The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up the Heart

"So what are you thinking or feeling now?" she asked.

I sat there in the quiet boardroom, with my face in my hands. I could hear the muffled sounds of the rest of the office building going on with it's regular business things.

"I don't know," I said.

"I don't know?" she mimicked me gently.

I looked up and peeked at her, "I don't know. All I can think is the L word."

"Ooh boy," she shook her head.

"It scares me so much, how much this is affecting me. I don't know how to let go if that's what I have to do, because it is killing me right now even to consider not..." I flicked away a stray tear that found its way down my cheek.

"Do you think you should let go?" she asked.

I took a breath and considered how to phrase what I felt.

"It's like that Marie Kondo thing," I started.

"Huh? Marie Kondo?"

"You know how she has that system of purging things and keeping a minimalist, simple life..." I tried explaining. "Well it's like you consider what you have and how that thing makes you feel and if you can let it go."

She nodded at me.

"Well," I looked out the window lost in thought.

"Well that's the thing. It isn't what I may or may not have promised for tomorrow.

It's just that, when I think of him, when I am with him, when he's being whatever the hell he is even the most annoying version of himself, but when he is there with me....he sparks joy."

Expectations of Empathy

This morning at work, I was returning from a meeting and passed a colleague. As she passed, I sensed it.

She was asking someone on my team a question when I sidled up to her and waited for her to finish her query. As she turned, I simply put my arms around her. 

"Hi Nadia," I said quietly, "I think you need a hug right now."

And she just started crying. There in my arms, she held on and sobbed. 

I think it's because I know what it's like to hold in so much pain, and contain all the grief in a very tight vessel that you think you've buried deep inside that I am able to sense it so acutely and tangibly in others.

I recall recently talking to someone very important to me and we were discussing our lives, and also that thing about being empaths. I recall pondering the idea that I sometimes tell myself that I am able to absorb all the pain that is out there in the world and perhaps help mitigate the anguish and despair that is out there, if perhaps somehow, even a little bit, it makes the world we live in a better place.

I don't know. Maybe it's a way of surviving for me. I've done my share of locking out people and pushing away those who care simply from a deeply entrenched emotional claustrophobia that maybe everything that comes my way is just a way of me getting my share.

Then again, just the way I spotted Nadia throughout the day chatting with colleagues, making jokes, cackling to her own surprise, I can smile to myself to know that perhaps just by my own small gestures I can provide comfort to others and help lighten the loads they are carrying just by acknowledging that I care.

There'll always be the people who will make sure you know that they care, not by assuming you know, but by their behaviour. It's also ok to let go of the naive idea that you can ever be so important to be someone's #1. Be your own #1. 

The Chaos of Reckless Loneliness

Lately, she's stopped being alone. And yet, she finds herself lost in a starker, darker, loneliness than she's experienced in a long while.

How did she allow this door to open again? She's kept it shut, locked tight, waterproof—almost—for a very long time.. and somehow, without realizing, the door's eased its way open again.

She's put up too many guards over the years — successfully building out an empire of aloofness and detachment that's only served exceedingly well. And in the blink of an eye, somehow she's allowed it all to vanish, evaporate, in the blink of an eye.

And yet this loneliness seems the worst sort. It's addicting, calls her name in the middle of uneasy dreams, whispering into her ear whilst she's otherwise occupied. She's constantly seeking it out. It's a strange ache: she's catapulted head over heels into a black hole of chaos. She's not sure if its killing her or she's only revived.

And yet, despite it all, she's always been one to jump into the deep end, launch herself into the air without a parachute ... so maybe this time, despite the agony, despite the reckless hope — perhaps, she'll finally fly.

Circles

Sometimes the best gift you can give yourself is to take that gift you thought was everything you every wanted and carefully wrap it back up, typing a perfect ribbon on top of where the old ribbon lay--and give it away.

and even though hurts you, still smile.

Ma

"Really yummy. How did you manage to get the paneer so crispy and still so soft and flavourful?"

