Second.

A friend told me yesterday, “Forgive and Forget”
I forgave her, a while back I feel.
I think it’s just hard to forget.
I do feel that she should have chosen the second,
Because if you ever truly loved the first,
You would never fall for the second.
But oh well, we all know it’s hard to let go
So there you go,
You became her second but even she could not let go.

You — forgive and forget
Hmm, I have tried to convince my heart a ton of times
I have tried to train my mind to believe that
Even if I lived in an illusion of being the first
I was undoubtedly always the second or maybe third or maybe worse.
Forgive — for you, might come as a wave of emotions
Slowly destroying the last of what I have destroyed already
Forget — I never thought we needed that
For all these four years, I trained myself to believe that if one thing I could be sure of,
It would have been you.
But yes, I should acknowledge that
You indeed were the best teacher of life lessons in life’s own gruesome way —
You know when life takes its toll?
Well, it never rains, it pours.
I learned it the hard way.
Not through the silence before the storm,
Not through it either
Maybe through what followed.
I learned it your way.

There are days when I wonder
Who was at fault after all.
The human brain always plays the blame game —
It’s easier that way you know.
Fight or flight they say, I don’t know why we needed the later when fight was obviously our way,
Oh well, it was second just like I was I guess,
And the fool in me believed it was the first
Always the first
I think I should blame my childhood for loving the number 1 so much.
There you go again, blame game.

So yes, it was my fault,
Because I can’t fight this anymore.
I can’t run from this anymore.
This ‘this’ by the way, is something you are agnostic of,
Because however strongly I feel and whatever I feel,
The way I trained myself to embrace emotions
You trained yourself to escape them.
I don’t blame you, I blame the situations that you put yourself in
All cause of your decisions, of course!
But how do I blame you when I myself failed to pull you out of that mess?
I had one job. And I failed several times in several ways.
The cost? I don’t know if something that was priceless to me can be quantified at all.
Maybe you can, because oh well, I needn’t second it again after all.

So yes, I blame myself
For believing in a lie that I wanted to stand by,
I don’t know if it was for the world or for us
But you & me before the world was always a masked curse
It poisoned a lot of things with time
My tiny head could not stand the wrath of time.
So yes, I didn’t forgive.
I didn’t forget.
I didn’t forget the past and lived off of it.
It’s like feeding of off a cadaver
Long gone but hard to let go, such a scavenger!
I thought what was in the past, was too good to change, was too good even for you, to change.
I forgot that I was second so what all the firsts did to you,
Now will affect the laid back second for you.
I didn’t forget what I should have after all
Clearly I am to blame for this all

I forgot that emotions are venomous to you now.
I forgot that piling you with expectations was bad.
But, my friend, did you ever wonder?
Amidst all this frenzy, why I still did not forget the expectations? Why I still did not forget the past?
Maybe, had I seconded you too, we would have at least been friends to the very least.
You were this part of me that I could bet so much on. (I didn’t say bet on my life because it would be cliche and we really weren’t, so I skipped that word there)
I am sorry that I broke us
I should not have obsessed over the past glory
It is something to let go — Evanescent, transient
It is something to learn from
Things change, so do people
It’s better to embrace this uncertainty
Get comfortable getting uncomfortable
Than live in falsified claims to calm your head
I failed. Once again. And I failed us in the process.

I should not have waited on you
I should have known I was second to you
So tomorrow if and when you tell her a truth you feared,
And if I am addressed as a random-er, as a nobody you once knew
I think it would be an insult inflicted on everything I was to you, whatever that seconded,
On my character and my soul too
I believe two is still higher than a random number in this positive set of yours:
Not so as one but still not so random
I am not random and I hope it resonates with you.

You see, these expectations rooted off of love
Unrequited and vicious kind of love
Not the kind you want in your life
But the kind that piles on you and shatters everything around you
I did that to what I called ‘us’
A hint of my potion of overly imbalanced love from an unthoughtful witchcraft
Imbalance is disastrous, my friend
And so is attention
Both feel surreal when you are on the greater end
But greater means a greater fall too
A fall that will not only break you
But the resounding echo will shatter all that is left to rest of what was around you

So to this mirage I called ‘us’ for so long,
I owe an apology
But I don’t know if I can forgive or forget yet
I am sure, like everything else human, I shall embrace this habit too
After all the fittest and the wisest know when to stop
You once told me that ‘Genius’ is the one who knows when to stop
The context was different
Your advice for a completely different dramatic situation
How did I not learn how transferrable this was
Soft skills for behavioral interviews- maybe I took it quite literally after all

So here’s where I think I should learn from that statement and STOP
Because, what I felt is ineffable
What I said, is a small packet but not of the happiness you spoke of these past years
I am sorry for what I did to my ‘us’
But I hope someday, when you are traveling back to the place we all grew up in
I hope it all flashes back to you
That this mirage of mine wasn’t that weak all this while after all
I hope you will see it someday
And, trust me, I don’t expect you to
I let that go a long time back you know
But I expect it of me to be able to forgive myself for all the wrong
Maybe even forgive you if you sought forgiveness
But I think my calming anger should do the later
Maybe forget what was terrible
And even forget what wasn’t, if that’s what it takes to be happier
I wouldn’t be able to forget this second one though
It was too good for me to let go.

So like your little box of cards, I shall save the good too
At least I was the first to know about this collection of yours.
And this is probably another addition which maybe you can discard too
Like what we discarded in a way that left me all confused.
But then again, I was,
At least a first, somewhere, in your little world
Somehow, that day, when we headed up to see it — this collection of yours,
I felt I found someone who no matter what, will never second me
I just failed to see that, cliche is called so for a reason
That disruptive friendships don’t seek a place in this romantically obsessed cliche world.
And well, second once, second for it all
But thank you for the good times
Thank you for everything I learned the hard way
Whatever it was,
I know I am better off for life and you did justice to your role in my play

Here is a silent little toast to a shattered mirage
Which, deep down, I still believe,
Wasn’t all a reverie after all.
Even truth spills through illusions sometimes
Else how would the illusion take such a lustrous form, take life?

Yours truly,
Your forever Second :)