To all the guys I've loved before...

    There's something about seeing the people you once loved get hitched that hits a weirdly hidden melancholic chord in your heart. Today marks one such day, for the third time in my life, when I feel a quickly vanishing yet piercing pain in the heart in the middle of my usual doom-scrolling session when I see the engagement pictures of a certain muse to whose romantic rejection I owe the inspiration to this blog and the forlorn beginning of my journey as a poet. 

    For those of you who've seen and known me in my hopeless romantic era, guessing who this person is won't be hard. For the rest, here's another relationship-realisation-reflection post you didn't ask for. 

    This marks the third time I'm seeing a person I was romantically linked with (in the past) step into the wondrous, albeit strenuous, world of marriage. Long-term commitments have never seemed like a good idea to me. I have seen so many unhappy marriages and unsuccessful relationships around me that the mere idea of taking on the extra baggage of 'forever' with another person gave me the jitters. But adamant non-believers like me are often paired with hardcore believers by the creator that sits above us. Destiny played its game, and I ended up in a fling—a rebound relationship, if you will—that has stretched itself for almost a decade now, soon to convert (hopefully) into one of these marriage things that I'm so vehemently against (still).

Image by Bruno from Pixabay

    Anyway, I've been on the receiving end of love, respect, loyalty, and kindness for a long time now and know that it's extremely rare to find such treatment in our generation. I know I, too, would be stuck in the shipwreck of situationships and one-night-stands had it not been for this one genuinely true bond that now colours my life in shades of the 'forever' that I used to be and still am occasionally scared of. 

    Yes, there's an inexplicable skip of a heartbeat when you see an ex enter into a long-term commitment with someone else. Its bound to be weird since you once hoped to be that person for them, but I guess, at some point, you realise that life knows better than your wishes. You may think that life with someone else would be brighter, but trust life to give you only that which is suitable for you and that which you can handle—nothing more, nothing less.

    Today, I'm grateful that I didn't end up with all these three people because one's a manipulative chauvinist, the other is an ignorant nincompoop, and the third, well, he is a Greek god in terms of looks but is known to be a casanova. Everything happens for a reason, and everything that doesn't happen doesn't happen for an even better reason. The key lies in accepting this game of fate, although the momentary instinct is to turn bitter against everything.

    So today, a mature version of my teenage self speaks to all the guys I've loved before and wishes them a happy life with whoever they ended up with. I sincerely hope their lives have an abundance of love and light. As for me, I'm gradually transforming from a non-believer to a believer in marriage and all things family. Hopefully, there's light at the end of this tunnel of recovering from dystopian glimpses of yore for me.

    I now know the importance of people who value you, listen to you, and love you. I began the Guwahati chapter of my life with much reluctance, and it took me almost half a year to realise and accept that even in the slowness, biasedness, and blandness of this city, there's something I can always learn, do, and be. Today, I'm more grounded and grateful for all the blessings I have unknowingly overlooked over the last 3-4 years! Life seems beautiful today.