The age of ‘I can imagine you saying this!’
and other silly intimacies
First things first, extremely crippling indiscipline has crept into my writing schedule. I don’t know why there are so many half-baked ideas just sitting in my drafts mocking me. I am also unsure about where time is flying and why it’s flying as fast as it is.
Over the last couple of days, it feels that writing about anything will divulge sensitive, exceedingly personal details about me. I have been hiding behind the veil of fiction and that’s awfully cowardly of me.
I am an ardent admirer of things people say, especially the things that are boring. We are all so foolishly perceptive — constantly noticing people. The way they laugh, roll their eyes, their language, the way their nose crinkles, the jokes that will only make them laugh and the intimacy of I can imagine you saying this.
I can see you laughing through your teeth, never honking at the cyclists, chuckling at my horrible jokes, listening like you’ve never heard something more important than what I’m telling you, dropping a random fact about electricity, pouring water for everyone on the table, curiously tinkering with the remote; I can see you when you’re not here. I’m not mentally ill but my imagination is fuelled by all the memories I have collected of you and it makes your absence a lot more bearable.
Because I know, I love.
Because I know, I cherish.
When did I learn so much about you? What do I do with this information? Maybe it will be handy when you are far away. Maybe it’s so that I can daydream with striking accuracy. Maybe it’s so that I can use many words and nuances when I describe you in the books that I will write, maybe not now. Maybe later.
Maybe this information will bring me endless sorrow but maybe it will be the most important thing I have ever learned in this life.
But this information also makes you predisposed to my perilous presumptions.
I know you’ll get late, forget the book I told you to bring, get distracted mid-sentence, complain about the heat, complain about the cold, disregard your food allergies, leave the vegetables, drop food on your whites and be innocently unaware of the damage of your actions & words but it’s okay.
Because I know, I forgive.
Because I know, I accept.
It is no less than a superpower to be able to predict with such boggling precision something as irrational as behavior and countenance.
But such is the power of intent, attention, and fidelity.
However, it is deeply unnerving to imagine the possibility of things that we cannot imagine. The debilitating terror of I could not have imagined you doing this.
The fear of being wrong about people we swear by.
The frightening possibility of opening our hearts out to the wrong people.
The things you say in anger, your moments of weakness, parts of your childhood you still haven’t healed from, things you do now but will undoubtedly regret, and the most terrifying of all is that you may pretend like you did nothing wrong.
Because I don’t know, I begrudge
Because I don’t know, I fixate
