Posting For A Friend....An online confession.

Posting For A Friend

                                                                      

Disclaimer- I received a strange e-mail yesterday containing a candid confession of a friend of mine (obviously inspired by all those facebook confession pages) who asked to borrow my blog temporarily for posting that confession online. As it is, I hesitated for just a bit before allowing my blog to be borrowed for such a purpose. But I finally decided to help out my friend and so am posting this for a friend without a blog. All opinions mentioned in this post are the friends own and are not personal.

 Hi, Facebook friend, first of all, Thank You. Thank you for letting me know that you are interested in taking our friendship forward. I am honored, I truly am. And if I didn’t tell you this immediately, it was because there was a power failure at our house and so my computer shut down (damn UPS hadn’t been charged) and not because I switched off my Internet connection to avoid answering you immediately. Honest. Anyway after the power came back, I spent a long part of the night thinking about what you had said and I am honored that you selected me especially to deepen friendship with. I truly am, you know? Honored. But. And before I get to the “buts” let me confess right at the outset that I, for quite a long time, have had a big, big crush on you. Ever since we met for the first time last year in the midst of all our mutual friends, I have had a massive crush on you. Who wouldn’t? You looked so radiant that day, the day when we finally met in real life after a year or so of facebook friendship, that you stopped my breath with your first hello. I wanted nothing better than to hold your hand all day, that day and I was so reluctant to let go of you, to go pump hands with all those other damn people (which I did perfunctorily) while all I wanted was to save my hands with their remembrance of you. And later on, I have always thought of that day in fond remembrance whenever you updated your facebook profile page with new pictures of you, as the day I finally got to touch you in flesh after all the online salivating.

So with that true confession out of the way, let me come to the point. Whenever I think of you, the first thing I remember is your favorite dialogue "let them go to hell, I don’t care". And although I may not have told you this in any of our fascinating chats, I have never wished anyone to go to hell, at least not for differing with me. Such steadfastness in belief, well, it’s just not in me. Do you remember what I always said to you whenever you said "my foot, if they don’t agree, let them go to hell"? I have always told you that each one of us has their own point of view and it’s not up to us to damn them just because they think different than us. It was my duty as a true friend to point that out- even at the risk of making you angry. And that’s the nub of it. You are a charming free spirited girl bold enough to make your own decisions and stick by them. But me, I am a compromiser by nature, I listen to everyone. I adjust, I compromise and I prefer leading a peaceful life rather than telling the whole world to go to hell if they don’t agree with me. Oh, don’t take me wrong, I am not a wimp to let others ride roughshod over me. It’s just that I simply pick and choose my fights and let the insignificant ones go by while I put my foot down only when it matters, when it really matters and not for everything which annoys me. It’s that damn conservation of energy thing drilled into me in physics class which has made me so slow to anger (I also follow diligently the law of conservation of mass-as evidenced by the size of my tummy) and I never tell others to take a hike over any differences of opinion but always reach out as far as possible to try and find a middle ground which is quite opposite to what you keep telling me to do. I give, I give a lot and then, only then, ask to take, which would not suit your firebrand nature at all.

You know, if you had asked me to deepen our friendship some ten years ago, or maybe even five years ago, I would have leaped at the chance and in ten minutes stood outside your window strumming a guitar to woo you. But now that I am all old and mature with a receding forehead and graying temples, the fire has gone out of my ardor and I take my time to think things through before I jump into them. And such thinking has told me that you would be very disappointed in the real me. Your life is full of adventuring, traveling and photographing (is that even a real word? if not, I call dibs on it), while mine is waking up, going to work and coming home to sleep all days of the week. On Sundays I sleep half the day and watch TV the rest of the day for these old bones need rest more than anything else on weekends. And so trust me when I say you would be bored with me. All those facebook photos which show me having fun? My friends drag me to them with threats, for I never go willingly, so it’s not really me and let that not give you any false impressions about my fun routine. In reality, I am a boring, boring person in daily life and it would be a disaster to waste your time with me. I am one of those persons who works and earns and takes care of the family and kids and am not the type to run off with you for a mountain trek in the Himalayas at a moment’s notice. I am too responsible for that. Plus, I prefer stability and a peaceful family life more than constant excitement and novelty. In short while you are a ranging wolf, I am just a homely pup.

So in short, as much as it pains me to say it, honesty and commonsense tells me that any deepening of our friendship would be a recipe for disaster. So let’s forget that you ever said that, OK?

(P.s. it took me all these words to put my thoughts into clarity and it didn’t feel right to just message you with a decision, so I took the liberty of asking our mutual friend to post this on his blog which I have heard you say that you read regularly. He is just the messenger so don’t shoot him for the mail)