And I smiled to myself, because while making the dish I remembered his mother's tip, and lost in that special world in the kitchen, my dish became infused with a hint of love mixed with bittersweet loss.

Cooking has always been an independent venture for me. From the age of 6, on a makeshift stool comprised of random pieces of wood stuck together, I was making roti—rolling away with the belan as well as I was able to with my little hands, patting the dough primly with a dusting of flour and carefully shifting it onto the hot tawa.

To date, I still have a faint scar on my chest from where the edge of the tawa burnt me as I leant over. The symbolism of the act, the pain, and the scar, is as succinct as it could be.

Making roti is the one thing that has ties with that Other World. It's one of the very few memories that I have with her: standing on a chair and rolling a small glob from the big portion of dough in the bowl, and happily rolling it, flattening it, making my very first roti, only for it to come out in a very strange misshapen triangular form. But that memory is so much more than the detail. It is adorned with her gentle grace, her loving patience, more that overwhelming warmth than the accuracy of her face. She praised me for my Christmas Tree roti and commended me for my creativity. "Let's make it green!" she suggested, and got out the food colouring, so that when my father finally returned from work that evening, there among all the well-formed round rotis was a special little green Christmas Tree roti.

Things changed drastically soon after, and our family, smaller by one number now, moved to a new neighbourhood. I began a new life at a new school in a totally alien landscape. At home, I soon learnt to do the chores and cooking. I was in first grade.

When it was warm enough, we played in the streets. It was a way of getting out of our father's way. 

"She has no mommy," I overheard another little girl tell the other kids on the street. And that information made them all avoid me, as if it was a contagious form of a shameful disease. 

In those young years I became the object of passively aggressive bullying. I didn't realize that was what it was, but for some reason, my newfound tendency to cry easily seemed to be a point of amusement for the other kids. I cried every single day in school in those years. That the other kids thought that mocking me for not having a mother seemed the best joke did not help. I remember being completely ostracized in 5th grade as a clique of 'popular' girls chose to disparage me on my lack of femininity, loud gossip and meant taunts of not being able to go shopping with a mom. As we grew up into the pre-teen part of elementary school, I shied away from the female teachers' attentions and stayed aloof from other children's mothers who volunteered at school events or joined us on trips. If another kid's mother was extra kind to me, I had to shoulder the additional grief of that particular kid's glares at the perceived invasion of territory.

When I started high-school, I was just as aloof. This was a new start and I kept these secrets of my history  to myself. I became one of the class clowns, tomboy Jane, the go-to girl for crazy antics and hyperness, all in the most geeky ways. And I made friends. Friends who after a few years eventually complained that I was too secretive; that I kept my feelings to myself. By then I had told them a bit about my family life, but only enough so that the very deep and dark bits would not scare anyone away. But keeping such things to oneself has its own psychological consequences too.

That particular loss is one that has never been healed. And it continues to hurt, almost every single day. It is the one thing that I can never articulate to anyone, because the depth of that loss is absolutely endless. I don't want anyone's pity or sympathy, and yet, through most of my life, that is the one thing I crave instinctively: some form of maternal love.

The problem is that when I became close to anyone else, they sooner or later shared in this nugget of loss (as is natural in exchanges of personal data with close friends) but the problem is that soon, they too extended that holy grail: aw, it's okay you can share mine! Certainly, the offer was always made with the best of intentions, with a good heart and full of warmth and kindness. But somehow, time or other events seemed to break down the very structure of that relationship and along with the friendship went that maternal gift.

More than that, often the rational for the breakdown of friendships happened contingent to the nature of the maternal bond. Somehow, there still remained that sinister whisper of contagion which I first overheard on the streets as a child. One of the most defining milestones was being explicitly shunned and kicked out of a tight-knit circle of friends—at that time the only friends I had—like a dirty untouchable. 

