Drifting Apart

‘Drifted apart’ conjures in my mind the vision of a vast stretch of blue. A wobbly white dot nearer to the horizon. Moving farther away every single moment. A passerby has stopped to take a look. Suddenly his eyes are downcast with  sorrow. He wills to stop the sailing blob. But does not enter the blue. And so, it sails on. And away. The speck of white takes the shape of a girl. I see eyes moist with tears. Broken dreams written large on them. This picture grows vivid and I feel nauseated. A sudden seizure grasps me. Does the passerby resemble you? Are we drifting apart?

There is no hatred between us. Love still exists, but loneliness has crept in. Professionally sound, we lead our own lives. We have our own friends. We relax every weekend. Not together but in our own individual way. We respect each other’s privacy, and fiercely guard our personal space. In all these years, ‘us’ has somewhere drowned in ‘my own space’.  We keep others’ secrets but never look back to notice whether the other wants to share something. Whether she wants him to share his friend’s secret. Whether he wants to tell her his own secret. We are so engrossed in ‘My Friend’ that we forget that there are no secrets between a man and wife. Anything the man knows, his woman knows as well.  Our friend in trouble calls us up at any time of the day or night. Eager to hear him out, to resolve his issues, we receive the call. But when one calls up the other, there is a certain lethargy, a preconceived boredom that creeps in. “Again! She will either nag or ask me to buy her something!” Unknowingly, we have prioritized our relationships. But we will never admit it, even to ourselves. While we try to guide others out of their trouble, what we do not realize is that we need some advice ourselves. When in the presence of friends, we crack jokes and share a hearty laugh. Evenings are merry. However, the moment we are alone in the company of each other, we fumble for words. When one returns from the office, tired and exhausted after a day’s work, we forget to smile. Instead, we are grumpy and ill-tempered with the other. When a friend comes to visit, we take extra pains to drive him around the city, excited and chirpy, pointing out places and describing historical significances. But on weekends when we are alone, we never bother to go out. Suddenly, driving seems tedious and all places seem ‘seen a million times’. Dining out is fun when in the company of others. With the spouse, eating a meal at home or in an expensive restaurant feels the same. Dull and colorless. We text and chat with our special ones all through the day and night. We know everything going on in their lives. But we never pause to look aside at the sleeping spouse, to ask him how he spent the day. To others, we make promises to meet again. But with each other, we never even hold hands every day.

As we grow distant from each other, we become better friends and ‘Man Fridays’ to others. We lose our companionship but nurture our friendships. We do not want to let the other go. Our heart aches to see the relation slowly turning dead. Brick by brick, we laid its foundation. Brick by brick we are dismantling it, with our own very hands. But we cannot compromise on our friendships either. They are important to us. After all, our friends are a part of our personal space. Letting ourselves change, our ideologies change, because of an individual suddenly seems so wrong. It is an encroachment of personal rights. A violation of our basic needs.

We can compromise and change our ways. We can shed tears, have useless confrontations, and choose to let things be the way they are, while we put up a happy facade to the world . Or we begin to drift apart. Somewhat by choice, somewhat unknowingly. Whether we let the other reach the horizon or whether we enter the forbidden blue and pull him back is what defines ‘Us’. Our ‘bond’. Our ‘companionship’. Whether we were meant to be together. Whether our match was really made in heaven!