That emotional intimacy issue…

Update dt 3-Jun-2012 – This is a rant.

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Its about 1.30 am, in exactly 12.5 hours I am required to present my Business Plan at our 10000 women program, in front of a special panel. My B-plan is not even 40% complete. And yet I am on this blog.

I am here because I desperately need to write, need to communicate and I just don’t have anybody to talk to.

Here in this campus I am staying with 13 other wonderful ladies, each one of them are amazing listeners and they give great responses and feedback to most conversations. I have been spending my days talking to them, laughing and cracking jokes every now and then.

But I cannot ‘talk’ to any of them.

Its that emotional intimacy issue. I can write my heart out on this computer, and as soon as I would hit the publish button it would be up for mass public viewing and that wouldn’t bother me but I cannot talk to the 13 people I have known, for last 3 months, staying in the next few rooms of this hostel. Weird!

This emotional intimacy issue, this inability to establish personal one on one bond, with people of either sexes, it has trickled down from long lost past. In all of my 35 years, I have never established a single personal relationship. Tons of men, not one boyfriend, tons of friends, not one best friend.

The only person I could really talk to or bond with, until some months ago, was my sister. Although she would probably disagree on the bonding part, but that’s a subject for another day’s post.

“If you are not able to share your small or big moments of happiness and sadness, worries and concerns, if at the end of the day you are talking to yourself, fighting your own fears…do you still think that relationship is worth it?”

I asked that question on my FB and everybody replied, “No. Its not worth it.” I am pretty sure the responses would have changed drastically if I had mentioned that the relationship I was talking about is the one I have with my sister.

“Sister? What are you talking about, you shouldn’t even have such unrealistic expectations from your sister. That’s what boyfriends and husbands are for.” They’d probably advice me.

True, I expect too much from my sister. Perhaps sisters don’t need to talk everyday. Perhaps they are not the people you should feel the need to share your small and big joys and sorrows and all that jazz. She has tried to explain this reality to me too many times already, but I just don’t get it. I still wish she called and talked. She doesn’t like it if I call too much.

Oh well nothing is wrong between us. Its just that she lives away. In Dehradun, has a busy life, she’s an Assistant Professor and she’s also getting married soon. Her fiancee is her colleague lives in the same campus. So you know, its understandable why she doesn’t have  the time to call me.

Only, I don’t understand.

Anyway, so if she did call,  I would have told her how the women entrepreneurs gang here, all 13 of us went to see Agent Vinod, how much they all hated it and how thoroughly I enjoyed it, and how for the first time in my life I danced in a movie hall. Like those cheap boys who dance on a Munni or a Sheela, I danced on Pyaar Ki Pungi Bajakar. It was so much fun.

But you know, even if she did call, and even if I did tell her all that, she’d probably not get it. She would not get what is the excitement all about. Dancing in a movie hall is not appreciated to begin with. Spending money on a film like Agent Vinod is the other illogical act of the evening. And grown ups behaving like NOT grownups in public is something she’d never get.

Just for the records, she is 9 years younger to me.

There is one person though who understands. A very special man who have been a part of my life for over a year now, the longest anybody ever stayed. He did understand the last time, why I was so excited. For some strange reason that night when I shared all those fun at the ladies night out withAgent Vinod, he was being surprisingly nice. He was being flirtatious, again, mysterious and charming. I felt loved again. I ended up being typically me though when he tried to be too mushy. I said, “Kuch zyaada nahi jata rahe ho aaj tum?”  I don’t know why I said that, what was my problem if he was being slightly possessive for the first time?

That emotional intimacy issue. What else.

The last thing he said that night was, “I’d call you tomorrow and let’s meet  once your module is over.” Next  morning, before I could ask him, Were you drunk last night, or did you smoke up? Or were you just high on something new? his phone went out of range. Been 2 days, the phone is switched off.

He has disappeared. Again.

For the records, he had just come back from a 3 months sabbatical to Mongolia and Turtuk. A sabbatical for him means no phone, no internet. Pretty much no civilization.

These are the people I desperately need in my life, people I try to reach out constantly, at the end of every significant or insignificant day.  Would you look at my destiny.

Nobody knows how difficult it has been to overcome that emotional intimacy issue with this man and retain him for over a year now. A lot of credit goes to him. You see I am an hyper-reactive person. And he is one of those elements we read about in our chemistry class, those who don’t react to anything, what are they called, inert elements?

So he is non-reactive. All those times in the last one year when I flipped out and displayed some of my histrionics, he stood by me, inertly. He wasn’t surprised or annoyed or intimidated. He just stayed around.

For the records he is not my boyfriend. He could be, but he is not.

So if I could reach him on the phone today, I would have shared with him the internal conflict Samyukta Media have been going through for last 2 days. How I had a difference of opinion with the team and refused to budge, and so now my team hates me. How I finally gave  in but only after putting some conditions which I am sure they would hate further.

But even if he was around, he wouldn’t have extended his shoulder to cry on. He would have said, “you should have done better, you have a bigger responsibility to resolve conflicts, it is not acceptable that you prolonged the conflict for two days instead of trying to find common grounds.”  And then he’d have quoted something from Herman Hesse or some other author and I would have bought into all that.

Back to talking about  the emotional intimacy issue, it doesn’t stop at personal life  you know.

As a part of our course module all of us here at the 10000 women program have been put in touch with a mentor who is committed to give us their personal guidance in nurturing our businesses, solving our problems  and eventually hand hold us to a level where we can confidently approach a VC or an Angel Investor.

The first time I met my mentor, he intimidated me. He was very forthcoming and out rightly rejected my business. That was the end of my mentor-mentee relationship with him. Through the next two modules all my fellow classmates told me that I have got the best possible mentor, that being brutally honest is just his style otherwise he is literally an angel, they all went and met him, held one on one meetings, all but me.

A huge opportunity lost purely due to my personality disorders.

Have you ever seen a large black insect, the one that moves very slowly and if you poke it, it becomes still for a while, pretending to be dead or something. And starts to crawl back slowly after it has been left alone for a while. That’s me.