Pritam's Blog
Love That Makes Me Feel Free
My parents’ love for me is extremely protective and possessive. It belittles me and my capabilities and stands against everything I love - my sense of freedom and my aspirations.
Until I came out of the middle-class comforts of this family that showered me with overprotective and over-possessive love, I wasn’t aware of any other form of love. At the same time, I wasn’t comfortable with this love - something which turned me into a socially awkward committment-phobe…
Probably that was one of the reasons why I never tried to pursue the first love of my life. I did tell her that I loved her but that’s it. When she rejected me, to be honest, I had mixed feelings.
A part of me was sad. But the more intense feeling that I experienced was that of relief although I wasn’t fully aware of the reason behind it back then.
It was, probably, because the kind of love that I knew and was capable of, was beautiful and tiring, maybe even ugly at the same time. Beautiful for the obvious reasons. And tiring because it involved being constantly under a certain kind of pressure of expectations. Ugly, because it curtails one’s freedom.
I didn’t want that tiring, ugliness to engulf her as well. And when she rejected me, I felt relieved because now, whatever was tiring and ugly had disappeared and only the beautiful thing had remained. I was content with that. I still think that this is the most powerful form of love.
Later in life, with Pallabi, I experienced an entirely different kind of love.
In all these years, she has never asked me, not even in her most vulnerable moment, if I would ever leave her.
Instead, she says, “If you ever get tired of me, do not hesitate to tell me… Just because we have loved each other at a certain point doesn’t mean we are obligated to be with each other for the rest of our lives. People change. Feelings change. So, if you feel differently at any point, do let me know… If we break up also, it won’t make all the good times we have had, meaningless. We will probably remember them with fondness. But if we choose to be with each other when there is no love left, all that will remain is regret…”
Initially, it contradicted with the kind of love I knew. And I used to think that probably she didn’t love me enough. Probably, she was trying to give some hints, that she was going to leave me. I felt insecure. And I turned into a clingy boyfriend. I couldn’t contemplate it that you could love someone and let them go…
But over the years, I realized what she meant. And I was amazed at the honesty and sincerity with which she practiced this particular kind of love.
When I decided to quit my secure engineering career, she was the only person who stood by me. “There is no point in continuing with something if you are not happy with it… Quit the job. I will support you,” she said and she supported me.
I remember during our masters, one of our teachers took the entire batch for camping to his village. We stayed there at his farm. A few of us went for a walk to the forest. By the time we returned, it was already 3-3:30 in the morning.
Most of them had fallen asleep in a hall inside the house. When we returned, they were all over the floor with no place for us. The others with me who came late somehow snuck in the little space between the sleeping bodies. Being someone who isn’t fully comfortable with touch, I wasn’t sure about where to lay down.
A girl, sleeping in one corner, peeked and saw me. She cleared a bit of space for me and said that it’s OK, I may sleep beside her. I obliged. I was dead tired.
In the morning, I woke up all embarrassed. The Bengali in me always needs a side pillow. And in my sleep, I had turned the girl who was kind enough to let me sleep beside her into my side pillow, lifting my leg over her. I still wonder why she didn’t kick me.
When I told my girl about the incident, she just smiled and said, “You needed a place to sleep…”. That’s it. She didn’t make an issue of me ‘sleeping’ with someone else.
And that was not the only incident. She didn’t make an issue when I bumped into a stranger, a girl, and said, “You smell so good.” Or when she caught me making a live nude sketch; she just looked at the sketch later and said, “This is the worst sketch you have ever made… I don’t blame you… You were turned on.”
More recently, I told her that I never forget the birthday of my first love’s mom. It never occurred to me all these years that I never forget the day until it was that girl who, when I messaged her asking to wish her mom on my behalf, said, “How do you remember her birthday every year?”
It got me into thinking - do I still have feelings for her? It was bothering me and I had to share it with my girl. And she said, “You had a life before you met me. And just because you love me now doesn’t mean you have to forget about that life…”
I do not know why I am writing this or if this is making any sense. My girl, she always says that I am a ‘terribly wrong thing in a more wrong world’ and I agree with her for I had spent many hours staring at my goldfish circling around inside the fish bowl, until it died one day.
But it feels good the way she loves me. Because it makes me feel free and not like a goldfish circling around a fishbowl.