Remember the guy Scooter from How I Met Your Mother? How was kept in a hang by Lily for a very long time?
I really enjoyed watching the show back then, not realizing what actually feels like to be kept hanging by someone else. It was not until one of my friends went through the same.
You’d always feel and love the connection between Marshall and Lily throughout the show, even when they are away from each other. But nobody cares about Scooter. He was basically there to give us the laughs and create funny situations. I loved that finally in one of the episodes; he’s let off from the “hanging” period by Lily.
My friend was a really sweet guy, Amber. And as is the problem with sweet guys, they never get a girl. He was an introvert himself and there was only once that he proposed a girl to be with him after years of friendship, thinking that there was a possibility of a future with her. The girl, Saloni, however refused and offered just friendship instead. Amber willingly accepted it. He blamed himself and thought that it was his fault that he fell for her. As time went on, my friend started falling for her again and that is when things went downside. Saloni started feeling jealous when he spent more time with the rest of his friends. She started demanding his time in the name of friendship and justified her reasons for doing so by saying that she was possessive about him. After these things, for a girl there is still the possibility that she might not have anything other than friendship in her mind. However, it makes a guy fall deeper for that girl. And that’s exactly what happened with my self-proclaimed introvert friend. We advised him to meet Saloni lesser than he used to do, otherwise he was going to be in the same situation again as he was a few months before. He did that and Saloni started bugging him to talk to her. He finally confessed why he decreased communication with her. Then he asked for a reason, a proper logical reason, as to why she doesn’t want to take their friendship to the next level.
To that Saloni replied by praising him. “You’re the only one that I can trust. I share a lot of stuff with you. You’re really sweet. You’re amazing….” – and a lot of other things which made him the perfect boyfriend ever – “…But I just want you as a friend in my life”. While I was reading these messages that Amber showed me, something occurred to me. I’ve been here before. I’ve encountered these messages before. And I was the one to send them!
Years ago, there used to be a girl in my school. Her name was Smita. She was a real talker and could start off on anything and everything whenever she opened her mouth to speak. She was among those people in a class, who were too pretentious just to make friends as they thought just being themselves wasn’t enough. I was already in a relationship by that time, though I had kept it a secret. A very few people knew about it. She really liked me. She was fair, a little fat but since she would just keep talking about random useless things, it made her irritating at times. I got to know from her friends that she was smitten by me. When you’re young, things like these boost your ego. “Someone likes me. I guess I am special” – that’s what a young guy likes to think.
We talked about stuff, usually nonsense. I ignored and talked to her as an when I wanted to. She’d have done anything that I asked her to do at that time. And thinking that she’ll become a prospect girlfriend for me, she do it. What she didn’t realize at that time was that she deserved someone even better than me. I used to take favors from her such as when I was training for the Sports Meet (read: The Silver Lining), she offered to keep time of my runs during our games periods and try to motivate me. I had an internal conflict, as to whether I should tell her that I was already committed to someone else or not. The judgmental me said that this was morally wrong and I should not be taking any favors from her by letting her believe that there might be a chance of a relationship later on. Telling her the truth meant breaking her heart and I didn’t want to make her sad. So I didn’t tell her (She eventually found out). She proposed me once and I said the exact same lines as Saloni said to Amber above. THE EXACT SAME LINES! I didn’t let her off the hook. She still remained in the delusion that something might happen between us in time. A year later she found out about my relationship status and herself started distancing from me. She didn’t do it immediately, but gradually. Like she turned talking everyday into talking twice a week, then once in two weeks, then once a month and so on.
It’s been more than 3 years now since then and when I read those texts from Saloni, I immediately thought of Smita. She’s working for a big company, a regular blogger and is in a happy relationship with some guy from her college now. We talk at most twice a year, that too on Facebook. I’ve not seen her since an even longer time and just know about what she’s doing through her social network updates. Only I know the extent to which I wanted to apologize to her for being a jerk with her at school. I felt miserable inside. I could equate the feelings of distress between Amber and her. While thinking about not to hurt her, I actually did hurt her a lot passively.
The experience with Smita made me give Amber the best advice I could at that time. I didn’t tell him my story though in a fear of being judged upon it. I asked him to do exactly the same that Smita had done with me. Decrease communication gradually so that Saloni doesn’t realize what he’s actually doing and even her habit to talk to him daily, fades away. He got my point and said that it was probably the best thing he could do rather than falling for her and getting rejected again.
I was happy I could help Amber. I felt terrible when I came back home. I wanted to text Smita badly and text her that I was sorry for whatever happened between us years ago. But it had been almost a year now since I last talked to her. Those memories might’ve been sad memories for her and I thought not to make her think of them again by sending a sorry, just to clear my conscience. I just sat and watched her innocent profile picture wondering how mean and selfish I had been back then. What was her fault? Just that she loved someone and wanted to be with that person? And that’s the reason she got hurt later?
Sometimes our point of view seems right to us and we take decisions accordingly, not knowing that when we perceive them from a broader perspective, they are not right at all.
The Judgemental Me 