Tracing Patterns In And Out Of Love
Our second issue takes you into the stories we tell ourselves about the people in our orbit and how we make our stories about them until we put ourselves first
Greetings dear dreamers
Welcome to the second issue of the Abandoned Dreams Collective.
A few days ago I ordered a poster off etsy for my bedroom wall. Its a design incorporating a line from the song goldrush by Taylor Swift.
'My mind turns your life into folklore’
Its early days still but this might be THE Taylor Swift lyric for me from her entire discography (please note that I will also say this about 1989 other Taylor Swift lyrics).
Sometimes you meet certain people where even across the mere handful of times your paths cross, something of their essence stays with you. Something makes you sure that you’re going to know them better at some point in life. Something makes you unconsciously add their story to yours and mythologize elements of it. The writer of this week’s story, Karan Mirchandani is someone I met years ago and always knew I’d someday know better. Because life is sometimes really funny and comes to a full circle, he too wrote about the stories that he’s spun and the tales that he told himself in the pursuit of love.
In Tracing Patterns In And Out Of Love, our second essay, his words speak to all of us who over romanticize, who look for hidden meanings, and who never seem to get it right.
Tracing Patterns in and out of Love
“I don’t fall in love hard anymore..it just doesn’t work like that for me.”
The pause after I say it is endless, the words hang in the air waiting around to see if they were going to be repeated. I feel unsure again - it’s a line I’ve convinced myself is true and have thought was the perfect arc for my story so far. I’ve tried to pack in as much age and jadedness that I can muster to make the words feel resolute.
But really, all I hear are the echoes of my college roommates' harsh words as he stood at my door. Words that I often go back to when my own resolutions fail me in the process of love.
Except in the cold winter of 2006 as I find myself walking to a basketball class there is no reality check . All I know then is that she would be there, learning a sport that I never did find the aptitude for. But I was 13. Plus I hear her laugh at how terrible I was at basketball. Any common ground would do. It’s why I start watching Sonpari, a terrible kids tv show, that I never quite gravitated towards - but it’s her favourite. Yellow by Coldplay makes it to the top of my playlist because her Facebook status has the nonsensical lyrics of a song that I think is about Jaundice? Is Jaundice beautiful? I wasn’t sure but as I discuss Twilight with her in great detail, something she would make fun of me for years later, I know that really this is love. But I won’t tell her that, as we walk in circles around our society, and I feel a rush of adrenaline at the fact that an aunty passing by probably thinks we’re dating. I feign annoyance at the rumours. They don’t have anything better to do or what I say, fighting to keep the smile off my face.
It’s what I think love is, and do so for years. The yearning and pining was all part of the process, they were just dramatic plot beats to make the climax that much more interesting. Years later we discuss her wedding plans with another boy. I always knew, she teases me - my years of aching is a fleeting sentence in her life as she hypothesizes that, if not for this guy, maybe we would’ve dated. I always knew.
Never again I think to myself as the one sided love morphs into a close friendship. And yet, in the summer of 2011 - beginning of college, I cry dramatically at the foot of my bed, holding the pieces of a torn up card that I had no intention of ever giving. But the story would be better if I’d convinced myself that I did. That I would’ve handed her the note on Valentine’s Day, a gesture that even a Hallmark movie would roll its eyes at. But I had seen Jim pocket his note that he had left in the teapot for Pam on The Office and maybe somewhere that lingered in my brain as I tore mine up half-heartedly. It makes for a good story, the slow burn longing - picking the perfect spot to cry so it would go well with a montage later. Maybe I’d play Someone Like You to raise the stakes. Or a cheesy Christian rock band as I picture the moment of finally telling her. It would be the perfect climax to our story. Except these are just images in my head perfectly edited for me to find comfort in. And just hopes of our eyes meeting in a bookstore between the shelves, or at 3 am after we had had too much beer - knowing then that all this conversation, all this time spent together meant love. That my forever entangled earphones would one day be split neatly as we swayed slowly in a parking lot listening to a song and sharing shy glances because the lyrics felt like they were about us. Instead I’m sitting at an uneven table listening to her tell me about this guy she met. It’s just some guy I tell myself. Lots of some guys in college - it was part of the thrill of it really. They’re getting married this year.
You love this..all this yearning and pining, you find comfort in it .
