oh! you’re confused about liking me, is it?‘ to which he said this sweet thing, ‘no. i meant every word i said‘.
i asked, ‘should i leave you alone for the time being?’ (i didn’t want to, but i had to respect his need to process his life-stage in peace, in his own space and time)
to this, the bastard said, ‘no. just don’t have expectations from me at this point and don’t assign meaning to everything.’
i am not an idiot, even in love i will speak up for myself if i think it’s the right thing to do by me – i said, ‘well the expectations came from your romeo-ness of so many days, and the meaning also came from there’.
to my surprise he said, ‘yeah i know. i understand. that’s why i’m not blaming you for acting like a crazy bitch – texting and deleting texts immediately after‘.
(i have to state here that he wasn’t being derogatory here when he called me ‘bitch’. we were being playful with each other from the start, and were already calling each other bastard and bitch and slut etc. playfully)
i told him it was all his fault, for being so fucking cute with me since day one (!!!) – we giggled about it. i told him, ‘you crazy bitch!’. we giggled some more. and just like that it felt like we had had another roadblock but talked it out.
(he said something about, ‘i’m surprised that you’re still talking to me, i thought you’d be completely turned off by me by now. i haven’t been very good to you’ etc. or soem such)
i left him alone the whole day after. the next day, i let him reach out to me himself. giving him space. no ‘swords’. to be honest, i was no longer feeling on-edge. i decided to believe his words ‘i meant everything i said about you’ (i.e. i ‘live’ you, this connection is different, i’d be lucky to be with you, i have never come across anyone like you, you are a goddess etc.)
mid-morning, i was starting to read a new book (a haunting read – our wives at sea by julia armfield) when he texted me, ‘what you doing?‘. i sent him a picture of the book in my lap, my painted toes in the blurred background. he instantly replied, ‘look at those delicious feet!’. i sent him a video of my toes. he went ballistic about them, what he wanted to do to them. i told him he was crazy (he is). this turned into a day-long sexting session (intermittent, coz i had a 4 hour pottery class ) – which was super-hot and sexy. i genuinely wanted this man’s hands on me, my god! aaah!
i was settling into bed when we continued to sext until he suddenly said, ‘gotta go. dad’s really unwell.’
i said, ‘fuck. ok bye.‘
he said, ‘don’t feel sorry. this is the kind of person i am – sexting with you while my dad is very unwell.’ (in a deeply self-depricating way) (on day one when he asked me about how i found my way into the world of ayahuasca, i had said that after my divorce i was ‘broken and lost‘, and in search for spiritual healing i gradually journeyed into that world of plant medicine – to this he had replied, ‘i am neither broken, nor lost, but i would also want the experience of Aya) (this was alarming, its always alarming, and i have seen this in many people, men and women alike – people who claim/ insist they are ‘fine’ after divorce/ breakups. but especially divorce – since its much more than a private relationship between 2 people, the dissolution or failure of a marriage deeply impacts one’s identity, one’s familial relationships, one’s societal perceptions etc. amongst other things – a life unexamined is wasted, a pain unexamined/ misread is wasted. i am always suspicious of people who are ‘fine’ right after life-altering events such as divorce – this was a red flag – i should have talked to him about it or held back my progressing affections/ investments in this silly unaware dude.) (clearly Amit was broken and lost re: sexting with me all day while ageing parent was seriously unwell) (zero judgment there – like many humans in similar situations, i asked my ex-husband – when we gf-bf in college to fuck me the night of my grandmother’s sudden death) (sex/ pleasure and death of beings/things are closely linked etc.)
honestly, i felt a bit ‘used’ (i didn’t like that i was an unaware distraction for him that day – and i felt so close with him that day through the horny shit that we were talking about – because this wasn’t the emotionless meaningless casual sexting i have engaged in with so many men in the past – where both people knew this was just that – just sexting. i was into this guy, and his dad was unwell, and he was actively in crisis and clearly he was using me as coping mechanism that day, i just didn’t know about it.
but i also am not one to judge. i know how it feels when a loved one is unwell, when you feel helpless, when you also hate/ dislike that loved one, but also feel responsible for their wellbeing.)
so i simply replied, with full empathy and love, ‘don’t judge yourself too much. life is complex, parent-child relationships are complex, coping mechanisms are complex.’
he replied, ‘you are the best person i have ever come across, and the sexiest’ (re: the sexting we had indulged in all day)
i said ‘take care’ and let him be that night.
