And Then There Were None
Confronting the emptiness of my mid thirties
Introduction
I turned 33 this year, something that is usually celebrated but dreaded for those not wishing to follow the mainstream path of life in India. For conservative orthodox families in Asian cultures, it usually means another year of bountiful youth sacrificed at the altar of singledom and the pursuit of an individualistic “selfish” life.
So much could have been done. Wows could have been made. New cars and homes could have been purchased. New furniture, interiors, and home decor, moving into a new area as a couple with new neighbours. So many family outings with the in-laws and parents, so many kiddy trips, so many international vacations, so many local excursions, and of course, so many fights and disagreements as well.
For women, the process of shaming them on their rapidly advancing age and “biological clock” in the context of marriage and family life begins much earlier, and those who couldn’t resist the pressure have either succumbed to it by getting married or have migrated to a developed country far far away from the roving eyes, ears, and tongues of their gubernatorial relatives in the guise of better work opportunities or further studies.
It is quite rare to find single women in their 30’s in India unless they’re of the brutally rebellious type. All my female friends from my initial years in the corporate world, my hiking buddies, and college friends have either caved in to the pressure of the Indian family system to settle down and start a family, or have migrated to greener pastures in the US, Europe, and U.K for work or further studies.
This, of course, was a very gradual process and it’s not like everyone took off my from my life overnight.
In fact, one particular line from an article I’ve quoted before comes to mind all over again:
“Everyone inches away so slowly you don’t even realise. One moment, you’re forcing yourself to plan in alone time to rest, and the next moment you’re looking at an empty schedule.”
The insidious nature of ending up friendless can be likened to a drug addiction that creeps up on you very stealthily barely making its presence known.
Like I said in a previous article:
“addiction is insidious. It creeps up on you stealthily. One moment you’re doing drugs to chill with your buddies and take away the week’s stress. The next? You’ve been uncontrollably hooked to it for past 10 years and have lost everything you had in pursuit of the things the drug made you have a false sense of confidence in.”
Let me be clear. This article is not about loneliness. Because we all know one can be surrounded by dozens of people and still feel lonely, right? Rather, it is about the importance of drawing a safety net around oneself with whatever resources one has at their disposal so that they aren’t suddenly confronted with the stark reality of being friendless at any age.
On a macro level, this is the story of how I lost my trekking community of friends and acquaintances to either work or family life gradually over the years. Its something that all the other singletons in my trekking community have lost too. But on a micro level, its about losing the pool of friends who were closest to me, the ones who I drew my daily inspiration and engagement from. You know, your closest set of friends, the social circle whom you depend upon just to survive and thrive as a human.
Here’s how the dominoes fell one after another:
The trekker friend
The first trekker friend stopped hanging out with me for a rather silly reason. It was so silly, I felt compelled to write about it. I had met him on a trek organized by a common trekking club which we both were a part of, and had hit it off there to start going on treks all by ourselves with our own private groups. We’d been religiously going on treks one after another for years together, it didn’t even occur to me how much I took this particular friendship for granted. And then the inevitable happened.
He dumped me for not lending him money during his most trying moments:
Sometimes, you don’t realize the value of things when they’re all around you in abundance. You don’t make any backup plans and forget that those things, or in this case people, can choose to make an exit from your life whenever they like and for whatever reason. Friendships, situationships, relationships, everything is fragile and fallible.
The second trekker friend
The second trekker friend broke up with me because our interests although from a distance, aligned perfectly with each other, drastically varied from each other in reality.
Just because two people have a common passion for the outdoors, it doesn’t mean all their other preferences must line up too right?
How naive I was at the time to realize that even such micro differences could exist in people sharing the same interests and hobbies which would potentially cause them to ultimately wildly drift apart. We were both trekkers, yet operated from diagonally opposing standpoints when it came to which locations to trek in and in what kind of weather.
