Baby Steps to Sanity

There are these following stages to sanity. Sometimes not in that exact chronological order. But whatever:

1. Singularity: And all the other fancy-pants terms used for being by oneself. With a sparkling clean head. Making through the day, calling for cabs alone, standing by the ATM machine, waiting for cash alone. Etc. Not being stuck in some wait. Content, by measurable parameters of human reason.

2. Infatuation: Being one of the most dangerous sorts of fixation. One-sided. Unspoken of. Driving oneself to the ends of insanity. And making her fall off the edge, with the elan of an enchanted lover. Living, vicariously, lopsided towards imagination. Hunted by cravings of the anti-pragmatic kind. Counting the inconsolable, unsettled gasps of a perennial adolescent.

3. Non-committal Non-serious: The conscious choice of being in this kind of an arrangement finds its root in the dearth of conversions of series of infatuations into regular affairs. Parties engaged are mostly busy convincing themselves that this is indeed the non-committal non serious thingy. And there are no stakes. Either party exclusively look out for their reasons.

4. Non-committal Serious: This usually kicks off at a book shop, or a meeting at a common friend's. One doesn't understand why one likes the other, given that the track record of past flames doesn't match with. But there is a certain level of comfort. Understanding of mutual flaws. Something that comes with seasoned loveless-ness. Parties are semi-involved. But neither has the bloody guts to commit.

5. Committed-Serious: Finally, when the most necessary issues of arrangement are worked out by the art of persuasion and the fear of dying alone, parties enter into what is commonly called as a relationship in romantic parlance. Movies, dinners, stay-ins, taking the sex for granted. Etc

6. Marriage: One day you are made to believe that you were created to only pro-create. That is the beginning of marriage and the end of what is called life in common parlance.

7. EM: Stands for Extra-marital. After the boredom of feeding on the same face for years kicks in, one finds an artist on the street, with long hair, or an unkempt beard, living on alcohol, the perpetual hedonist, or any one specimen stretching from 1-5 above, she secretly elopes with whatever she previously cursed as unconventional.

And then someday, if the stars are pleased, gets to Sanity.

Unrelated prequel: here

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