Track – I know It’s Over by The Smiths.
“I know she makes you angry right now and I know you want to give her a piece of your mind but what good is that going to do…” said Darshini.
Darshini has helped me navigate through life in these last four months of cynicism, frustration and anger. She is the most practical person I know and this is the most emotionally devastating experience of my life. I feel bad for her, she is a nice person. She too has problems of her own. Sometimes I feel like I overwhelm her too much and, in guilt, try to do nice by her. I just don’t remember a time we talked about her life, a life of far more potential than mine. We are on the phone, as busy a morning as it can get on a Monday, two consultants in the prime of their youth, talking about a piece of shit relationship that is beyond it’s clock.
I am not good at confrontations. Never have been, never will be. I do the moment justice but sometimes I forget to think about the future. I forget that being right and standing your ground has consequences. Having the last word also means that you have live with silence for the rest of your life. Silence immediately after conflict is dangerous. All you can do is think about it, think about them, about what you could have said instead. It’s like your mind is in one of those fancy massage chairs at the mall and you’re just waiting to be hit with one pulsation after the other, knowing not when which will happen. There is anger and there is sadness and let’s not even talk about the guilt and the madness. Yes there is poetry too but you won’t enjoy it.
“…listen you’ve got to stay focused and you have got to move on and I know this shit stinks but you are on the brink of some amazing things so can you please not fuck this up right now. Can you do that for me? For yourself maybe?” said Darshini. I haven’t felt her get this worked up and I have seen her give presentations on a broken foot.
“I know what you mean and I trust you. I trust you more than I have ever did in my life.” I said, almost trying to shrug her off my shoulder. To be honest, I wish I had trusted her more. She was practical but she was devastatingly right on many occasions.
” You have got to get back on your feet at least two days before the 4th. I know it’s not the most decent of requests to make but it’s the only option that you have..” she said, as she took a grasp.
“Can I count on you to be focused for the next few days?” said asked again. We had been twenty one minutes on the call but I knew her emotional exhaustion was well into Wednesday.
” You can count on me to fight. At least till 4th. But I am taking a vacation soon after and you’re not going to stop me from that. Even if it doesn’t go well.” I said.
“Especially if it doesn’t go well. I wouldn’t want to deal with your drunk, disappointed ass for the next few weeks.” she chuckled. She was being honest with me. I couldn’t feel bad at that even if I wanted.
“I am going to have some food. Then I’ll take a nap and I’ll get to preparation after. I feel like I haven’t eaten or drank in ages.” I said, knowing that it was probably true.
“Well you take care of yourself. I really believe in you. It is not the end of the world and you’ll understand that one day. It will just take time” she said, with a little too much honesty for my liking.
“I’ll text you. You take care.” I said, as I ended the call.
I was exhausted. I really was. From all the cycles, phone calls, work and the pity. As funny as it sounds, I hadn’t felt my weight in a very long time. My head was in the clouds, I was not thinking straight. I was tired but not sleepy. I really wanted to smoke. I hadn’t in a very long time. I hadn’t also ever smashed my phone against the wall before today but here we are. Not really difficult to kick back to an old habit, as addicts would say. It didn’t seem like much of a risk.
So I did what I always do. I got into my car, got a pack of smokes, got something to eat and drove angrily on my way back. I can’t listen to songs now cause life has a new context and nobody told my playlists that. I slammed all the doors on my way back home. I put my food to cook and went to wash up. My washroom was dirty. It felt like I hadn’t been there in days, maybe I hadn’t. I had my meal and I got down to studying. I didn’t go well. I tried to take a nap. That didn’t go well either. I knew it was time for the A team to come in.
I never had great luck with prescription meds. Nor with therapy. Call it placebo if you want, but I really needed a pill at that moment. The only problem was, I hadn’t seen my psychiatrist in three months. Even worse, I hadn’t gone for therapy in four. Which meant that I would be spending fifteen minutes out of a thirty minute session on apologising to a doctor who is supposed to help me. Fuck that shit. I would rather find a doctor on Practo, and go to them instead. It’s not that my previous doctor wasn’t good; you don’t charge fifteen hundred bucks a session for nothing. It’s just that it wasn’t working. There was also the fact that he had previously suggested that I go to therapy in my own city, since it would give an opportunity to go outside. All this was enough to convince me to avoid another confrontation today, so I just went with it.
The only decent clinic I could find was twelve kilometre away and was called the ‘The Happy Place’. I admire the positivity but I do think it’s a bit of a kick in the nuts for the patients who go there to cry about their feelings because no one else is willing to listen to them. Was that who I was becoming? I have friends. Successful ones. Which means twenty four is difficult year for them too. I don’t want to bother them. Also I compete. Like a lot. I had been winning, at least at work, for quite sometime and I wasn’t ready to let go of that. With Darshini, it was different. She is five years older to me and she was my boss at one point of time. I couldn’t compete with her even if I wanted to. I wanted to talk to her about this but I felt like I had already used up my daily quota.
The earliest appointment I could get wasn’t for two days after. Surprisingly, that is the only thing that made me cry today. I really needed this to work for me, fast. I had lost too much to a person in the past and I didn’t want them to affect my future anymore. But two days without meds was going to be painful. The real question was, was it even possible?
Middle of the Road 
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