However we did not know

What will become of it when it started to grow.

Lost in love we hardly cared

Stories of lost love

Never got us scared.

We were together forever

And we let love grow

Until the day when little cracks started to show.

Scared of pain and hurt and sorrow

We forced love to grow and grow

Until we turned from friend to foe.

Now we’re alone and wondering

What went wrong what went amiss?

Would pain and sorrow been worth fighting?

In the end  we’re all strangers

And I for one is sure

That we love ourselves more than we can ever love others.

Loving oneself sets one free

Him that I love, I wish to be free

Even from me.

So how is it possible that I see couples who date for ten years and then they are suddenly married for five years? And they look absolutely happy doing all this.  Do they defy the laws of evolution and stay exactly the same with the passage of time? Do they never make mistakes in their relationships? Or are they simply aliens living among us pretending to love each other and look happy and innocent, all the while planning a covert operation to take over our planet?!

None of the above!

Its really quite simple. Unlike Love, Relationship is not a condition. Its a choice. We choose to be in a relationship. And when we do so, we do more than just love. We commit. We commit ourselves to the relationship and to our partner for a lifetime. Commitment helps us to keep the relationship up and running with widening differences and issues flying over our heads and motivates us to come out of all the chaos and make that love spark again.

Commitment makes us want to communicate, talk about our problems and try to fix it. Commitment does not guarantee that it will work out. However what is does guarantee is that we try everything we can to make it work. And that’s important. We owe atleast that much to the person we love loved. And that effort can have surprising results for many couples.

However, commitment does not just happen like that. It, too,  is a choice. Its a decision based on the level of respect we feel for each other. Its based on the time we had together. Its based on all the experiences and all the sacrifices that defines our relationship.

When we realize all this, we will know that they are really not aliens out there, threatening us and our planet!  Just couples who not only respect and love each other but are also committed to their cause. Their relationship.

Note: Don’t worry I’m very much alive still. I just thought that if i ever got down to committing such a selfish act as to leave my family and friends behind to quit my scandalous affair with sadness, my suicide note would read something like this.

However, I’m neither selfish nor a quitter hence this note will always remain redundant, here in my blog, reminding me of yet another time when I chose to be a fighter instead.

So it got me thinking what Christmas was really about. Was it not related to Christ and the reincarnation of God for Christians? Not anymore? Well apparently not as much. Especially so because of all the Non Christians liking up to this particular festival. While the Christians are trying to make Christ be the focus of Christmas, the Non Christians want Santa Claus to be the primary personality of Christmas season.

Now doesn’t that make Santa the anti-Christ?

And Santa being Satan certainly explains a lot. For one it explains the red suit! It also explains why he goes about spoiling kids with great FREE gifts! And teaching them to associate getting great gifts for free with breaking and entering! .  And can you ignore the diabolic anagram going on with Mr. Pot Belly’s nickname. Santa and Satan. It’s not even subtle. And try rearranging the letters in Saint Nick, what do you get? Yes that’s right: Sick Taint! Oh and Santa Clause sounds dangerously familiar to Satan’s Claws! E-V-I-L.

ANYWAY, Christmas season is upon us, whether we like it or not. So I’ll stop being the Grinch for this Christmas and go on and shout out a “MERRY CHRISTMAS” to all you Christians and Non Christians alike. Ho Ho Ho!

Disclaimer: The author is in no way trying to prove that Santa and Satan are the same. This article is just a figment of her (boring and equally harmless) imagination. No  offense intended.

No seriously. Every few months i find myself facing the Great Wall of Depression (of course ignoring the small depression bumps in between, they don’t count) . It sneaks up on me at first. I mean i almost never notice it until its right there towering over me. Instead of fighting it and bringing it down, i take refuge in it. Almost enjoy doing it. Then it engulfs me. And its downhill from there until i hit rock bottom and i realize i am the one to blame for it. MDD slaps me right in my face. I realize that i helped build this Great Wall, brick by brick. And it is overwhelming to realize that i spent the past year tearing down my last Great Wall of Depression only to replace it with a brand new  more darker and ominous one might i add!

