Eyes that see

“Am I getting attached…again?” she thought as she stared blankly into her coffee, which was now getting cold. This wasn’t anything new to her. She could never manage a proper friendship with a guy. She wondered why this was the case, as right now she has amazing friendships with females; she could talk, text, hang out, even love them as her family and still not get attached. According to her, attachment is something that causes her to second-guess or causes her emotions to stir whenever she has to text or talk to the person about something. Funnily enough, this bizarre definition has worked out for her well so far, and according to this definition, all the male friendships she’s had have ended up in attachments.

She was so invested in male friendships because, as a preteen, she had a hard time being friends with girls. This stemmed from the fact that in whichever schools she’s been to, the girls seem to hang out in cliques. It’s not that no one would let her into the group. Of course they would; they were just kids after all. It’s just that she would have to mould herself into how a particular group is. On the other hand, she found guys to be an open set. She noticed how they didn’t have a finite boundary; they’d hang out with just anyone. Based on these observations, she started to establish proper friendships with guys ever since she was in grade 7. But again, to her disappointment, the majority of those friendships ended with either the guy confessing to her or her catching feelings. This went on till grade 10; at this point, she started to believe it was almost impossible to have a friendship with a guy where neither of them caught feelings and yet enjoyed each other’s company fully. She moved to a new school for grades 11 and 12, and there she found a guy who matched her energy. A potential friendship was blooming. Something that started with asking for notes and similar music tastes soon turned into something where they wouldn’t miss a day where they texted each other “good morning” and “good night”. So far, no one caught feelings; she was already getting thrilled by the idea that she could finally have a friendship that would last her lifetime. As they got closer, she realised that he was broken in his own ways, but she didn’t mind. They had now gotten close enough to hug each other; they started doing it almost every day at the school staircase, but he’d immediately move his hands away when he saw somebody. She thought it was fair, as she understood that not everyone thought forwardly, especially the teachers. They were still friends, nothing romantic, no attachment, just really good friends. At some point in grade 12, without realising it, she started getting scared of the idea that she might disappoint him. On a rainy morning, during a class break, he handed her his phone to show her a few texts from his girlfriend. Curiosity got the better of her, and she scrolled up the chats and read the texts exchanged between the couple, even the ones he didn’t permit her to read. The texts weren’t anything intrusive in particular, yet what she did was wrong. When she realised her mistake, she confessed this to him, but he was really disappointed. She tried apologising over and over again, but he wouldn’t even acknowledge her. That night, she blamed herself for disappointing her best friend and ended up inflicting self-harm on herself using a thin copper wire. The next morning, he accepted her apology and chided her for hurting herself. Now, were they friends, or people with feelings, or something more complex than before? A couple of months later, because of the nature of their friendship and the fact that he had a girlfriend, their friendship strained, and they stopped talking. “Why doesn’t he reply to my texts anymore? I thought we were best friends, and that too forever. I even wrote poems about us, about how we’d be friends even if the world ends, then what—” She forced herself to stop her train of thought. This was the moment she defined the word attachment.

Now that she was in college, she found beautiful female friendships, filled with love and no attachments. Even now she makes friends with guys here and there, but as soon as she realises she is getting attached, she is now logical enough to distance herself in order to stop the attachment and not cause herself and the guy any emotional burden. She made a new friend just recently. He is rich in intellect, and she loves talking to him, as conversations with him are often deep and philosophical. Of course she wants this friendship to last. As the coffee grew colder in her cup, she wondered if she was getting attached again, because she realised that at times his replies affected her mood. She knew these were mere feelings, and she had no reason to act on them or worry about them. She wondered how her situation resonated with something she had read a while ago:

…For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another…

She knows her fleshly heart wants a false anchor to hold on to, to be attached to. But deep in the Spirit she understands that this is a fleeting desire. It is a constant and tiring battle. She doesn’t blame the guy or herself; rather, she accepts the truth but doesn’t confine herself to it because she wants to be attached to nothing in this world. She sipped the last of her coffee as if making a final decision. She made up her mind that she wouldn’t let her heart waver over feelings that appear now and disappear the next second, and that whether it’s a man or a woman, she would work towards growing the friendship she loves nonetheless, without getting attached.