The Seven Year Itch.

(Dated Dec 3, 2010. Reposting this here from my Facebook notes. Because I will always need to remember this.)

I’ve known him for as long as I  can remember, and that’s a really long time. I can never tell you when it happened; pinpoint the exact moment when I started falling for him. But I can tell you this, even with my uncertainty of early childhood memories, that it was love at first sight.  All I know is that by the time I was 15, even though I had no clue as to what the future held for me, I was irrevocably in love with him. Back then, I had taken it for granted that it was a lifelong affair, something you believe by default when you lack options.

But options were aplenty when I went off to college. I wavered, drifted apart, but I will never admit that I made the wrong choices, because I had what really mattered. I held on to him, incredibly, almost impossibly, as impossible as studying Math in the Arts field. Exactly like that, in fact.

As I said, options spoil you, so once in college, I began checking out all the other options caring much less about how I really felt. Almost convinced that there was no future, I opted for psychology (never regretted that either. Well, we had our moments.) I knew well in my head that the choices I was making would never allow me to continue our love affair, but I knew with equal resolve, deep in my heart, that it would never be over, either. And I was right, it never was. I thought that with time I would outgrow the phase, but who was I kidding? How can you outgrow something that is so deeply rooted in you that it defines part of who you are? The romantic in me refusing to move on, to even consider the possibility that it may be over, and compelling me to follow my heart, I set out to end my love story as all love stories should, happily (or so I thought!) as in a DDLJ-climax-worthy scene, I left behind my world, my friends, and the institution that built me for what felt like a lifetime, and ran out to board the train with the only one I had ever loved, to marry my childhood sweetheart, my soul mate, MATH.

Uh-Oh! Turns out, life is not all that rosy after the walk down the aisle. You now witness all the burping and farting, the snoring and drooling, and every other flaw that makes your lover piling up before your eyes like dirty underwear. And counting in dog years (because I feel like one), we have now reached the Seven Year Itch! The romance has died like Cauchy and Leibnitz, sweet words have twisted into ugly lemmas and theorems, foreplay (problem-solving) exists now only in theory, the sex is as monotonic as decreasing bounded sequences, and as the pros tend to zero and the cons to infinity, my marriage now resembles a null set.

Do I want to call it quits? Do I feel like straying to other subjects in search of the lost romance? Honestly, the answer on most days would be affirmative. But in reality, I could have affairs with every other option ever conjured or even thought of,  but I doubt the sparks ignited would ever last beyond a one-night stand. Because the truth is, all it takes is an unsolved problem, to see my sister struggling with a particularly nasty sum that just won’t yield the right answer until I patiently point out the calculation error, or a phone call from my best friend asking me to recite formulae I learnt years ago which I know verbatim. That’s all it takes for me to fall in love with him all over again.

The intellectual challenge offered by an unsolved problem is the biggest turn-on, even today. (It goes without saying that solving it correctly would be the orgasm!) Well, and correcting a professor of his obvious logical/calculation/analytic error on the blackboard, arguing with him that my way is right (and winning!) comes a close second. Yes, I get a perverse pleasure out of that, I’m quite broad minded and kinky that way!  

The challenge infuses me with a passion, a burning hunger that could ignite the dying embers of my marriage into roaring flames. In that challenging instant, I feel the exact same emotion I felt when I chose Math over Xavier’s (a choice that was called by many as foolish than brave!). It’s the feeling of knowing that I am right, it protects me like a patronus, a talisman against the taunts of all those who tell me I made the wrong choice.

Because I look at the children whom I teach every day of the many eccentricities of my lover – Trigonometry, Algebra, Statistics, Geometry, Mensuration, and I know, I just know, that there is no one else I’d rather be with, not now, not ever. I know deep in my heart, and in some part of my brain that deals with mathematical ability, that he was the one I was meant to grow old with!