You never think that people can have this kind of cruelty.  And perhaps they simply do not realize the extent of their behaviour, maybe because they do not know what this kind of experience is like. But it hurts more than I could say when you are given a taste of what it is like, when a friend says that their mother is there for you too, and then so easily take it away without even recognizing the emotional destruction they cause.

After these experiences I became a little more hardened. I remembered how to be aloof again. When visiting friends at their homes, I was pleasant and polite but always reserved and never opened up my heart again for a surrogate mother.

And then he happened. You could not talk to him—really talk to him—or get to know him, without him talking about his mother. His love for her is probably his quintessential defining characteristic. It absolutely shines. And you cannot help falling in love with her. So I fell for both of them. They both made me laugh like I never laughed before. This was a new kind of bond and relationship that I had never experienced or witnessed. I was in awe, and yet was head over heels in being blessed with her love, too. I felt like a geeky fan being bestowed with the attention of a mega celebrity. But it was more for me. So much more.

Sometimes out of the blue, her voice pops up on my headphones. An old saved voice message wishing me a happy birthday and telling me that innocent unknown lie: I will always be there for you. These are those times when I need to rush out of the room, or rush off the train, and hide. Sometimes, it is so hard to figure this out. You think it is just another heartbreak, but it isn't. It's much more. When I cry for him, I cry for her too.


What is loss? I could never figure it out, only feel it, again and again, in louder explosions, each time. 


I type the question, and pause, as my adopted feral kitten stares at me in consternation as I cry, trying to finish this. I am so sorry, baby, I will never kick you back out in the streets motherless for I know what that feels like. Is that why you followed me home?

Safekeeping

One of the hardest things is piecing yourself back together again after breaking into a million pieces. 

Trust.

You can trust someone with information, or trust them to get a job done. Trust someone to have your back, trust someone to be there, no matter what. Or trust someone to keep you safe. 

The worst part in misplaced trust in a person is that when you give that trust to another being, that trust is completely contingent in your very own personal trust of the self. You are trusting yourself, your sense of judgement, in being able to believe that this other person is worthy of keeping your trust.

So, when they decide they no longer want that burden, when they decide that hurting another person to relieve their own stress in life is OK, because they have already done the calculations and decided you will be OK even if your trust in them was wrong all along, they forget that the implications lie on a much grander scale. Because, even after the damage is done, and they have moved on, that huge earthquake is only the start of an avalanche of aftershocks: you are left stranded in a place where you cannot even trust yourself.

When you have moved from a space of casual acquaintance, slowly and systematically ingraining everything inside of you with this person's aura, their function in your life slowly becoming part of the very equation of who you are, so much that you would bet your life in that trust, nevermind your own sense of identity and trust, it goes without saying that once that little piece of trust is removed like a Jenga piece down there below the other million pieces which comprise you, of course everything, absolutely everything, collapses.

But it is all inside of you. And not any other person ever could imagine what it is like beyond that outer shell.  Inside, you are juggling the pieces that have not yet fallen, and yet you are trying to pick up, and catch, the other falling pieces which are sharp, fatal, piercing you with pain. Inside, you are slipping trying to escape falling completely and utterly to that bottomless pit where your sense of self can never be resuscitated, and yet you are slipping on the shards which make up the slopes you are trying to keep a grip on with the soles of your already-ripped and bleeding feet, and mutilated palms, slipping on the blood, bringing you to your knees, on which you continue to struggle up. Inside you are suffocating, as the atmosphere around you is a vacuum-sealed vessel of building pressure, toxic fumes of self-hatred, green gaseous canisters of laughter assaulting you with no remorse. Inside, you don't even know which part of you is really you, and inside, you don't even know who you are anymore, not really. 

Can you ever really—really—trust another person to keep you safe?

Crypticity

There are these strange moments when I bid farewell to the last person I'm to interact with for the day, and it's almost as if I'm shutting a mental door behind them, and collapse against the door, sighing audibly, a loud "phew" if you will: finally I can stop pretending, finally I can wipe off the smile.