He was a mild weather person who leaned more towards colder climes and regions of extreme cold, like the Himalayas in our country. Because of this he always organized treks in cold regions or in our regular haunts, but only when they were cold, or cold and wet. Even the slightest bit of heat was intolerable to him. I, on the other hand was a hot weather lover who could tolerate all weather extremes, but especially thrived in hot and humid weather. Due to this fundamental difference in weather preferences, I always preferred organizing treks in hot and humid jungles, whereas he would always only look for the coldest and wettest terrain to trek in. Even if he did invariably join any of my treks, he would constantly be hiding from the sun, or plan the trek in such a way that the itinerary would keep us out of the sun as much as possible.
I, on the other hand, would never be able to join any of his treks since they began way early in the morning on purpose just to stay out of the sun. During one particular summer, he organized only night treks, and didn’t once venture out into the sun. We tried organizing dozens of treks with each other before eventually realizing what a futile effort it was and eventually fell out. We both had come to the conclusion that neither of us are going to budge with our preferences in either direction, and that it would be in our best interests to not waste anymore time, effort, and money in organizing treks with each other.
The college bestie
The college bestie broke off because he started acting more as a liability than an asset. Everyone wants to be surrounded by people who lift them up and encourage them in life, not by losers who themselves have nothing to offer, but pitifully pull others down too.
I wrote about him too on here:
Unfortunately, he let his weed addiction get the better of him which ultimately caused him to lose all his friends and the people whom he regularly used to hang out with. After a point, his bipolar behaviour had become too difficult to handle, and it was feeling more like a chore to hang out with him instead of a pleasure; of being someone who can soothe all your stress and anxieties after a hectic week of work.
At the end of a hectic day, we all crave for someone who can dull our pains and soothe our stresses, not someone who does the exact opposite.
The friend who turned workaholic
The friend who turned workaholic was perhaps the closest friend I ever had as we not only hung out in the city, but went on hikes together too.
During the earliest days of our friendship, he was unemployed and had all the time in the world to accompany me on treks and long drives. So he gladly did with just a moments notice. Nowadays however, his new job sucks all the life out of him and he has no energy left in him by the end of the week not just for me, but for any kind of socializing. Like the majority of adults in my city, he too chooses just to binge watch something on TV while ordering food in, complete household chores, and get as much sleep as possible to prepare himself for the nightmarish work week ahead.
His work and commute to it has consumed all of his peace and sanity that he is left with absolutely nothing by the end of the week, and desperately needs the weekend to recharge and recoup from the weeks madness.
Even when his workload is low, the office commute is what manages to do him in every single week. I’ve tried and tried and tried to get him to come and hang out with me at least during the weekends, but to no avail. I personally know what it feels like to sit in traffic for 3 hours everyday just to get to and from work, and so totally understand why someone would want to just lie in bed all day to recover from the weeks insanity.
The couple who up and left for the U.S.
The most scathing and painful dump was by this married couple from my trekking group. We used to regularly go on treks together and used to meet up in the city almost every month for food, games, and partying. We’d either meet for badminton or swim for hours together during weekends at a friends pool. Then after building up a heavy appetite with all the exhausting activity, we’d go out for dinner and drinks together. We even partied together on multiple occassions; celebrating each others birthdays, and making it a point to celebrate Indian festivals only in each others company.
Then one fine day, I see pictures of them in the U.S. on their Instagram. Okay, they probably went there to tour or something. Then a few more popped up the next week, and then the next, and the next again. They just didn’t stop coming. It was then that I finally realized what a con this was. They hadn’t gone there for tourism. They had migrated their entire lives there!
They didn’t even bother telling me they were preparing for such a move, forget informing me the day they were leaving. No rhyme nor reason, they just up and left, dropping me like a hot potato. Maybe they did the same with other friends too. Maybe it was something they weren’t preparing for but a sudden decision where an on-site job position suddenly opened up, a situation that has befallen thousands of others in the past.
I don’t know and I couldn’t care less. I’m glad they behaved that way and showed me that this particular shade of people too exist in the world. Imagine if they didn’t! I’d still be that naive wimpy kid who believed in the permanence of situations and things.
