Tricked By My Own Heart

You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you've got something to say.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald

Some years back when I was doing my intermediate studies I had a big debate with my parents in which I tried to explain them why I had no friends giving every quotable reason for it. I couldn't succeed and my father had said that I didn't know how to make friends and I didn't know what friendship was. I had not told him the chief reason for avoiding close friendships. I couldn't tell him how weak I am in staying away from people who are dear to me. I couldn't tell him that I was afraid of making friends because I was afraid of loosing them - loosing them in time, loosing them to others, loosing them to myself. Four years later, now, my fear has materialised and I don't know how I am going to bear it.

I had a particular group of friends in my engineeri's first year and it was all formal. They were my friends because they sat around the place I was sitting in the classroom, and being a student I had to keep formal friendship with my classmates. We all were simply friends with no big emotional attachments. When I started making some friends a little far away from my bench in the classroom, I remember somebody saying "you are no more with us these days". The next year I had a new set of friends.

We were still simply friends with the three guys being a bit closer to being called as good friends. Things kept happening. I never had thought before that I would ever talk to a girl in the college. Soon in third year we were a group of nine friends. I changed. I don't know about others because I didn't know them before. They were all good to me, gave me lots of respect, made me feel important and most precisely, I was getting emotionally attached to them. I had my fears but the warmth never made me realize what all this happiness could lead me to.

I kept friends with old people too. Three of my casual friends from intermediate times got more closer to me though we weren't meeting frequently. When one of them left for US, I got the first blow in friendship. Though I am in good contact with him, I never knew I would miss him. The other two too got more closer to me even when we hardly share anything in common. In the college, I became a part of two groups. I can't call the second one as a group precisely, but I had two different sets of friends. One of them became more than just a group to me. Today, as I write this, I am emotionally attached to each of the eight and it gives me creeps to imagine my time without them. I will surely have some tough times after I get done with my engineering. I will have to move on.

Among the several invaluable things they all did for me is a blog they made to wish me on my birthday. I have read the messages in it several times by now and the only thing I can say is that I am sorry, I might not be able to return to them the kind of friendship they gave to me, I might not be strong enough to be such a good friend in return, I am afraid of this bond we have built for it is transient and we won't be together some months from now. I am sorry I tried to become a good friend even when I had that fear in my heart. We can't make the time stop. We can't make friendships stop. But someday we have to move on. The fear would be no more then. Because it would have by then done the damage.

Yesterday we all went for a lunch at a restaurant in Jubilee Hills. We had a wonderful time there. The gifts, the flowers, the presence of each of my friends, the presence of the friendship, the smiles, laughs, giggles, and mischief - it was all mesmerising. The fear too was still there and it didn't cease to exist for a single moment. I couldn't even move away from any of them telling that I can't take it when time moves up apart. I am sure they all are stronger than me. Mental strength is something I couldn't teach myself till now.

I went to meet my aunt today in Malakpet. Even my grandmother is there these days and it was long since I had been there. I sat talking to my cousin for long about our engineering syllabi and campus placements. She is in second year and already worried about the later thing. I spent about three hours there and returned home just in time to receive two of my friends here. Now I am sitting here reminiscing not able to understand what I must do next keeping in mind about what has to be done - as a plain objective.