And it is weird, because these are the moments when I shut down the gates, lock the windows and then let myself be me. And yet, that girl out there with everyone, laughing, smiling, joking, slapping, glaring, she was me. But not really. These moments I tune into my music, and in a few hours of downtime, my focus is incomparable. I am down the warphole, and yet I am in a dangerous emotional torpedo. Sometimes, yes, I self destruct when I get too close with my solder and tweezers, trying to figure out what went wrong, without protective measures.

I harbour a lot of secrets, and I am not sure how many I keep from myself either. There was a time I felt that there was that one person that I told absolutely everything to, but one soon learns that sometimes, some things it is better to keep to oneself.

I am not sure now what I am really asking for. I know what I want more than ever, and yet I am now embarking on a ship that will literally take me away - far away - from any retribution or fulfillment of these dreams.

Maybe sometimes I shut the doors and lock the window against my own dreams. And that's okay. Maybe I will learn to survive without them.

Voices from the Other Side

Sometimes at the end of the day, the most miserable thing to be is alone. Especially when it piles up: day in, day out, same grind, same routines, and a whole long collection of lonely evenings. Someone to share what your day was like with, to sit in companionable silence, even, watching television together, or not even doing the same thing together, but still being together. There is a safety and security like no other when you know that you can cast your heart to drone over the surface of the many thousand miles of the earth and it can find that other heart that beats in sync with yours.

Yet the claustrophobia of company takes away the glow. Expectations of and from other people weigh heavily on your shoulders. Even when you're focused on accomplishing one task, you feel as if there are a million eyes - even if belonging to just that one person - peering over your shoulder, not letting you be at peace. Even when you sit for a second to catch your breath, you still need to take a figurative look around, almost guiltily, because you know that this moment to yourself isn't really yours, everyone else expects it to be theirs.

And this, too, piles up. It is almost as if your own lungs cannot belong to you because every breath you take is chained to another person's demands. As if your own hands, your own feet, taking you to places and performing your tasks, can never really be your own. Even your tears, if you even allow yourself a moment to let them fall, they too are tainted; accusations abound and fingers point, prodding, taunting, persistently, irritatingly, to your apparent selfishness.

What is it worth, then, being caged in forever, if that is the cost of not being alone? Why set yourself "free" from loneliness if it only means you lose your own sense of self? Why bother to try, if when every time you moved mountains to show you care, you are left holding the mountain to perpetuity as the very action is questioned, disputed, and doubted? How many times can you be expected to jump over train tracks with the train a split second away; how many times can you lay yourself down and let others walk over your back to safety; how many times can you give away your umbrella to stand alone in the rain?

What is the point of not being lonely, if the other person doesn't know this is what you feel but can't say.

Missed Beats

I have, in the last several months, questioned almost everything: life, my own identity, my purpose, my worth, everyone else, love, trust...and God. Somewhere along the path of broken, sharp shattered glass on which I've had to trod on barefooted, I came to a really weird realization that maybe somewhere I lost a belief in this big G entity. I still have strong feelings about the physics of the cosmos though, as in a greater force, maybe big F.  This F is found in smaller, (arguably) less overpowering things, like music. Like, laughter. Or even tears. In that really really really great feeling that comes out of really really really great and insane friendships. And even those really really really horrible feelings that come out of them, when things are out of sync, and even in love. Like music, sometimes we just have to wait and find the rhythm again.

Contentment

Sitting here alone with the blue sky and white clouds, autumnal winds blowing, and the sun shining on my head, whilst really great music is playing and keeping me and the elements company. Despite the context of the song playing and the very state of being up here watching the tips of the evergreens alone, I'm smiling.

Déjà Vecu

Watch when this girl goes back in time to meet her ten-year-younger self who gives her the lecture of a lifetime she forgot she ever gave and needed.

Live to Love - Back To The Future

Speechless.

Perfer et Obdura....

The thing is, I forget that I'm my own hero.

