Attachment

"It begins when the object of your affection bestows upon you a heady hallucinogenic dose of something you’ve never even dared to admit you wanted. An emotional speed-ball of thunderous love and excitement. Soon you start craving that attention with a hungry obsession of any junkie. When it’s withheld, you turn sick, crazy, not to mention resentful of the dealer who encouraged it in the first place. Now, he refuses to pay up the good stuff. Goddamn him! And he used to give it to you for free. Next stage finds you skinny, shaking in a corner certain only that you’d sell your soul to have that one thing one more time. Meanwhile, the object of your adoration is now repulsed by you. He looks at you like someone he’s never met before. The irony is you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out. You’re a mess- unrecognizable even to your own eyes. You have now reached infatuation’s final destination. The complete and merciless devaluation of self."
 

 It starts with Jim Harper. And Maggie. And Don and Lisa as well. So Don was dating Maggie for a long time now. Both of them had tried to reason out umpteen times why were they dating each other exactly? But the effort went to waste every time. They broke up, made up and this went on. Amidst all this, Jim Harper enters into their life and things get even worse. Maggie tries hard not to accept that Jim Harper is the man of her dreams- one who understands her, one who’d never want to hurt her, one who can look at her alone and know that she’s beautiful. She resents knowing that the one who she always wanted has come along and that she wants him so much but that was not possible at all. She’s already taken, you know. Why? Because some years back, she hadn't known that you can fall in love with the wrong person. That life first takes the wrong road only to realize which the right one was. That attachment is a dangerous thing. You can get attached to the wrong person and you can never, I mean ever, take it back. 

People blame you when you lose commitment to a relationship. They would have expected you to drag things a little longer. Oh yes, people are like that. They expect a lot from you and the fact is, you don’t even need their discretion. But they don’t know the pain you've endured. They haven’t survived all the times he humiliated you. They haven’t been there when he looked at you and failed to recognize the love you have for him. Love that was based more on how long you've been with him, instead of how much you actually loved him. They haven’t seen you losing your self-respect to a man you weren't even supposed to love in the first place. They don’t know that when you look at him, you don’t see a man who you love but a mistake that you made in spite of being so wise throughout. 

Meanwhile, Don has realized that Jim and Maggie have developed some sort of connection. They are falling for each other. He tries to hook up Jim with Lisa. Ah yes, before I forget, Lisa is Maggie’s roommate.  She’s not like Maggie-not at all. Maggie is a journalist- aware, smart, bold and outspoken. Lisa is a fashion designer, self-explanatory. It’s not that Don loves Maggie too much; it’s just that he doesn’t wanna lose her. He’s been with her for so long, hasn’t he? It’s guilt that’s stopping him from hurting her sentiments. And yes, not to forget, the inner voice repeatedly calling out to him- “She’s your girl. No other guy can have her.”

Some human tendencies are bad. One of them is attachment. Sometimes you wanna get rid of certain people, but you just don’t because you think they belong to you no matter how messed up your relationship with them is. And that’s where you start losing yourself. You do things that aren’t logical. They don't make you happy either. But you just do them because something inside constantly tells you that it’s the right thing to do. It’s like being Brooks from The Shawshank Redemption. He was a prisoner for fifty years and when he was finally released, in a few days he committed suicide. Life in prison is not a good thing, right? You’re trapped in a cell, the four walls of it suppressing you day by day. You don’t get proper food and you’re treated like scum. But once you get out it, you’ll always see yourself valuing that phase. Because even though it was harsh, there was a sense of belonging. Instead of trying to prove yourself to a population of 7 billion people, you had to expose who you are to only a few fellow prisoners. And that was it. You form an ‘attachment’ to that cell- where you were trapped, only to come out and miss it later.  

In the meantime, Lisa has come to know that Jim doesn’t actually like her. He’s a good man and he’s trying his best to not hurt Maggie and Don both. Jim’s boss asks him to tell Maggie that he loves her. He tries doing it but fate brings him back to Lisa again. And now Maggie feels jealous, she reveals to Lisa that it’s hard to watch her with Jim. Lisa knows something bad is gonna happen. She quits trying to make herself love Jim. Maggie and Jim now know that they love each other. They kiss and decide to tell Don and Lisa how they feel about each other. As soon as Maggie approaches Don, he invites her to the house. The house is dark only lighted by candles and decorated with ribbons. Maggie is surprised. This is really not where her relationship was going. She stops, looks at Don, he asks her to move in with him and Jim and his memories are pushed aside in the corner. Maggie doesn’t love him, she shouldn’t be even standing with Don right now, but well she is. Something is making her do it. Attachment it is…

And in the end, you make a wrong decision, thinking this is the best thing that’s ever happened to you. You fail to differentiate between ‘first’ love and ‘true’ love. You’re trapped once again in a prison, where the four walls are made up of delusion and the air is filled with misery and self-pity. You will regret again, but for now, you love the moment. For now, you feel as if life has turned a full circle; all your desires have come true. Your past has once again made sure that you end up having a bleak future with the one you ‘think’ you love. And what follows is nothing but agony…


Some years hence, you'll just find yourself trying to answer this simple question, "Why was I holding on to something that I knew would never be mine". Caught up in regrets and expectations, you'll wish to redeem yourself, only to find out how futile all your attempts will turn out to be. Again, it'll be just one thing that will lead you to that- Attachment and attachment alone..
And this is how life is. This is how it will always remain to be.