How detached we should be to attachments!

Life to me was very beautiful with him around.  He is my mentor, my best friend and honestly my everything except the status of a spouse.   We both were emotionally very dependent on each other, financially supporting to the core, both earning together and planning to spend together.  Physical togetherness with plenty of evenings spent in coffee shops talking, laughing and crying together discussing both ups and downs of our lives.   People used to be jealous to our friendship.   They used to think that we are actually a married couple.   We used to be thick friends.   If a male and female can be friends for life, we stood as an example to that relationship.    

We shared food, we loved eating together, going around the city. Initially on his bike and later when he got us the car.   Our spouses used to be really wondering the kind of affection we used to share.  Our children grew together.  We dreamt bigger dreams together.   We planned to work hard towards those dreams.   Life with all its own struggles and sacrifices never felt heavy to move on with this man in my life.   Even in those moments of deepest despair, the thoughts of giving up never aroused between us.   We together were strong.   The financial struggles did not deter our energies.    We eat at the street food joints.   We took local buses when we could not afford the petrol any more in the month.   We burnt mid night oil to keep studying and equipping ourselves pacing with the changes in the technology and knowledge.   

Life would have been honestly very different and more beautiful had we been a married couple.   But that never mattered to us as we were beyond a definition of a relationship.    We are not in extra marital affair.   We are in a relationship that is filled with beautiful attachments and dependencies.   We made promises to each other.   We vowed on each other for our children.   We honored and respected and honestly thanked our spouses for their understanding of our friendship.  We were thankful to God for making us cross each others life and making us lead this one life together.   It was all going fine....until that summer night when things changed

Hell broke loose when I wanted to have friendships outside him.  Possessiveness started.   We built our houses together. But didn't realize that those walls were coming between us.   As our children grew, our priorities changed.   We aspired more.   Travel took us to places that we didn't even expect.   From the meager earning to seeing dollars in life, life was changing...with it we didn't realize how much it was impacting our relationship.   He left abroad.   I cried.   I waited every day for his call.   I waited to chat with him for long hours.   I could no longer mingle with people around normally.  I felt very lonely.   He had his own struggles in the new found land.   Cooking, working with highly challenging clients and making money and sending those pennies back to India to clear the loans became his priority.  I wanted to get distracted.  I started getting more men friends.  It started to upset him.    Twice or thrice calling became once in a day calls.  I used to fight in that one call on why he didn’t call me the other time.   I didn't realize that he was slowly getting detached.   I was burdened with this attachment.

Later on when he returned, I decided to move on.  I went off packing my bags for few years.   Things pretty much changed in between.  Several reasons brought in a wall of separation between him and his wife.   I had no clue of what was happening in his life other than the usual niceties we shared in our emails.   What used to be routine became obligation.   What used to be fun sharing became a compulsion.   We no longer shared everything.   From being an angry young wife to my husband and honest soul-mate and friend to this man, life started becoming painful.     We now had our own houses, cars, insurance and we could afford good education and lifestyle to our children and spouses who were dependent on us.   But somewhere deep down in my heart, I wanted the friendship back.   Yes, I desperately wanted back.  

 I started threatening him by saying that I will end my life if he is not close to me.   He got scared.   I wanted to hurt him by going out with other men and booze and dance in resto bars.   He got wild at me.  He refused to speak anymore.  I got further frustrated.   I was not able to understand the changing priorities.   For him, his personal marriage was getting on rocks.  He was struggling to balance that first.   I desperately wanted his full attention, like he used to do.  Be at my side by a single call, drop me back home every evening after work, buy me my meals that I  missed at home...buy me clothes that I could not afford...He was the one who brought me many things first in life, right from my first cellphone to anklets that I loved.   He was the one who wanted me and my husband to be together.   He was the one who pushed me to raise my child in a family that is together and never broken.   He is the one who made me aspire big things in my career.  He was the one who made me get into public speaking and motivation.   He encouraged all my positive things in life.   But we failed to realize that the earth below our feet started to shake

Despite my honest attempts to unite him and his wife, they got physically separated yet legally stayed wedded.   It was getting too much for his kids.  I was trying to support both of them but he was adamant that he didn’t want to live with her anymore.  I stood helpless.   I was the one who refused divorce and marriage between us both when we were deeply in love in the initial years of our friendship saying that our spouses are not capable to manage their own lives and we don't want our children to be raised in broken families.   Later on when I was pushed to the roads by my own family, he was the one who refused marriage saying that kids are now growing up and we don't need to be in marriage to support each other.    We accepted the truth of life.  We respected our spouses.   We decided a big no for broken families.   But lately, his world was breaking apart.  I was left being a mere spectator.   I could not help.  I cried and cried every night.  I could not stop blaming him at times and blaming myself many a times.  He went off

