How much do you love me?

Have been thinking about calling a friend, but something stops me from dialing the number. I have been the one calling her the last three times, but she never seems to get enough time to call me. In fact, the last time I caller her, she said she was busy and she will call me back. It has been five days and she hasn’t called back still. Maybe she is no longer interested in me. Maybe I should also stop calling her up too.

Does this sound familiar!?! I can’t say about men, but there are a number of women that I know (including me) who go through this trauma in our day to day lives. We would like to be in a relationship, but are insecure about how much to give and how much to ask for. Insecurity breeds doubts and eventually creates distances between relationships. Consider another scenario:

My daughter goes to stay at a hostel.  I call her every morning, noon and night to check on her. Many times she doesn’t pick my call because she doesn’t have time; so I drop her a message. If she doesn’t respond to messages, I call her friend to find out if she is all right. If her friends tries to ignore me too, I catch the next flight to her college and knock at her door in the middle of night, “Why have you not answered my call? I am worried sick about you! At least you should have sent me a message… bla bla bla..”

In both scenarios the context is the same; someone I care about did not respond to my call. But the way I react to the situation is so different. When it comes to my daughter, I have no reason to be insecure. We love each other and we will continue to love each other for the next seven births as well. I don’t worry about what she will think and whether she is fed up of having a nosy mother. Whatever she might think, I have a right to know that she is fine, and I will assert my right till the end of the world.

However, when it comes to other relationships like friends, uncles, aunts, even boyfriends and husbands, our insecurities get the better of us. Unanswered phone calls start to mean something much more grim. We count the number of times I called vs they called. We track how much money we spent on their birthday gift vs. how much they spent. How many times they made us feel special vs. how many times we did the same for them.

Some days, I feel baffled about how we try to measure love in number of phone calls and materialistic gifts. When we love someone, is it because they love us too? What if they stop loving us one day, would our love end too? Do we need permission from anyone to express our love for them? I really don’t think so. The way I see it, there is only one thing in life that no one can have excess of. That one thing is love. And the best part is that love comes free and can be shared free of cost too. Then why do we keep ourselves devoid of it? Why do we ration it and give it to only those, who choose to give it back to us in some form? What can possibly go wrong if I continue to love someone, who for some reason has moved far from my life or is not in a position to express their love back for me?

To all my friends and family reading this, I sincerely hope that you get the message. If you think I am too nosy and you want me out of your life, you will have to really tell it to me on my face to get out of your life. Silence, ignored phone calls, cryptic messages, etc. will never give me the message.

For the friends, whom I don’t get around to call so often – I hope you get the message too. If I would rather choose not to be your friend, I will tell you bluntly to your face and request you to leave me alone. Silence, ignored phone calls, or cryptic messages, in no way mean that I don’t love you anymore. They just mean that I am kind of lost right now and would appreciate your support to sort out the mess. So please continue to call.

P.S. – The story about my daughter going to college is hypothetical right now. Toyna reads most of my blogs, but I will make sure she doesn’t get to read this one, right now.