So here are the bricks that i helped build in my GDK (Great Depression Kiln):

1. Lost motivation to lead a healthy lifestyle. Stopped jogging in the Month of Ramadan this year and haven’t jogged ever since. Stopped exercising altogether. Took interest in fatty food. Took special interest in junk fatty food. Gained weight.

2. Gave family little or not time at all. Found mother  very annoying. Lost patience with mother on too many occassions. Found brother to be immature and irresponsible and a total waste of time trying to explain it to him. Came home late most days from work. Usually took detour while coming home and stopped at malls/shops to prolong getting back into household chaos.

3. Shamelessly ignored friends and their need to socialize with me. Shamelessly ignored my own needs to socialize with them. Gave up on socializing altogether, actually. Aspired to become a hermit of sorts. Lost my interpersonal skills in the process, leading to awkward silences, even with close ones! Thank God for Facebook and some really nice friends i’m not entirely friendless, yet.

4. Got sucked into a veritable black hole of laziness. Gave up learning to skate, reading books and any hopes of ever learning something new. Wrecked havoc at work with mind numbingly lazy excuses for not getting the work done, on time that is. Survived at work somehow. Fingers crossed!

5. Last but not the least, gave up trying to understand my relationship with my boyfriend. Not entirely though. But to a risky extent. Often “dazed and confused” like that Led Zeppelin song. No im not kidding. Still hoping for a miraculous happily ever after. Details in a later blog i promise .

So there you are. Upto speed on my deeds for the past year. Its that time of the year that i start over. Bring down the wall. Brick by brick. Only to re-build a few months later. Can anyone help me out of this vicious cycle of depression? Anyone?  Wait is that my echo that i hear? Oh whatever.

Well now that I’m back it means that its time for some personal shrinking again cause I am not ashamed to admit that this has been my original sole motivation for blogging. Yes very much so. Blog therapy I like to call it.

However, no matter the need to shrink myself back to being a functional and satisfied being, I will not jump into it and make a mess of things like I always do. Little baby steps of self psychologizing is what I’m aiming for. So i guess you’ll find me here more often now…hopefully..that is if don’t fall into that abyss of crazy lazy heaven that I’m so inclined to fall into these days!

Ciao for now

I normally try to be myself and write funny notes because that is who i am and that’s what i like doing when im socializing via the various online social utilities available, particularly Facebook. At most, i pray that the people who read my posts, do so with an open mind and a funny bone in them. And it applies to my friends as well. I like to believe that the people i hang out with and call friends and share my humor and my life in general feel the same way as i do. Otherwise, i wouldn’t have hung out them in the first place.  Especially for someone like me who likes to crack a joke and tease friends about funny incidents when we interact with each other. That’s the way it goes, our hangouts.

However, recently i have learned the limitations of social interaction on the web. Apart from the obvious constraints that i mentioned earlier, there is also the fact that every word i say on my friend’s wall, some deliberate and some on a whim, are all documented forever. It remains on the wall for everyone to read, the person intended as well as all the 169 people on that person’s “list of friends”. It remains there until the context in which i had made the original statement cease to be. And then Judgy Wudgy the Bear trudges along and reads my post and makes a judgmental comment on the person who is the proud owner of that wall, who also happen to be one of my closest friends.

So when i got home from a long day at work yesterday and logged on to Facebook to find a big ass private message from that friend asking me to be proper on Facebook, by writing proper sentences on her wall and on the wall of all our mutual friends so no one gets hurt in the process (:s), i couldn’t quite figure out how to react. So i did what i do best and joked about it and asked her to calm down. But she was quite fired up and sent me another big ass message! And i thought, i always wanted a big ass but all i got was big ass messages . KIDDING!! Actually i thought that she was overreacting and was being too concerned about what people thought of her. I have to admit i was a tad pissed. So i decided not to reply.