the next morning marked the beginning of the ‘silence’/ ‘absence’ phase of the Amit saga.
i won’t go into detail here, coz i am getting narrative fatigue now. i’ll just say this – for the next 15 days i continued to intermittently text Amit ‘checking in’ texts, without much expectation of him replying. i sent him more candid videos of me with my dog, being lazy in the morning. i sent him videos of a street dog (a dog i adore) i had fostered back in 2021. i sent him videos of the indie dogs who live on our premises. i sent him a couple of long pep-talk cheerleading texts too. i was playing the confusing role of half-girlfriend who wasn’t really girlfriend. i was being a concerned friend and well-wisher, but more than that. he remained mostly silent. i sent him an excited text about having joined an evening dance class, which he ‘hearted’ in response. he replied a couple of times conveying that he was mostly in and out of the hospital for his dad’s ailments.
just before the silence had begun, Amit said something about wanting it all to end. not that he was suicidal, ‘but i want it all to end’. now that i wholeheartedly understand. i have been through this exact thing a few times in the last decade or more. its basically an ego-death, a desire for a compete reset, without the desire to self-harm. (do you remember this man had said, ‘i’m neither broken nor lost’?!?!?!) this is the level of lack of self-awareness that is quite prevalant in people who need to feel and admit that they in fact are completely lost and overwhelmed. because the more you do not realise this about yourself, the fact that you are breaking apart and need some respite, you will continue to ACT like you are fine, basically pretending you are fine – do you understand how dangerous and taxing and exhausting it can be to keep pretending?!?!
Only once you admit/ accept it, can you move forward, can you begin to break down quietly, with dignity and eventually rebuild yourself and your world one day.
i have been on the brink of ‘i wish everything would simply end’ a few times. its nothing to be ashamed of. its a mark of being human, its a mark of ‘i am finally allowing myself to feel the exact weight of the overwhelming things that have been sitting on my chest for so long‘. it is a hopeful beginning. it may not seem like it, but its most definitely a beginning. because if you don’t even acknowledge the pain, how can you begin to feel it? and if you do not feel it wholly, how can you move past it? how can you forgive yourself and your life and the people who hurt you (intentionally or otherwise)? how can you go about life without hurting others, in that case? you simply can’t, in my experience.
it has already been said in multiple ways by people dramatically wiser than me, ‘hurt people hurt people‘, ‘when you carry a wound deeply enough, you eventually bleed on people who didn’t cut you.‘ ‘The worst part about being broken is that the jagged edges of your soul end up tearing into the people who try to hold you.’
anyway, the gist of it is this – for around 2-3 weeks i was playing quasi-girlfriend to this absent man. i was confused how i was supposed to behave, so i sent candid videos of myself in my routine life in the hope to make him smile maybe (shrug emoji). i am the elder daughter to ageing parents and i have had more than my share of hospital visits and hospital duty since years ago now. i understand the fatigue and hopelessness of that stuff. i empathise deeply. i have also had to ‘care for’ a family member with whom i share no love-bond, for over 1.5 months. i get it. it can be bleak.
i didn’t expect him to respond. he had said in one of his last texts to me – something about feeling numb/ depressed (since he took that drug that was meant to be ecstacy). that was sad to hear. he apologised a couple of times for not replying to my texts. i told him he didn’t need to.
i however, on my side of the story, couldn’t stop thinking about him, our conversations, the reassuring ways he had ‘handled’ me earlier. i thought i was sitting at the beginning of something with someone i liked. surely i could see this pause as a big speedbump, but i had no way of assuming that this was the end. i waited for this dude in every fucking way possible. i refused to go on dating apps again. i was interested in this one man only. i thought about him constantly. i imagined how we would meet, i imagined driving to his city in my small awesome car that i love so much, i imagined walking around, i imagined spending time with him, making out with him, nerding out with him, smoking up with him.
just remembered this lovely thing this bastard said to me on the day that we were sexting all day (while his dad was really unwell, the last day we talked) – a few days before that i had asked him, ‘are you a successful nerd?’ (by which i meant to say that i am a wannabe nerd, but my intelligence lies in being intuitive and conceptual rather than fact-science-based, so i was asking him if he was someone who could understand and explain the world to me) to which he had replied a long list of lovely nerdy things he is interested in, ending the list with ‘Göbeklitepe‘ – and i had been delighted to read that (immediate lady-boner haha).
