Adrift

I had not expected anyone to notice that I had not been writing lately. After all, there are hardly a handful of people who read my blog, most of them friends, who have the blog thrust upon them. It was therefore a pleasant surprise to see a message in my inbox from a reader asking why had I not been writing, she also suggested something to write about. That something, coincidentally is the only thought that has been haunting me for weeks and I have been ignoring it. Not anymore.

Three months ago, when I wrote my first post, after a gap of four years, I wrote it only for myself (OK, for one other person too), but the primary reason was to express the thoughts which were getting bottled up and had started to choke me. So, I wrote, and I wrote some more and in three months I ended up putting together close to forty posts. That, is a good number, given that I hardly get any time to myself -- to think or to write. Number, however should not be the driving force behind writing, content and skill should be. And it was the content that I was getting a little worried about.

Reading some of my posts, I realised that though my writing style is evolving, the content has more or less remained concentrated around similar subjects. I decided to pause. I also decided to try my hand at subjects that I had not yet written about.

As a result, there are more than half a dozen incomplete posts sitting in my drafts. Some are ideas, some are thoughts, yet others are just vague emotions. Together they would easily be more than a few thousand words, yet in their current form, they are just that -- words. I am trying my best to convert these words into comprehensible pieces of prose, but tonight, I need to go back to my comfort zone.

Going by the general feel of the subjects in this blog, if a reader tries to draw a mental picture of me, they might see me as a sad, forlorn woman, disappointed in love and dejected in life, who has nothing better to do than whine. Those who know me might think of me as a good actor who pretends to be happy on the outside but carries all the pain of the world within her.

This however is far from being true. Neither am I dejected, nor disappointed and I certainly do not carry anymore pain in my heart than anyone else around me does. In fact, I am quite capable of being a pain myself. I just happen to be fascinated by the grey areas of life in general and relationships in particular. And since I can not go and talk to just anyone about it, I chose to talk to myself and to a few others too by the means of my writing.

In my last post, I had shared a poem by Kipling -- a poem of friendship, companionship and in a way of love too. It was sent to me by someone, who believed that we -- that person and I, were in such a state at that time.

Last night, I shared the poem not because I was missing that person or because it was a relationship gone bad that I regretted. I shared it because it cemented my belief in the process of drifting apart. It was a reminder that every relationship, at the end is transitional. Everything that begins must -- and does -- end, eventually.

Observing the many relationships around me, I have realised that drifting apart is almost inevitable. Best friends, siblings, lovers, spouses -- all drift apart sooner or later, totally or partially. And there is nothing much one can do about it, in fact the harder one tries to hang on to a relationship, the sooner it gets over. Strange but true.