The Relationship Paradox

The University experience consists of 4 (in some cases 5 and in some freak cases 3.5 years :P ) turbulent years where we fight everything from teenage angst, generation gaps, "old" age (like mastering physics in year four!) and believe it or not attainment of "puberty" for some! :P In all likelihood the people who were standing with you at the starting line and those who promised would be your BFF for HEA(thats happily ever after!) would disappear somewhere in between. It often makes me wonder how forever is reduced to the time taken by the other person to bore/irritate/annoy/cheat on/lie to you. Interpersonal relationships become a matter of convenience. Sometimes the drift is so gradual, so painfully slow that when it hits you that you have lost a friend, you can only gasp for breathe and kick with all force to stay afloat. In some cases that i have witnessed other people go through, it is almost like while hurling down at breakneck speed you lose your parachute. and then there is the black, disgusting, corroding void. You try and fill it with others, try and keep yourself occupied. Call it alone time/self realization/recovery/enlightenment or any other fancy word your vocabulary can churn up. But it doesn't help.

The beauty of the human psyche is that it is programmed to adapt and recover. We wail, sob, complain, crib and do whatever we can to take the load off. We even go through five stages of university grief. 1) It's all his/her fault. 2) Why should I make the first move? 3)Add random new people on FB 4) Try like crazy to get another BFF 5) Move on like nothing happened. So yeah we pick up the pieces and mend it the best way we can and give it's responsibility to another person and hope with all our might that this time it stays. But we know better don't we. In this melee we will encounter various shades of a person. How many of us can remember our equation with a friend being the same all through university? Lucky if you do. You were spared the horror. So yeah we see our happy endings wither away eroded by time while new promises of forever emerge almost when you least expect it. Is it how life is going to be? A series of trysts and try outs because we need to belong? and then there is the thought. Could I have held on a little longer, a little tighter? I guess relationships are meant to be fluid. Sometimes you might lose out on who you thought would last. But in some other strange, balancing way you last with someone who you never thought would. So let me leave you tonight with a thought

"I do not promise to be friends for ever, I can only make your memories last"

ciao