it turned out he was interested in the things i was, only he might have a brain that could break down complex things to explain to me. this is rare. this coincidence.
if i were to mention Göbeklitepe to someone, at random, on a dating app convo i doubt they would go, ‘oh yeah! Göbeklitepe dude! how cool! ‘ haha. only some nerds/ wannabe nerds know about this and are genuinely intrigued/ interested. yes he may have been posturing, but i ain’t so cynical. and how would he know the specific things that i also am intrigued by. wow. mind blown. i was hugely turned on, and wanted to lie in bed with him, watching some Gaia documentaries.
he had also, at the beginning, after reading some of my ayahuasca posts here, told me that even though he held disdain for people who talked about energies and vibrations etc (he thought they did a disservice to the world), he had loved/ appreciated how i had approached the stuff in my writing. i thought that was lovely – all i want from people is to be slightly open-minded and to have the ability to go ‘huh, i didn’t think of this in that way’ – that’s all we need to have healthy conversations/ relationships in this world, no? 2 people with different brains and different sensibilities can make each other’s life richer beyond imagination, only if they are willing to. etc. (yes yes, i was deeply smitten with him).
i got derailed. i was narrating this wonderful thing he said to me re: nerdy things on our last day of talking. in the middle of sexting, after he had told me he thought i was deeply delicious in every way (my hands, my feet, my skin etc.), i randomly asked him, ‘hey, you want to lay in bed next to each other, play with each other’s hands and talk about (nerdy) things for hours?’ this was deep in the middle of him telling me how he would like to fuck me, and he replied, without a pause, ‘can we spend the rest of our lives doing that please?’ i mean, c’mon! how can i not be smitten with this idiot!? i am not crazy or stupid. (she said to herself over and over to stop gaslighting her own self)
you see, i thought i had come across the next man – the next chapter of love – of course we hadn’t met yet, but i was ready to. i knew he was going through a rough time, i would have waited and then gotten ready to seriously date him. this was an absolute first for me – i cannot overstate this – i was, for the first time, in my adult life, wanting to seriously pursue & build a relationship via dating. i have never dated before, i have just found myself in long-term relationships and then divorce, and then casual conversations – that’s all. so yeah, i was ready to date. i was hopeful. so excited, giddy, happy. for this bloody jackass. this unhealed unaware 37 year old man-boy. this moron who clearly did not understand, ‘say only what you mean, otherwise don’t say it at all’. fucking asshole! a loveable fool.
anyway, i continued to think about him, cumming to him, re-reading our texts, assuring myself that i wasn’t imagining a connection, texted him, sent him videos for about 3 weeks after which i stopped. all the light and glow left my cute face, i developed dark circles for the first time since my divorce. i began over-eating out of anxiety and confusion and depressive hopelessness. the part where one gaslights oneself – it is deeply taxing and damaging.
one thing i have to share about the videos i shared with him – they were a revelation for me personally. i was not at all trying to look pretty or feminine or whatever posturing people do for their potential mates. i was simply being myself, dark circles under eyes et al. that was huge for me. i didn’t instantly realise this. but when i did, i cried a little. you see, i trusted this man’s affection for me enough to think that he would ‘live’ me exactly as i am, without me having to perform to be pretty or cute or feminine etc. he could see my flabby upper arms, my unwashed post-workout face, giggling and laughing at my lazy dog, and he would love it – i assumed. and more than this being about him, it was about ME – me finally relaxing fully into myself. sharing myself as i was. its so freeing when you’re just being yourself in front of a lens/ camera/ someone’s eyes and not posing!?! aaaah as a woman, its like taking a deep deep breath and a deep deep exhale. its like unclasping one’s bra after a long day. a huge huge relief.
i cannot overstate the significance of the above.
every day, when i was driving to my yoga class, or pottery studio or dance class, he was basically sitting there in the passenger seat, experiencing me – i had an imaginary friend (fuck my life) named Amit. at the peak of my orgasm, one name was automatically on my mind, ‘Amit’. i genuinely enjoyed this stuff because i assumed that he was there, going through his life-shit which every adult goes through, but he will be back. fuck.