The friend from work
The ‘friend from work’ refers to my teammate from my very first workplace. We had been work buddies for more than 3 years and continued our friendship even after I left the company. He’s the last remaining friend I have and nothing has soured between us. The only reason he’s even on this list is because his physical presence has been lacking ever since the Covid lockdowns began.
Like everyone else, he’d been asked to work from home the moment the pandemic struck and so made the thoughtful decision to head back to his home state in the North of India in order to soldier through the pandemic with his family by his side. We still occasionally chat with each other on the phone and regularly keep in touch through messaging. It’s going to be 4 years now since he’s left and there’s no sign of him returning back to my city since neither has his company mandated him to return to work, nor does he have any pressing need to be here.
I’m just waiting for him to return so we can start hanging out again.
Final Thoughts
Losing all these friends one after another made me realize how painfully dependent I was on the outside world for engagement and a sense of purpose in life beyond work. But isn’t that exactly what life was once upon a time? People always used to live communally, right? Not anymore. Today, people follow opportunities. Globalization has flattened the world and has made many cities cosmopolitan in nature. But what good is having Pizza Hut, Dominoes, and Baskin Robbins a hop away from your house when the very same system has stolen your friends from you?
Sometimes you just don’t want to believe it. Your mind is unable to comprehend and accept its new reality. This is truly uncharted terrain. You’ve never been here before. So you distract yourself with new happenings in the city, take up courses, and indulge in festivals to push away the loneliness and isolation. Some of them help, while others add fuel to the fire by reminding you how lonely and friendless you are.
The reality seems to be zeroing in on me stronger by the day. What so many people don’t get about being friendless is that your mind defiantly refuses to accept the new reality. So you keep going about your day like you usually would, checking all your socials for new messages or new trek plans. As the months pass, you gradually start feeling like an idiot checking your Whatsapp, Facebook, and Instagram messages 25 times a day in the hope that someone would have sent you a message or added you to a trek plan.
The realization that everyone single person you once hung out with has either gotten married or has migrated to far away lands only gets harsher as the months go by and wraps around your mind like an intense winter cold. You finally realize there’s no point of being on social media anymore as your feed has just become an endless slideshow of family portraits from all your friends across the world. All your ex hiking buddies and ex work mates showing off their new homes, new cars, their new kids, and all the excursions in life that subsequently follow.
“The realization that everyone single person you once hung out with has either gotten married or has migrated to far away lands only gets harsher as the months go by and wraps around your mind like an intense winter cold.”
There’s only so much retail therapy, meetup events, and flea markets you can attend before realizing what a pointless endeavour it is to look for someone of the same disposition that is likeminded and is ready to indulge in the same hobbies together.
This article is neither a rant nor a mournful account of the friendless situation I find myself in, rather than just an observation of reality and a write up of events in my life as they’ve occurred in a chronological order. It was me who said no to relationship drama and family life when that ship arrived, and I completely accept my new reality for what it is. I wouldn’t get into a relationship or an arranged marriage situation (which is the norm here) even if someone offered me a million dollars, so this friendlessness (or loneliness) is mine and only my cross to bear.
Frankly, I’m glad that some of these friendships ended as I’d reached a ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ situation with some of them. So its good we/I pulled out before there was even a chance for things to take a turn for the worse.
Because I made the conscious decision not to couple up or migrate abroad for work, I tend to focus only on the positives of this lifestyle. I can do whatever I want whenever I want, with the only downside being that everything ends up being doubly expensive due to the inherent ‘couple’ and ‘group’ prices built into every experience that’s travel related. I don’t have to check with anyone before leaving the house, and I can set the AC to whatever temperature I want. I can leave for a trek at a moments notice on an odd weekday without having to encounter the wild weekend crowds (no pun intended) at those locations.
I am in fact, enjoying the perks of singleton life barking mad!
Like I said in the introduction, I am writing this article so that youngsters can learn from my experience and avoid making the same mistakes I made if they don’t want to end up like this. That’s my only intention here.
