The Completely Bearable Lightness of Being 35

35. I’ve been that for a month now. It tastes, smells and feels much better than I thought. I feared the implied mundanity of the phrase ‘settling down’. But I’m learning that it’s not mundane when it happens naturally when you want to do it.

I met someone I had a crush on back when I was 13. We didn’t meet often so it stayed what it was — a mild fluttering in the stomach when I saw him, the beginning of a blush when he glanced in my direction. I saw him off and on over the years but always from a distance, like from a bus window or across the street. And a quick nod of recognition is all that passed between us. I was young and surrounded by too many distractions to give it much thought. And even if I had, I think I was not confident enough in myself to have done something about it.

So much has happened in these twenty-odd years to each of us. We are past the panicky gawking of adolescence, past the frenzied social rituals of the twenties. Now, I think we tend to be okay with not always knowing what we feel. We’ve learnt to not let the awkwardness of a situation stop us from moving, from talking, from responding.

That doesn’t sound like the conventional definition of ‘settling down’ but in a way, it feels like it. It’s the feeling of solidness (I wouldn’t yet call it unshakeability) that comes from knowing an uneasy situation will not stop your life.

Oh, another thing that has happened with 35. This was probably seeded in my mind a little earlier but it has grown into being me only now. When Jinal was here, I was talking about my close friendships. I told her I loved one of our common friends and that I liked her. She tilted her head and said,

“Don’t you love me?”

I grinned and told her,

“I do! And I thought it. But as I started the sentence, I thought you’d find it a really weird thing for me to say. That’s why I changed it to I like you.”

“Silly,” she grinned and added, “I love you too.”

And I realised that the weird thing is NOT telling people who are close to us, not telling members of the same sex, not telling friends who are not spouses or partners, not saying ‘I love you’ to them. Love is not bounded by relationship status or gender. It’s a free emotion, a good, nourishing one. And it only chokes and turns into other weird things when it is forced into restrictive expressions or not even that.

I say ‘I love you’ much more easily and more often now. I say it to a lot of people and I think that doesn’t make me a bad person; it makes me a lucky person. Every person I identify that I love reminds me of how much abundance there is in my life, of support, warmth and affection.

Oh, here’s something about being 35. Everybody is nostalgic again and wanting to reconnect with their past. It’s now twenty years since I finished school, a decade since I finished b-school. I think nostalgia goes in 10-year cycles. And because of this, it seems that ageing happens abruptly rather than gradually. The skinny girls sported post-pregnancy fat when I saw them last and now they’re back to looking the same (we are at a health-conscious age now). And the men? Most of them look exactly the same except, without hair on their heads. 35 looks the same as 25 but minus hair.

Then there is the being okay with fighting and anger. I’ve tried to be all zen about violent expressions, especially after my break-up. But I realise I am a high-strung, emotional person and I attract people like that too. Friction and clashes are bound to happen. I’m realising it’s okay to not always resolve the fight. And I’m realising that disagreeing, however violently, need not have to do with how much you care about the other person.

I had a rather raucous argument yesterday with someone whom I have a complex relationship with, but whom I care about (now why should this description even be a surprise?). We sat in stiff silence for about 25 minutes. Then, just before it was time for me to leave, I realised I didn’t want the heaviness of not knowing the right way to say goodbye. So I just put my hand on his shoulder and said,

“Hey.”

I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to say after that and I think I started off with some version of

“Go home safe and sleep well. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”

But before I could finish, he hugged me. And just like that, all the animosity vanished and what we had been arguing about, seemed like nothing more than hot air left behind in the place we were at. The situation has not been resolved. But our friendship has not been impeded because of it.

These are fun things to discover about 35.