i experienced such beautiful feelings of readiness – to be in a relationship, to love this man, to get to know him, to be with him. i was getting ready so fast, it surprised me. you know, aside from the fact that this man completely failed me, i thoroughly enjoyed becoming who i was becoming – this open-hearted woman, looking forward to love in her most genuine avatar. aaah i was envious of the person who was going to get to be loved by this woman i have become in the last 6 years or so. i also thought about what a distance i had travelled as a potential partner since i was last partnered (marriage) – and its a sea change. i was super excited.
soon that excitement turned to dust in the waiting i did for Amit to contact me. i deleted our chats, because i guess i started to feel the injustice of it all, of his silence. there came a time when i did not text him for a month – so as to give him space and leave the ball in his court, but the ball never came back. i deleted his number. i turned proper depressive. wallowing in feelings of confusion, loneliness, doubting every instinct i had had about this connection. all of my youthful glow left me. i continued with my routine, trying to stay busy, but it didnt matter what i was doing – no matter how hard i worked, Amit was there constantly. the things he had said, the fun we had shared, the emotion, the passion, the hope, the banter, the sexiness, the lust, the cuteness, the chemistry and to top it all my fucking unstoppable imagination. no matter what i did reminded me of something he had said. swimming, pottery, yoga, movies, books, hell – even the sight of my own goddamn feet reminded me of what he said to me about them. he haunted me. and its not like i didn’t want it. i didn’t let him go. i couldn’t.
i cannot overstate this – all the light left my face. my beautiful round smiling face. fuck.
my 42nd birthday came and went. he had made a big deal about the origin of my name – the story i had shared with him about from when i was named. he had asked when my bday was. he had gushed over everything.
like an idiot i waited for a text from him on my birthday (fuck man, that was depressing). of course it never came. at 42, to spend entire weeks fixating on a man, is humiliating in manyways. being a hopeful romantic isn’t. but i felt pathetic. i loved him, i hated him. i hated myself. i couldn’t definitely be angry at him. i kept feeling my sweet excited feelings about him. it was like a part of me, a big part, was refusing to be real about his deafening absence. she refused to acknowledge that that man could have been entirely full of shit or simply cruel or callous or numb.
this has been the best thing thats happened to me for years, and also the worst thing. so fucking confusing. for weeks, tears simply fell from my face, at random. i was so affected. it was an insane salad mix of so many feelings, feelings of gratitude, hopelessness, ecstasy, surprise, shock, self-doubt, cynicism, hopefulness, butterflies, sadness – it sort of broke my brain, what this man did. and try as i might, i couldn’t move past him. i even tried to go back on dating apps and talking to men – i couldn’t feign interest beyond a couple of texts each time. fuck me, seriously.
fuck amit. what a bastard.
the cherry on top came on august 15th, when i found his number in my records (i thought i had deleted it permanently, but it was there still, as if by magic). i decided to check in on him one last time. i was curious to know the ending of this story, if there was one. i needed to know what was going on with him, if he was thinking about me too, or had i vanished from his brain. i was perplexed. and i refused to be ghosted without consent (haha).
i texted him ‘hey’. he didnt reply for a while, then i sent him a video of my potter’s wheel progress saying, ‘look what i can do now‘. he replied, ‘wow that’s some impressive progress‘. i asked how are you. he replied, ‘i’m not depressed in the way i was when we last talked, but life’s still meh‘. i replied, ‘good to know. have a good life. cheers.‘ to which he sent me a picture of a strain of marijuana he had been growing in his home, saying, ‘this (whatever the name of the strain was) is coming along rather well’. i was already crying tears of disbelief and anger and heartbreak.
it felt like a punch to the gut.
do you get it? it seemed like this dude was simply living his life, seemingly not at all thinking about me, while i had been through heaven and hell both, each day, for over 2 months. wow. what a royal waste of my life, love, energy, emotion. fuck. how fucking delusional had i been. it hit me like a ton of bricks.
i couldn’t stop myself from one last expression of how i truly felt. i texted him a long text about how i waited to hear from him each day, i wished him well each day, i missed his presence in my phone each day, and now he sounded like a stranger and that was heartbreaking. ‘i wish you hadn’t led me on in the way that you did‘.
my heart was beating so fast – this was his chance – to salvage or break me entirely.
spoiler alert – he chose the latter.
his reply, ‘you’re too intense. i like you. and i am going through upheaval in every aspect of my life. sorry for causing you hurt.’
my vision went foggy upon reading the clichéd ‘you’re too intense‘, the robotic ‘i like you‘ pissed me off even further.
