Who cares, anyways?

The constant scuffle between what is worthwhile and what isn't tears me apart. The moment I meet a stranger, I somehow know, that he/she will be a stranger all my life. No matter how thrilled I am to pursue the friendship, no matter how promising it appears. I have friends who've been around even before I knew what 'friends' meant. I've been involved in friendships where the extent of intimacy far superseded the boundaries of a mere friendship. I've had friends without whom I couldn't even imagine my life. And yet, the whole idea of friendship is losing its essence. Meeting a new person, meeting an old friend, nothing stirs my soul like it used to. And it isn't even funny anymore!

It feels like I'm trying to balance myself on a dwindling rope where I need to have the right amount of my heart and soul into the friendship to keep it alive and an equal amount of detachment to experience indifference. Does that even make sense? One day I feel I'm inseparably entwined with the lives of my friends and family that I'd collapse without them and yet on the very next day, I exactly know the relationship is heading towards a dead end. I struggle to strike a balance between the two seemingly impossible ideas; sometimes I end up getting too entangled with the friendships and sometimes the detachment just makes things fall apart. 

Do I really value people in my life because I've not got "better" things in life to keep me busy? Do I really have complaints and expectations because I "think too much"? 

I say things now, while I still can, because I've experienced what it is to have suppressed emotions and find your loved one count his last days in the Intensive Care Unit of a hospital. I expect because that is what that takes the friendship forward. I put my heart and soul into every friendship because I believe, just for once, it will all prove worthwhile. I care, sometimes way too much, because I realize the difference it makes. I fight, I argue, I disagree not because I want to walk away, but because I want to stay and stay whole heartedly. And the worst of it all is that no one really understands! People keep staring so hard at the intricacies, the factual details that they completely miss out on the bigger picture!

I'm tired. Of trying to balance. Of trying to make futile efforts. Of trying to fuel the lamp of faith every time the winds of disappointment flickers it down. Of pretending to an extent that I myself don't know what is real and what is artificial. I'm tired. Of constantly holding myself back. Of remembering and then battling to forget. Of failures. 

I sometimes feel like putting everything aside and simply escaping the monotony of things that don't work. I feel like running away from everything and everyone. 

Who cares, anyways?