Tailspin

It started out with two conversations yesterday. One with someone I love and another with someone I’m supposed to love. Both tread over my mental minefield seemingly without a care. Whiplashes and big gashes. I was hurt and suddenly had lost faith in everything.

It was plain obvious – no smile, no spark, no positivity. Some I know from far far away tried to pick me up and make me feel better. He succeeded marginally. But what really helped was a a few of hours of sleep, albeit light, in the background of some eclectic music (loud).

I woke up early, almost having forgotten what had happened the previous night. I managed to make a lot of out the precious early morning. Then, went to work. The entire day was exceptionally productive. And on my way back, I tweeted – “ Time to give an extremely productive day an ending that it deserves. Don't you dare to spoil it now!”

No sooner had I reached home, there was an e-mail waiting for me – which broke me down completely. Then there was someone else on Skype who did his bit. And finally, I went to the chat room that I hang out usually, where I received some scathing comments under the pretext of humor. I ran out of the room scared.

I have never felt worse all year. Is this another episode of clinical depression that has been otherwise well managed by my medications? Only time will tell.

A social/familial misfit

This Sunday evening, during a break during my songwriting/recording sessions, I logged on to the personal messengers. I found my sister online and started chatting with her. She told me that our cousins were all there visiting her. She also told me that she was chatting from the laptop that she had bought for my mother. She was actually testing the internet connection.

She asked me if I could help her check the bandwidth by video-chatting. I was feeling relatively okay then and said okay. We got connected over poor quality 'broadband' at their end. I saw my cousins huddled together around the computer.

We couldn't really 'talk' to each other thanks to the connection. And there was a whole lot of noise coming from their end. Too many people - three cousins, my sister, my parents, and my wailing niece - and too many conversations going on at the same time. A nightmare for a noise-conscious, ADD-esque, social phobic person like me. I tried working some humor, but my tastes of humor were not quite up to the tastes of my family - innuendos don't work, and any humor that I used came through as heavy sharp-toothed sarcasm, which doesn't really work with my family, except for a few uncles.

So, it was a less than memorable experience and I had to finally make an excuse of having to 'make' my dinner to get out of it. This made me so acutely aware of how much of a social misfit I will be if I ever dared to visit my family as I know it.

The wonderful world of online relationships

It has become a ritual these days. Every evening, after work/rehearsals/gigs, after reaching home, I log on to the internet and to SilverDaddies.com, where I participate in chatting in a chat room - yes, it is so '90s and early 2000s to be in a chat room, I know. There, I meet my friends from all over the world, crack jokes, pull legs, and of course, get better in the act of seduction.

SilverDaddies.com and this chat room, where I had met Vinokur in 2007, has once again become the place to meet quality men. Every other day, I stumble on to men with whom I establish varying degrees of friendship. Some last just the length of a casual chat, some go on to other intsant messaging/chat platform, and some meander into furious e-mailing back and forth.

In the past 6 months or so, I have acquired at least 5 such friends, two of whom I have become very close to. One of them, a guy from San Rafael California, has become an integral part of my routine - he's the guy that I wrote about in my blog post about the Federal Government of the United States denying visa to his Indian boyfriend. I need to hear from him daily to know that he's alright and relatively positive about his future.

Another friend that I met there, a professor of French literature from Paris, is visiting Mumbai for Christmas and New Year's. We have already decided on meeting up for at least a couple of dates during the time he's here. I try to keep in touch with daily over Yahoo messenger. He is a poet and sends me across some poems that he has written. I comment on them and he replies to them etc.

And then there are Scots working in Yemen, Canadians retiring from public service, and yankees pretty much doing nothing ,-). I meet such a plethora of interesting, charming men. I like doing this to know more about people from other countries and cultures - it's almost like traveling without spending a rupee. Whatever it is, it is worth the effort!