If you’re capable of being a good friend (and not everyone is), you’ve probably sat through endless sessions of lament, helping someone through heartbreak. Only, when it’s not your heart that’s broken, the circles they’re carousel can be baffling. The lowlife they’re describing — that lying, cheating, manipulative, selfish man or woman — isn’t the person they’re holding in their mind’s eye (or their heart’s vice-grip) as they sob. It can be as though they’re telling you about one person while thinking about another.
“S/he’s a (you-know-what),” you say, because, well, it’s clear to you that they are. But even as you say it, you wonder: does your friend know that? The person they’re talking about — the one so clearly conjured up by their descriptions — is obviously undeserving of such lament or such love. But the person they’re thinking about — the one who has caused these tears and confusion — is almost beatific.
It’s not that your friend is in some failure delirium. Because, briefly perhaps but with total vividness, the one who broke their heart was something other than the rude word you’ve recommended they be saved under on your friend’s phone (try it: in case it rings and flashes the said word, it’s a mnemonic to avoid feeling thrilled). They were — in short — wonderful. So, was the heartbreaker intentionally deceitful? Sometimes, but this is not about those times. Consider: were they just as enamoured by the possibilities of who they were capable of becoming — the version of themselves that another saw, and was falling in love with?
And so, the deflating but not devastating premise is this: they tried it until they got lazy. They did it until being interesting, exciting and kind became quite an effort. They pursued it until self-actualisation and being with someone as amazing as your friend turned out to not be their journey at all; just a merry detour. And like the kid who thinks he’s cruising along without training wheels until his parent lets go of the bike, they crashed right into the flowerpots.
The truth is that the potential someone else saw in them was probably not there to begin with. But unlike the kid with the bike, the bruises were also received by that someone else. And while the kid may keep trying, the heartbreaker usually just gets up and walks away, dusting themselves off – as though what happened between them and your friend was so light. And that’s the part that hurts most.
Can you help your friend integrate the two: the awful one who broke their heart, and the awesome one that same person was capable of being (but chose not to be)? It’s not bad to see the best in people. But it’s dangerous to see only that.
But it’s also so normal. You see what I’ve been doing all this while? I assumed that you’re an empathetic listener. I assumed that you surround yourself with people who are passionate and resilient, and that you care for them. Are these things true? Or do they really just say more about me, and what I want to see, than they do about you, and who you are?
(The Chennai-based author writes poetry, fiction and more)