I kept falling and kept having to eventually -after the period of laughing at myself while down - pick myself up again each time. Even if I got hurt, I had to heal. But somehow the very fact that I was always my own doctor cut open a wound of itself. A wound that maybe was always there for various traumatic reasons, but it widened and became more raw and festering each time I healed myself. I feel it right now; sometimes it is deep, deep inside, sometimes it's the very physical ache in my bones, or the way my chest tightens in a pain that is like having a metal vise around me. But the wound is always there.

Even still, I realize now that subconsciously I feel that the girl I was in the past was weaker and today somehow I am stronger to her. Maybe simply because I have endured this wound to date, and the latent knowledge of everything I have gone through has made me therefore better equipped by the very fact of existence. 

But the funniest thing is that today I went back in time. And all of a sudden I was looking at this beautiful, happy, cheerful, positive, and err, cheesy bundle of joy -- and she was me. She was me.

But I look at that me: I was so happy. And yet that was a time in my life when I literally had nothing.

And I wonder, who was this girl who had so much courage? Was she really so brave, so hopeful? -- Or was she delusional?

I mean, this was right at the edge of a period where I was in a pit so deep and dark, it wasn't even a pit anymore. I was buried under the fragments of my life, and it was as if all the physical world was the burden of rubble atop me. I had nothing and no one. But I had myself.

I still had myself. And I dug out. I climbed out. Suffocating. Blind. Reincarnated. I lived again.

But being myself meant that I was the me that still had that everlasting wound. That wound was me. It festered in my old life, and it threw me into freefall.

Yet it also taught me to fly.

Today I find it so much harder to be that brave girl who could be so happy in the darkest of times. The irony is that I am not alone in the personal sense and yet in this knowledge I am so much more. 

When I was in high-school, my motto was staunchly 'expectation is the cause of disappointment'. This was my internal warning  to prevent any collision. Yet being human, how it could it have ever be prevented except in a vacuum? In university, the dude who eventually became my best friend told me that for the first year before our actual mutual acquaintancy, he had this certain impression of me because of the way I did what I had to do without any nonsense - studied, classed, worked out, socialized politely yet aloofly - and that I was some kickass tough girl. But really I was just trying hard not to give a damn lest I get hurt (again). But of course, I gave a damn.

Do I regret it? I'm not sure I do. In fact, I'm pretty damn sure I don't. I've gone through so many cycles of heartbreak and despair that counting is just nonviable. In each of these experiences the crux is not what I've learnt from them, but rather what I have learnt of myself.

Just for some context, right now my heart is broken over giving a damn - a bit too much of a damn - over someone who says they also do but their actions and words signify otherwise. To be honest, it actually is not their fault - yet it is.

But this time, I'm not going to let my heartbreak break me, or even define me. It's a tough battle because I want them to see and understand that I am not alright: that I am hurting and I am hurting because of them. And yet, I want to be strong - and if that is what they see they will find some solace in knowing that despite their actions and their behaviour, it's OK, that I am and will be OK.

But you know what? It's not OK. I'm not OK.  However, a person who actually cares will know, or make an effort to really know, even if I seem OK. 

I look back at the happy girl I was, even when I was the saddest girl inside, and it's me who really knows. 

So dudes and dudettes, there is no holding back. I am my own hero. 

All I have to do is look back at who I was and I inspire myself, to continue to be inspiring to the girl I will be.

Because I am my own hero.

Peripeteia

Yesterday I had a conversation with one of my oldest friends that lasted way into the early hours - way past my usual bedtime anyway.

This is one of my friends who fall into that special category wherein you can not talk/communicate for a lengthy period of time and yet when you do connect, there are no hangups - no recriminations about why didn't you stay in touch, I won't talk to you if you don't, etc. - and it's as if that long period of radio silence had never existed.

Coming after my last post, it seems sort of like I have no idea what I'm talking about. Having no one, being nobody vs. having these kind of friends who know that there is absolutely no chance of being taken for granted, either way of the relationship. But strangely, it's all the same. 