fuck your lukewarm ‘i like you‘. shove it up your fucking ass Amit! fucking bastard.
this person seemingly hadn’t thought to send me a single text at any point in that 4-5 weeks i gave them space. they could’ve sent even a ‘hey, let’s pick this up next year when i feel a bit sorted‘, or even a ‘hey, forget about me please‘. any of those could’ve done, according to me. it would’ve been kinder.
i repeat – DO NOT IGNITE A WOMAN’S FIRE AND THEN ABANDON IT. only a coward or a really cruel person would do that.
i forgot to mention a possibly instrumental thing (or could be absolute bullshit) in all of the above. when we were still texting, one night i woke up from a long dream, remembering only part of it. this part – i was walking along a bridge-type road maybe, there was a body of flowing muddy water on the left that i could see, much lower than the level of the road i was walking on. i was walking straight ahead (with a backpack it seemed), when suddenly i, willingly & casually jumped into that muddy water, and as quickly as i had jumped in that fast-flowing water, i was out of it too (not wet), jumped straight back onto the road (as if in a mario-style video game) and continued walking – and then instantly Amit emerged, standing in front of me, appearing out of nowhere. oh and that water stream was apparently Ayahuasca (my brain said that to me in the dream)
when i had had the dream, i was quite surprised. i had interpreted this dream as what had happened in my life – i had gone through my ayahuasca journey (twice by now, most recently in 2023) and now stands in front of me a man who’d become a part of my life/ journey. (shrug emoji) and also frankly i hadn’t put much import into it. but it stayed with me, this visual – me emerging from the deep muddy river of ayahuasca and a man walking towards me.
today, i think this is all bull. Aya dreams have fucked with me in the past as well. at least one other time…
aya has been fucking with me in other ways too. i have mentioned before that i constantly talk to Her. I keep asking Her to show me to signs (show me sign that i am loved, show me sign if my gut feeling is correct, show me a sign if Amit is meant for me) yes, i have repeatedly asked her to show me a sign that all this time i am spending thinking and feeling about Amit is because he is meant to be a part of my future – and She has been showing me peacocks – everyfuckingwhere!
for my birthday trip in august (when i was waiting/ yearning for some closure, for Amit to text me just once) to bombay, i walked into my friend’s house and there was not just one, but 21 goddamn peacocks on her wall – a new fabric-frame she had put up above her sofa. not just this – i saw about 9 peacocks on my train journey back from Delhi to Kanpur that same trip. Aya has really fucked with me nonstop about this jackass.
of course i might be the jackass here – his absence/ callousness/ silence is the biggest sign that he is NOT meant to be a part of my future. ha!
maybe i am the idiot after all. sigh.
in the depth of this yearning phase, when i still held some hope that this story wouldn’t be a shit one, i realised a few things about this new me that gave me much to celebrate. i had become this gloriously authentic woman, who simply wanted to be her goofy self with the next man. to absolutely by MYself. and i have never been more myself than i am today. wow. a new era. no posturing, no pretending, no hiding. i had also become a woman who wouldn’t stop working out and working on herself because she was depressed/ low. i wasn’t a miserable person any more. i was aware of my failings and flaws and so quick to forgive herself and the other. i felt like i had become a drastically better more wholesome potential partner.
another huge realisation or insight i had was this – remember i said that while starting to feel like ‘i want to love a man’, i let my imagination run the show. in doing so, i began having ideas of a perfect man, of perfections in love and partnership. but when i came across Amit, it was clear that he was far from perfect (so am i), and then slowly, even in the silence/ absence phase i began feeling that i don’t want perfection, a perfect man to love. i am more than happy to love a man that’s imperfect, as long as he is committed to me, to loving me. in fact life is grey, not black and white, and so are people. i am a collection of contradictions and grey areas and a rainbow of flaws and beauty and imperfections and blind spots and fears and defenses and rage and love.
these, i feel, are huge personal discoveries.
when Amit said, ‘you’re too intense, i like you, i am going through upheaval in every aspect of my life, sorry for causing you hurt‘ i replied with ‘goodbye’ and ‘you’re too intense’ was my cue to leave.
