I hate Anna Karenina. What a senseless, self-absorbed prick!
I was in the middle of writing one of my strongly-opinionated and inconsequential college essays about how Anna Karenina's tragedy comes from her irrationality when my phone started vibrating nervously. Hush! People in the library stared at the noise-maker without much sympathy, and while I have no problem with lack of sympathy I dread being screened.
It was a message from him. “At a meeting, bored to tears by people. You?”
No, “him” was not the endearingly sweet, caring, loving boyfriend. “Him” was the fling I naively thought passé who was proving otherwise.
“Don’t even go there!” I severely forbade myself.
“But why? It’s not 18th century France where correspondence = love.” I reprimanded myself for being overly puritanical.
The internal haggle went on; I listened to parts of myself raising reasons and objections like parties in the perfect democracy, knowing full well that the final decision would hurt myself no matter what because the vote is never unanimous. Was that the majority will? The margin of victory must be thin, judging from the twinge I felt as I hit the “send” button. “Bored to tears by my own thoughts. Blaming the world as usual, aren’t we?” Oh one of those perfectly playful, craftily flirtatious, but impeccably innocent texts.
And there I found myself, after two hours punctuated by countless deadly innocent messages, the essay on Anna Karenina unchanged as was the pain I felt while sending yet another text. This must be how it feels when a trying-to-quit smoker is repeatedly offer cigs, an alcoholic ending up as a bartender, a… I ran out lame of metaphors before he replied, and my mind jumped, and so did my heart.
He had no right to infringe upon my mind that way. A text message and he turned my orderly world upside down? Classic!
We met in a volunteer trip. The summer was intensely hot, as were the feelings that overtook me as my wearied self was slapped by the endless scenes of diseases and poverty, of cultural amnesia, by stories of destruction and gestures of healing, of strange sounds and impossible movements, of arts and raw feelings. I was exhausted, perhaps so was he. We didn’t notice each other at first; I was dizzy from the pace of things, head buried in constant distractions. But slowly, and I didn't know how or when, despite my distracted mind and the restless commotion that overwhelmed us, we moved towards each other and pretended not to know. It was not until two nights before our departure that he leaned over and kissed me, that we wordlessly confessed. It was not until the night before our departure that he, while leaning over and kissing me again at 5am after I had told him not to, let me know that nothing I say could ever stop him from entering my life.
The next day we parted at dizzy noon, besides a crowded, noisy third-world bus. He handed me a book, a collection of short stories from our favourite writer, on the inside cover of which was written hastily “Life is irrational.”
He, the artsy actor, the carpe diem kid, was attacking me, the math nerd, the economics major, by rejecting the very crust of my creed: rationality. If I had read Toslstoy then, as I am doing now, the danger from such attack would have been more acutely acknowledged. But I was stubborn and stupid, believing that my head was stronger than my heart. And after all, who was he?
We kept in touch via the modern marvels that are Gmail and facebook, as twentysomethings who meet in volunteer trips do. We fell for other people, fell out of it, fell on our head drunk and silly at college parties, even fell out of touch. But he always knew just the right time to drop a line on facebook, so short and succinct and public it said nothing but the unwritten “I still think about you”; and I replied in kind. When we found each other’s numbers and started talking on the phone, I was getting out of another romantic mistake. He was the voice at the other end of the phone, reassuringly grumpy, always mumbling (and he’s an actor, how?); he was there when I was sober and depressed, or drunk and nonsensical, but never more.
Then he visited in the dazzling days of early summer, turned my world upside down, and left without a trace.
No, I wish he’d left without a trace. I have his number, his facebook, his email; we’re intangibly but unavoidably reminded of each other. It is easy, always, to remove him from my friendlist, delete his emails, lose his number, but the “delete” button that I normally hit so casually, with ease and relief, always eludes me when his name was on the line. I feel the irrationality of my needs, and learned to accept the weakening of reason.
And now we’re here again. He popped up after several months of no correspondence, with those toxic texts. Always words, always from so far away, always the right words.
Accept that I have the boyfriend on my side.
The boyfriend nurtures and embraces me. He never keeps me on hold, never disappears to make grand entrance. He makes me feel protected, trusted, safe. I cuddle up to his lucidity, his courage, his moral strengths. I admire how he identifies the complex problems surrounding his life but never lets them disturb his reasoning (why wasn’t my mind built like that?) He loves my eclectic mix of friends and charms them with his warmth. Wrapped in his tenderness, I was comfortable to show him all the mess that I am. And he wasn't scared.
But I never mentioned “him”.
I tried to tell myself it’s because there was nothing, really. What to tell? I am not the modern day Jane Austen with wits enough to make a cyber affair out of one-lined facebook messages and incomprehensible drunken texts. I don’t even understand the “thing” we have for each other; it has never been defined from day 1. Wait, we don’t even have a day 1. No beginning, no closure.
Which is why I knew that when I stopped texting, it was a temporary ceasefire and not a peace settlement. I know that the different parts of me are still as at war with each other over the tiny, complicated territory that was my brain today as they were that night, when he leaned over to kiss me after I had told him not to, and I kissed him right back. I know now how Anna lost her head. I know I can never be fully in control of myself, because life has a way to bring him up when things seem all figured out.
Because he knew what Anna knew and I didn’t, one dizzy noon by the noisy third-world bus, the open secret: that life is irrational.
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