One topic we went over was the corroded mental states we both were experiencing; both similarly disparaged and yet both on two different sides of a coin. One, the state of perpetual loneliness and the aching void that remains yet unfulfilled despite the growing residual feeling of yearning. The other, the agonies of being in a relationship that seems to be fracturing with a multitude of deeply felt problems.  And somehow in the meeting of minds we realized the commonality that there is never a meadow of permanent happiness (chorus: the grass is greener...). 

Happiness is so fleeting. And it is thus because we have made it so. Fleeting indicates the passage of time. And in this day and age everything is so temporally dependent. Time is money etc., etc. But what if we had the ability to live forever? We wouldn't have this embedded calendar of time ticking away, of the grains of sand depleting, of racing to accomplish x number of things by x units of time. Perhaps we would have no need for happiness; contentment would be king. (Or queen, if you prefer.)

If I lived forever, I would know that I had a tomorrow. I would have a tomorrow to wait for if today it could not happen. I could wait for love forever, because there would be no ending in loneliness. And I would have no end of patience. And patience is that which we all need a whole whopping load of.

I can feel my heartbeat slow down, my very breaths calm at the very thought of taking things slowly, at the idea of a forever forever. And yet, why can't I apply the ideal to our specimen of mortality?

Why am I building up these walls of bricks made of instances of time, effectively barricading myself into a cube of claustrophobia? Why am I resenting everything around me with my own conceived and self-constructed perceptions? I don't know. It is like shooting myself in the foot. Then shooting myself in the foot. Then shooting myself in the foot. And blaming everything else that brought me to that moment; without realizing maybe there is something I can be doing differently.  

Again, I don't know. But I've promised myself to put my energies into something productive, and not let them fester and become infected. Maybe if I think hard enough I will discover the way to foreverhood.

Elusive

Those who know me will recognize that I can tend to be elusive - a ghost - for the very purpose of not being known.

There are periods, therefore, where I will be less communicative; I will less likely be around. My absence can indicate some sort of cognitive clouding, a pulling away from opportunities to express what is on my mind, a retraction into myself due to some person disassociation.

Yes, it is true. I, like most people perhaps, attempt to hide my sadness. Whereas I have long dreamt and wished for the fulfillment of having another being to completely satisfy an innate yearning of empathy and compassion, I have simultaneously refrained from opening up as a form of self-preservation.

In the instances where I have mistakenly believed that I had found such a person, my tendency toward self-preservation had been further strengthened by the act of disillusionment; broken trust, a broken heart, the irreparable damage of being left behind, and perhaps somehow worse, the cold apathy experienced in a state of emotional vulnerability.

It is interesting to consider how more generally inclined our psyches are to holding compassion, patience and kindness toward those visibly impaired, whether it be psychological or physical disability. Anecdotal evidence rather proves this. However, why is it that when another being, not so as aforesaid disabled, experiences sorrow, suffering, and general weakness of spirit and mind, our threshold to compassion is so different. The latter soon becomes an emotional liability; to put it simply, putting up with their suffering becomes a pain in the ass.

I am as guilty of this as the next person. I will have been found to have sighed in exasperation and said, 'Get over it, already!' You know you have. But where is the line? That which differentiates a petty bout of complaints versus a long-standing promise to be there, no matter what?

For said reason maybe I hesitate at being that burden. The funny thing is, I have a chronic psychological phobia of being left behind by someone I have invested emotionally in -left behind not just in the physical act, but being displaced cognitively - and yet once I have opened up, that's it, that person's capacity to deal with this not-so-strong, not-so-independent girl evaporates. Catch-22, in a way.

The list of these experiences is longer than anyone could ever know, longer than could be known by even the one person in whom I placed everything, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, personally, on the basis that finally I found the elusive soulmate.

But maybe it's not just elusive. Maybe it just does not exist.

Right now I am broken and still breaking. And I admit this, the girl who would rather die before admit this. But I am already a ghost - unseen, unattended, invisible- after all. 

Offline

For three months - or more accurately, two - I was off the internet, and it was glorious.

