Every day I get down at the Green Park metro station (New Delhi) and then take an auto to office. Two days back, as I deboarded the train, I froze in my tracks. Right in front of me, on the bench, sat a guy who looked just like my ex. And I don’t mean vaguely similar, I mean eerily exact! I know it has been over four years since we broke up, and it’s probably too late to be randomly seeing his face in the crowd. But I was still baffled to see someone who looked like him. I walked to a point where he could not see me but I could see him. After 5 minutes of fleeting glances and prolonged stares, I concluded that it wasn’t him.
This incident got me thinking, do I still miss him? And by missing my ex, am I not kind of cheating on my current boyfriend? Lying to him about my feelings?
With the million other things going on in my life, I did not want to think about it. So I parked the thought aside, until one day I scrolled through my newsfeed and saw a friend who’d posted a picture with him. That is when it hit me… I didn’t miss him as a lover, I missed him as a friend.
Even before he was my boyfriend, he was my best friend, my confidante. We used to be the kind of friends who could humiliate each other but could never stand a third person doing the same. We had nicknames for each other, the kind that were sworn to secrecy. We didn’t just share our feelings, we had shared a chunk of our lives together, which is unforgettable.
When we started dating, people often told us, ‘You guys are perfect’ and yet that perfection wasn’t enough to sail us through. Breaking up with him was hard, but getting over him was harder, because I was supposed to get over my boyfriend and my best friend.
I do not have pictures of us together because I threw them out, in an attempt to let go. I do not have any gifts to remember him by, and he is not on my Facebook friend list. I remember the nickname he used to call me by and it has been so long since someone called me by that name. I miss him. I look at his profile time and again, in the hope of seeing something… A picture, a status. Something that says he is okay, he is happy.
No, I am not in love with him. But I miss my friend. I miss the guy who made my college life amazing, who made me laugh about nothing! I miss the guy with whom I sneaked off to the cinema without telling my parents. I miss my friend who understood what I felt, before I could actually translate it into words. I still remember his number, but I miss being able to call him.
Who am I supposed to call up and ask ‘Wassup?’ and say ‘Accha? College me toh aisa nahi tha!?’ Who am I supposed to have the ‘Do you remember the time when we…’ conversations with? Who should I ask ‘Are you going to the college reunion?’ or say ‘Dare you miss the college reunion!’.
When I broke up with him, I somehow lost the whole of my college gang. Let’s just say the bond fizzled out. I do not blame anyone for it, but I wish I could have done something to change that. I wish we could still call each other up once in a while, without letting our past stand between us. I wish he knew how much he meant to me as a friend, and how I wish I did not have to say the goodbye I said.
By any chance, if you are reading this…I just want to say – I miss you, I miss my friend and I miss us. Any day you feel that we are finally too old to care about our past, can you give me a call? Or just send me a text saying ‘Hi’.
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