The Demons In Me

Every evening I sit by the pool of my condo and watch the world go by – I watch toddlers playing, babies taking their first steps, teenage boys bullying younger boys, and couples walking hand in hand…On one such evening, all of a sudden a hundred ton anxiety bomb whistled out of nowhere and leveled me emotionally…I was truly gutted…Couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t function normally for a while…Midlife crisis? Maybe…

After a few days of wading through the debris left by this bomb, I decided to clean up some of the mess by exorcising (at least trying to instead of avoiding them completely) the demons that have been wrecking my insides for years…There’s one I want to exorcise particularly, one that has been bothering me for eons – romance, or rather the lack of it…So, how do I go about doing this? By writing a blog post about it, of course…

A heart to heart with a friend yesterday over what she desired in a relationship woke up the old demon inside me…I want romance in my marriage, have always wanted it but the spine-chilling truth is that my husband and I have never had even a second of Mills & Boon type of romance in our relationship…You see, we aren’t exactly the candle-lit dinner types although I would like to try it…My head started spinning…Shoot! Was our marriage dead in the water? Are we happy? OK, so we are a bit boring by conventional standards but does that mean we are unhappy?

A brief discussion with my husband followed…Suddenly, a ray of sunlight started breaking through the dark clouds in my mind…It turns out that we do have romance, truck loads of it, it’s just not the popular version peddled by Aditya Chopra or Karan Johar…Sitting together watching reruns of ‘Law & Order’ for the hundredth time because it’s my favorite show or watching IPL because he wants to, discussing books, reminiscing about our childhood or exchanging smiles over the antics of our daughter are all things which make us happy…What’s romance after all, if it isn’t being who you are in front of each other or doing things for each other?

Cathartic rant over but my position as the No. 1 over-thinker and senseless-worrier remains secure…