By some stroke of luck, all my personal gadgets cumulatively ceased working, and after some perfunctory attempts at repair, I sat back and decided to let it all go. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't difficult.

Despite all our angst about Change - things changing, people changing, people coming, people going, getting older, life changing - we are remarkably so attuned to the process of habituation that we  often lose out on the experience of actualization, the process itself of transformation, of really noticing what we are becoming.

I was reading actual newspapers. Reading actual, physical, books. So used was I to my tablet's e-reader functionalities that severally I found myself pressing my finger to a word on paper waiting for the browser function to materialize.

I was walking around listening to my surroundings. Sitting and hearing the people around me, or just that sound of outsideness that comes with the act of walking down the street. No longer was I selectively excluding the natural soundtrack with a neverending playlist that went on as soon as I stepped out and went off as soon as I stepped in.

No longer were my eyes diverted to a polygon of illuminated text or graphics that had somehow superimposed itself over the actual vast universe. I revelled again in the swaying of trees, in finding five million variations to the blue of the skies, in experiencing the secrets of the wind on my face without distraction. I watched clouds, counted birds in their flocks, watched ants trek the arduous distance of one foot.

Certainly, I had to use the computer at work, which accounted for 8 hours of a day, but suddenly I had overcome the inexplicable trance that infects us all; that strange urgency to have to stay in touch with x number of people contacts. For the period I relinquished technology I almost simultaneously became a hermit. Yet in this regard I was not exactly lonely. Perhaps that's where the urgency arises - we find import in the communication of others: each text message, email, ping is an instance of verification of our own very existence.

Is it troubling that our very being is thus reliant? Or simply inevitable? I couldn't say; only that for a period of time life became a little less superficial and more easygoing. For whatever it was worth, I had let go of something that until then subconsciously I must have given it permission to make me feel as if it was the thing which had a grip on me.

It was only when I stopped struggling with the withdrawal, accepted being offline, and embraced my surroundings and therein myself, that I made the trip to the electronics store, purchased soldering equipment and set to working fixing my gadgets that I am able to say: hello, I'm back.

Questions

What is it about these changing phases that makes them so more loved? The way it blows hot and cold, this way and that, pulling us to and fro; variations making us...feel.

I have not had time to let myself think. Or rather, I have had the time, but less of the inclination. Or, well, to be honest, I am not even sure about what really has happened. I simply got lost in the pull and sway of routine, and while I longed for something to save me from it, I don't think I really made an effort. I let myself get lost.

But something has snagged inside me, and once again, I don't really know what it is. I let a whole summer go by unaccounted for, and that only heightens the irony since it is that heat and respective sense of relaxation that is supposed to go along with that season that should have let me fly loose. But it didn't happen. I cannot really tell you now what happened these months past; just trying to remember makes me feel like I had lost my memory and it's all been blocked.

It could be frustrating, but somehow I'm not letting it be that big a deal. So much more has happened, inside and out, that really sets perspective in its place. Rippling tides that have increasingly tugged me underneath and made me feel like I was drowning and only thing left was to survive, all other luxuries - writing - be damned.

It hasn't been anyone's fault but mine. I realize that I have become a different person; or rather I have let myself become a person that has always been me, only that it was not previously provided the circumstances and environment that would have allowed it to exist in its own right. Yesterday I was thinking how I used to be this buoyant bubble of hyperactivity and mirth, always giddy, always jokey, always 'that crazy, happy girl', and the inside scoop was all the while I was that girl, I was actually someone deeper inside, sad and lonely and craving for something more, and therefore all that buoyancy was somehow my defensive mechanism. It still is. But now, somehow, I have let my guard down and become this quieter and much more soulful person. And as I was thinking all this, I realized I also didn't like this much more honest person, because even while it was honest, it felt wrong.