However later that night, since im not good at sleeping much, i got to thinking. Why am i different in this way. Why don’t i give a rats rear end as to what people might think about me  reading my blogs or the posts on my wall or my comments on other people’s walls? I do not remember myself this way when i was young. I remember living my life for other people’s approval. But what had happened to bring about this change in me?

Confidence, i thought. But that made me wonder where i got this confidence from. Which in turn led me to my job, which took me back to my hostel days searching for a job, and after following the bread crumbs of memories, i came to the conclusion that i am the way i am today because of this one person who loves me so much and was with me when i had neither family to rely on nor friends to run to when i needed to. And the rest of the night i felt blessed. I felt that there was someone watching over me. No make that two.

Sorry couldn’t help but digress. So in the morning i woke up feeling blessed and you know why (see i wasn’t quite digressing). And i realized that i am able to ignore these judgmental bears because i can. Not many people are as lucky as i am. It is hard enough to live in this world where people are constantly judging you every chance they get and if friends open the floodgate for you then its just not worth it. If i can’t keep them away at a safe distance from my friends, the least i can do is keep the floodgate locked!

Does this mean i cannot be myself on Facebook? Ofcourse not, i’ll go around commenting funny on people’s wall just like i used to, but i shall keep an eye on the Judgy Wudgies just so i don’t end up hurting my friends. But in a cafe or while on a rickshaw ride, there will be no stopping me, so you better hope the rickshaw rides tickle the right bones in you .

Now don’t go judging me!

I hope you’re okay.

I remember i had a neighbor, Leo, who was about my age and  had two most “adorablest” rabbits. And i used to go over to his house just to play with them. I used to feed them grass and follow them around on the lawn. Leo would sometimes hang around with us but i remember tolerating him only because he was the proud owner of the two rabbits. One day i had a fight with him over something so silly i don’t even remember. But i remember being so upset because i couldn’t meet up with my real friends, those rabbits. Seeing me all heartbroken my mother made us kiss and make up. However, neither one of us was interested in friendship. It was more of a trade. I made friends with him so i could hang out with his rabbits and he made friends back so he could play Atari at my place. So often he was at my place playing Atari while i was at his, playing with his rabbits.

Improvements started showing in my social behavior during my university years when i stopped being a zombie and started hanging out with real people, that is other than my online friends whom i’ve never met in my life before. It was definitely not a natural thing for me to do and took a lot of effort on my part. After a lot of faux pas and with time, my social skills got honed. And near the end of my “time” in university i bagged quite a few friends, some of whom are very close to me and i don’t know what i’d do without them.

However, recently the motivation to be social has been somewhat dampened. I’m not so sure why. And i find myself limiting my social interaction with only my closest friends and my boyfriend :s . And interestingly enough i do not even miss hanging out anymore. And i also  find that i have been engaging myself more and more on non social activities such as blogging and bog reading, photoshop’ing, jogging, solo shopping, reading books, browsing and researching online about Islam! So much has been the lack of motivation for social networking that i am getting less and less active even on Facebook and have been MIA on MSN Messenger for quite some time now.

It bothers me now, though. Because if i know myself well enough ( i’d like to believe that i do) then this problem might not be just a phase. Unless you would like to call the last 6 years a phase. I think that a time period of more than a year cease to be a “phase” and become a radical change in life style. And that is why it bothers me. Because if i am to be this unsocial for say, the next 6 years, then this is not good news. Because, when it was quite easy to be a zombie, ignore the rest of the world and live my life the way i want to in the past, it is quite the opposite now. Both my work and my personal life depends a lot on my ability to build relationships and keep up with people around me and keep in touch.

So help me God!

No.Wait.

I need to fix this without any divine intervention. Dinner plans? let me know!

2. I do not understand office politics

3. I do not handle awkward situations well enough

4. I get hungry quite often

5. I let people take advantage of me very easily

6. I can’t be bitchy back

7. I can’t be mad at people for long

8. I am very very very forgetful (a total goldfish)

9. I am emotionally dependent

10. I am insomniac