My desperation for his friendship grew stronger.  I was becoming mad not being able to be in touch with him.  My husband thought that I am really getting lunatic.   Somehow, I wanted to see him happy again.  He decided to detach from his past entirely and only focus on raising his children, providing them with good life and college.  He was focusing only on his career and making money for his children.   Meanwhile, my family was getting closer and closer... We were leading a very happy life.   But deep inside me I am struggling.   Depending on this relationship and attachment, I had no clue how to get detached the way he was responding.  Suddenly he stopped calling completely.  There was no communication on what was happening in his life.   His wife was forced to live alone for all the atrocities and accusations she did on his family and siblings.   Her destiny was burnt with her own anger and she was thrown to a helpless situation where there was no money, no people to show love, no home to call her own and no family to support.  

 
I was one side feeling it my responsibility to support her during the dire circumstances.   I started to help her in the smallest ways possible.   He was getting furious and angry on me for doing that.  He completely detached from me.  I felt broken.   Instead of worrying about his wife, I was stuck with my own issues with him.  One message on SMS, one notification that he read my message on WhatsApp, one response on Facebook, was all that I started to wait for.   Six months passed by.   There was no news.  I started reaching out to his clients to know about him.   I know he will be very disappointed with me for doing this.  But I had no choice as I desperately wanted to know about his well-being.  

Finally on the day of my daughter’s birthday, he called her to wish and bless her.  She was elated.   Same time, I got emotionally drained hearing his voice after so many long months.   I was happy and sad at the same time.  I cried endlessly.   He was adamant that he doesn’t want to talk to me despite me begging him to talk to me once on the phone.  I had to apologize for helping his wife.  I had to tell him that I will not do anything to let him down.   I am struggling with this attachment that he is already detached with.   

I understood that he moved on.   But I had no solace.  I am not able to move on.  I am not comfortable to the fact that I will have to live this life without him anymore.   He is there somewhere in this world doing well.  But he doesn’t want to be in touch with me anymore.  For I am related to his past that he wished to bury beneath the earth and its memories.  He wanted to detach from me for I am attached to his wife, who once shared her time with him with me unconditionally.  

The struggle of detachment from this attachment is immense and painful.   I am matured enough to understand the fact that I have to move on.  But from him?  It became the biggest question I had no answer for?   Who am I to him?  Haunted me like hell.   Why am I not able to give him the space he wants in his life.  He felt that both I and his wife crowded his life and suffocated him from thinking clear and leading a normal life.  He once said that he is stuck between two women that he wants to be away from both.   One is the one who shared his life as a spouse and the other is a friend who meant the world to him.  He detached totally from both.

If someone wants to leave us and go, we should learn to let them go.  Be it the materialistic things or people, when it is time to move on, we should.  We become sentimental to the homes we were raised and lived for long time, that we fail to understand that change is only inevitable.  We get attached to the places we are comfortable with and any changes to the environment threatens our peace.   Sometimes we even grow so fonder for a special dress that we refuse to throw it away even after it becomes useless to us.   We fail to detach from our own attachments.   Our own sentiments and beliefs.  Our own feelings and emotions.  This kills our inner peace.   This steals away our happiness and present life.  Yet, knowing and understanding this, we still feel it is not the right time to detach.

Getting attached to detachments is the only solution.   Being detached to attachments is the only long term solution in any relationship.  It can be death, distance or time that separates us from the people we love.   We still cling on to the memories.   That is OK, as long as we move on.  But if the memories become burden on our backs and baggage is too heavy to let us move forward, we get disabled internally.   Emotionally we get broken and depressed.  We long for the comfort zones that we once were used to.   We always want the good times to be around us.   This is the sad part of the human emotions.

Only when we learn to detach, from things and people, in the right way, we will give space for new things and new people and relationships in our life.  Otherwise, it will be painful.   The burden of the past baggage drags you to nothing.  It only humiliates you and the people concerned around you.    Yes, the crux of this story, is that stop being too much attached to anything or anybody.  Learn to detach when needed.  It helps and often heals in the long run.   Peace be with you!