I remember the look on my roommate’s face as he says these words. He’s been here before. I glance at my phone and groan out loud as the events of last night come rushing back to me. I say events like they had a chronological nature to them - like they had a connecting thread, a story that you could tell to your friends years later when there was a lull in the conversation. But really there was just one overarching theme. I sulk in a corner in the summer of 2015 as the music pounded the walls of Millers Bar that was fighting for relevance on a busy Pacific Beach street chock full of bars. Sulk as I drink, sulk as I pretend to dance, sulk as she kisses him and whispers something in his ear. ‘It’s like I couldn’t hear the music anymore you know?’, I would tell multiple friends who were on their last nerve with my sad lover routine. I am a live Ranbir Kapoor (of the constantly-watching-the-love-of-his-life-marry-someone-else-while-sobbing-dramatically-and-making-the-audience-feel-every-facet-of-his-pathos' fame) cliche at this point, calling my cab early saying I had to leave. But not quietly slipping away when no one was looking - not really. I make it an event of its own, making sure everyone saw, hoping she’d say No don’t go it’s not the same without you. Or something to that dramatic cheesy effect. Instead of Oh okay get home safe. And definitely not the text in the morning that made it clear she knew. That all my friends knew. Unrequited love was the theme of that summer and it would have mattered more to my roommate if I hadn’t done this routine once every six months for the past four years. If you said you like her and she actually liked you back you wouldn’t know what to do – he continues as I painstakingly relive the look on her face – my sad lover shtick had worn thin, it’s effects were much more palpable now. It wasn’t something as cheesy or endearing as loving a song about a colour that makes no sense. It had tangible effects- hushed conversations, worries about my increased consumption of alcohol. And this time when I finally confess my feelings – it is to address the depressed elephant in the room. The pattern wasn’t cute and yearny anymore, it had to be addressed
I think you enjoy this. Maybe I do - maybe as I sit in an airplane and she tells me about her boyfriend I should just say I think you’re cute. Or as we walk back from the hotsprings and stare at the barely visible mountains - I could say I’m in love with you. But where’s the story in that? What will I think about as I walk to class with Crash into me blaring in my ears. Where will I tell people about me attempting snowboarding just because I wanted to impress her. But maybe, actually learning it would've been nice. Maybe being present in those moments, instead of canonizing them as they were happening, would've meant that I had more coherent memories that weren’t painted with my melancholy. Ranbir Kapoor said in an interview that he’s tired of being the guy that leaves a wedding crying because the girl is getting married to someone else. And in the pursuit of chasing romance I didn’t realize I was actually chasing angst - and finding it every day. I used to agree with I don’t think I agree with Shah Rukh ( in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil playing the bitter ex longing for his past relationship) as he so eloquently says ek tarfa pyaar (translation: one sided love)is more powerful because it’s just yours and no one else’s. But I don’t anymore. He doesn’t mention the part where you’re a nightmare to be around - your friends just trying to have a good time as you sit quietly at the table tuning them out. And they all know. And she knows. I always knew.
That’s why in November of 2018 I proudly tell a group of people that I asked her out one week into our first meeting. It was over a cup of coffee at 8 pm and I saw her hand quiver a little as the words left me. She was fighting back a smile that would betray her excitement. And we walked the lanes when they kicked us out of the coffee shop - our hands trying to get familiar with each other as they interlocked. And we laughed at how cheesy it was that it started raining. And even when things get hard among the horrors of the last two years - I think of the fallen rose as we walked drenched in the rain. And even as 2020 washes away that relationship – it’s one I still look back on fondly with no angsty clouds blocking my hindsight. To everyone else this is a regular occurrence, but for me it’s a sign of stepping away from a vicious cycle.
. I sit here now with my words hanging in the air –I don’t fall in love hard anymore to explain my utter detachment from romance - I wear it like an edgy badge of honour - like a certificate for not pining anymore. I wrap up emotional unavailability in the glittery package of being 28 and wiser now. It’s a new pattern to deal with, one that emerges from the ruins of the last one – like the weaker sequel to the classic original. But it’s one that when the lights come on and the credits roll - the audience knows that resolution is just around the corner.
-Karan Mirchandani
I look forward to seeing you again next week with a new story.
Much love and many dreams
Nirmitee
The Abandoned Dreams Collective