The Stranger in My Life

I’m in a live-in relationship. With a stranger. No, don’t jump to the conclusion that it’s a boyfriend. Nor is it a girlfriend. Just a stranger. Someone I live with, someone slightly beyond a roommate. Which is why I call it a live-in relationship and not sharing the same room.

We don’t talk much, just casual comments once in a while or if I get lucky, we might have a quarrel, yell at each other. That’s the maximum level of conversation between us. Not even a decent talk. We don’t know much about each other, what’s happening with the other, each other’s friends, lives, worlds… In fact, we are not a part of each other’s worlds.

Kinda like how it is now…

We stay under the same roof, sleep in the same room…yet, we are strangers to each other. I am not trying to exaggerate when I use the word ‘strangers’. I mean it. There is no other word to describe what we are. Because we aren’t even close enough to be called friends or acquaintances.

She was someone I used to know, though that feels like long ago. Someone who knew me inside out; someone whom I knew so well, too. We used to have endless talks about everything, literally everything… So many evenings of senseless prattling, late-night movies, going out together… She knew everything that was going on with me, and I was  the one person she confided in. Like BFFs – best friends forever. Hah! Only, forever didn’t last for long!

I don’t know when that bond started fading off. But fade off it definitely did. I’d put most of the blame on the distance and the fact that she had new people in her life to replace me. Anyway, by the time I noticed the changes, it was too late. I did try, in whatever way I could, to regain the bond we once had. But just when I think things are getting better, she would prove me wrong. As if trying to tell me, indirectly, that we’ll never be the same. And so, now, I’m living with a stranger. Who used to be a hell lot more for me. Whom I miss like hell!