Tit for Tat

I am lying in bed idly. A few random thoughts rule my head. I don’t remember putting the lights out. I begin to fidget with the switch of my bedside lamp. *click* On.  *click* Off.  Repeat. My phone beeps.

It’s him. Hi. My heart races exceptionally fast; it might as well give Usain Bolt a run for his money. Oh, no. I am just exaggerating here. It’s the first time in days that he’s bothered to text me. We talk sometimes. No. I talk. Always. He just listens. Sometimes, he speaks.  But, he never talks. 

I don’t reply immediately. I take my own sweet time to type out a text. Two minutes later my thumb hovers over the send button.  Damn, that will look desperate. I retype Hi at least 7 times, using different textual tones each time. (What are textual tones, anyway? We don’t know but we still know, right?!)

After twenty minutes of contemplation whether to punctuate using a full stop or an exclamation mark, I hit send. Hi. :)

The conversation ends exactly 9 minutes later. Last time, it was 7. Not bad! (Not good is what I really feel.)

With the end of this 9-point-something-minute chat, I know one thing for sure. My phone won’t display his name in the days to come. 

The point is that I count efforts. I count those days when he texts me. (Because I would easily lose count of the days that I text him!) I count the number of times he cares to ask me how I am doing. I count the number of days he doesn’t speak to me. I count the number of times he does something that reminds him of me. I count the things that remind him of me. Of course, I also count the days I call him, the days I almost send him a text, the days I blabber endlessly, the nights we fight, the nights I cry and god knows what. But the best part is that I don’t need a calendar or journal to keep count because I am NOT a nothing-can-help-her-she-is-a-psychopath-and-a-creep. These counts are more like realizations than digits. Realizations that help me alter my attitude towards people in general.Who’s he anyway? He is any guy who was, is or will be a part of my life. No matter how big or small, a part of my life nonetheless. Because I am not really interested in girls, you know.  

So, why do I count? Because in this day and age, when I see the government is reminding us of the difference between even and odd, how can I forget to remind myself the way to be even with people? 

You cannot always expect people to care for you, to ask you how you are doing, to tell you what they are doing. Unless of course, they care. The dictionary meaning of a Conversation is ‘a talk, especially an informal one, between two or more people, in which news and ideas are exchanged.’ EXCHANGED and not SPOKEN. I don’t want to tell someone how my day was if they don’t express a desire to know – implicitly or explicitly. I don’t want to tell someone anything if they don’t want to tell me anything. Private lives. Secret lives. It’s really that simple. If you haven’t heard from me in days or months or years, it is either because I know you don’t want to or because I haven’t heard from you. No other reason.

If you’re thinking this has got to do with ego, then let me tell you that you are absolutely…RIGHT! Because yes it has got to do with ego. What happens when they don’t give you a reason to let the ego subside? It emerges even bigger. Ego clashes, they say. They are right. Hmmph.

Now, let me tell you a couple of things (more like facts).

I will not care if you don’t. I will not speak to you if you don’t speak to me. I will not listen to you if you don’t listen to me. I will not share stuff with you if you don’t share stuff with me. I don’t want you if you don’t want me. Marilyn Monroe once said, “A girl doesn’t need anyone who doesn’t need her.” Guess what? Truer words have never been spoken. And hence, I will not need you if you do not need me. I will not worry about you if you don’t worry about me. I will not think about you if you don’t think about me. I will not like you if you don’t like me. 

I will not love you if you don’t love me.

After reading these facts, if you're going to think or say something like, "Will she like Ranbir Kapoor even if he doesn't like her back?" or "She loves pizza even though pizza doesn't love her!", I'll just say that you need to be at least 18 years old to view the content on this blog. 

I get out of the bed to fetch my earphones from the cupboard. Back under the covers, I try hard to find a song that could cheer me up, but end up turning shuffle on. Just as the music blares through the earphones, I fall asleep almost immediately. I must have been really tired.

Tum sath ho ya na ho, kya fark hai..