but i couldn’t let him off that easily. i sent him a couple of voice notes (which i regret on alternate days haha). in the voice notes, i said, not very succinctly or clearly (it was an emotional time), that he had already been going through upheaval when he said those ridiculous romeo-type things to me for days on end. ‘marry me‘, ‘i have never felt like this about anyone else‘, ‘dating app is as absurd a place to meet someone as anywhere else‘, ‘be my love‘ (do people say ‘be my love’ coz they can’t think of anything else to say??!?!?! what!?!!?), ‘let’s spend the rest of our lives laying in bed and talking‘, etc etc etc.
i said we are adults, we shouldn’t be using fellow humans as distractions or human-toys which is what he did with me. that he could’ve, when we had first matched, told me that this was a bad time in his life due to everything he was going through (re: upheavals) and maybe we should connect later, but instead he decided to fuck with my head for no good reason. fucking hell!
i also said that i was actually looking forward to seriously date him, to eventually love him (a sincere verb), and that ‘being loved by me would be any man’s dream come true‘ (yep, i said that confidently & cockily hahaha).
i also made a point to remark upon the ‘you’re too intense‘ accusation. i said, ‘yes of course i am intense, i am healed and i know what i want, yes i am intense.’ ha!
i said, ‘i thought you were intense too, that you understood intensity, going by the crazy intense things you have said to me, in fact i had tried to temper you back a few times but you kept being intense, so i too joined in – like bring it on!.’ ha!
of course, he never responded to my texts/ voice notes.
this is so unfair – leaving someone to keep guessing what you’re thinking. so cruel.
so cowardly. so disappointing.
i’ll let this last part be short and succinct here – due to the way this man handled me or didn’t, i have retired from any hope for a future romance, with any fucking man.
i give up. i hadn’t even begun properly, and i have given up. i give up.
i have never been a person who subscribes to blanket statements like ‘all men are this or that‘, but i have found myself going there repeatedly since Amit’s bullshit.
i have also lost faith in my intuition, my gut feelings, my brain, my stupid heart. i am clammed shut once again. i don’t want any hope. hope sucks. hope is torture.
i am angry with Aya. i am like a temper-tantrum throwing toddler, stomping her feet in the sand, demanding the candy that she won’t grant me. i am the stubborn petulant child fighting with her mother, grasping for something that’s not good for me.
also, during this phase, i started to feel ugly, unloveable, unsexy, unfeminine, useless. and those feelings have stayed. sigh.
in other (might be connected) news, while i was still yearning and crying every day, i heard that an opportunity to sit with ayahuasca again is in the offing, for me. these retreats have gotten endlessly delayed since a couple of years, so i didn’t hold much hope till a month ago.
but long story short, i have been preparing for my 3rd round of aya ceremonies for the past 2 weeks now (dieta). first was in 2020, second in 2023, 3rd would be in Oct 2026. i will not believe it till i am sitting in the ceremonial area in the dark, having ingested my first cup of the Aya concoction. yeah – that’s me now – i do not believe, have no faith, need actual proof.
wish me all the best.
P.S. now every time Amit comes to mind, after i have become lost in my feelings and memories and thoughts of ‘what could’ve been‘, i always say a loud ‘fuck you!!!‘, in anger and frustration; but then my whole being also whispers ‘bless you‘. that dude needs it. he needs love, love from his life, from his environment, from within. and i pray that he isolates and works on himself intensely, dedicatedly for long, before he knocks on another woman’s heart.
i am grateful for Amit, for the adorable exciting giggly ways that he made me feel, for all the crazy cuteness, for the gorgeous horniness, for his curiosity (while it lasted) and also for all the triggers. i am aware that he showed me how i am/ could be as a potential partner, how i am impatient, deeply perceptive, how silence can be triggering, how much i was de-centered, how i was overextending myself, and also how clear i have become on what i want.
thank you Amit. fuck you. bless you.
thanks to you i have retired from being a woman who wants love/ romance. resigned in shame. thanks to you i have shut down, more cynical than ever before. i have become a shrunken dark-circled mess of a woman who is cowering in defeat, back in her jaded shell. maybe there is wisdom in that. maybe i am not meant to be coupled up ever again. maybe i will stop hoping. shrug emoji.
for a lot of people this might seem like, ‘oh what’s the big deal? it was just one man!‘, i get it. but i feel like a ton of bricks is sitting on my chest now, every other breath i take is a sigh. and that i should never trust anyone ever again, not even myself.
call me ‘too sensitive‘, and i’ll call you an unfeeling moron! (hahaha)
i have read that when you open your heart, you should expect it to get hurt. fuck.
fuck me. bless me.
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