At an intersection of myself, where the hyper met the depressed, I remember this was where the appreciation of who I was at a height. Meaning, somehow when I let it slip that, when people had figured me for this lighthearted ball of joy, I had hidden depths, somehow they appreciated who I was even more. One one hand, this was gratifying, but then again it also grated and was annoying because they had made assumptions. But then again, we all make assumptions, and I believe we make more assumptions about ourselves than anyone else, which is why we end up lost.

Sometimes the hardest thing is to figure out who we are. And either we face it heads on and try out mightiest to solve this universal problem before we kick the bucket and it's no longer a problem, or we just don't care. But to truly not care means we don't give a damn what anyone thinks, that we perhaps lose out in developing who we are, perhaps become hostile and anti-social, or amoral. It is the act of caring who we are with respect to who we are in the presence of others that keeps us who we are.  And to understand this underlying concept, we really actually need to take a moment to really think it through; just as we sometimes need to take a breath, or a step back, and consider who it is we wish to be.

So the next question is this: is the act of filtering ourselves for how we act, for what we say, somehow dishonest to the idea of just being yourself? That is where, if we are not careful, we may fall over the edge and get lost, especially if you spend too much time trying to answer this.

I have pulled away from 'interacting' in these past months. Like I have said, I don't really know why. I think it was so that I could find myself. I had things to deal with and the top of the list was nurturing the relationship that was most important. Time was in limited supply, so I figured that I would devote the time available toward this one thing, but then it was the very act of constantly keeping watch over how little time there was that somehow corroded the time itself.  Because you are ever more aware to how little there is, and if you are not careful, you find yourself wanting more, and more, and more when there is no more forthcoming. And the reaction to not receiving, and continuously wanting is not healthy. It eats you from the inside out.

Things which remain constant somehow lose their appeal. Perhaps this is why we allow ourselves to slip a little bit, and sometimes a lot, allowing ourselves to become splattered by mud as we trod onward on our journey, allowing ourselves to dip into a pool of misery or turmoil, because it adds some spice or flavour to an otherwise bland pool of sunshine.

So why is it that we internalize these changes, why the dynamic of movement from hot to cold, from up to down, from left to right, from dark to light, make us feel so much more alive? It's a question I have answered so many times and I am always still left asking it.

Temporal

I have realized another change in myself. Not something that is deeply embedded or having to do with emotions and personality, exactly.

It is interesting to remember that there was a time when it was necessary for me to always have my earphones on, music on, plugged into the computer I was using simultaneously. For hours, days, months, years, this was my status quo. While studying, reading, essaying, writing, researching, designing, coding, forum-ing, chatting, I had the earphones in, music on. Without fail.

In the last few days though, I suddenly realize that I have almost no tolerance for doing this anymore -- I feel irritated, and disoriented, plus there is this sensation of cognitive dissonance. I, the once notable multitasking queen, am losing my touch.

Or am I? I feel that it isn't just the physicality of the context. There are so many other variables contributing to this difference in me; now I feel that I am much more busy - mentally, emotionally and physically. I have more on my mind, and more emotional responsibility...I guess you could say.

And it's just another symptom of the same thing, when you correlate it to why my writing has changed as well - something I already discussed a few times. Writing....music...they were my constant companions and go-to's for my loneliness. Ah, those times back then, sure I had friends and was filling my days with that constant chatter of comraderie...but that too was also another sort of balm for my loneliness.

Now that's all changed, somehow. My days of filling lines in a notebook have diminished in being able to share it all to someone else instead. My hours of filling silence with music have also floated away with time...

But then lately, in the past few weeks, there has been a quaint revisitation to old songs and themes long past. Thanks to a co-blogger who has been steamrolling ahead with sharing songs, I've been finding myself navigating old alleyways searching out certain tunes and it's sort of a lovely feeling to refind old tracks and blow the dust away from them (figuratively) and remember the.. memories.

And finding old memories has also happened in terms of my writing. I first started blogging on Xanga.com way back in 2004. Before that, I used notebooks to write any thoughts (and also had this 'thing' about writing actual letters back and forth with friends). Last week, it occurred to me to go revisit those old blog posts on that domain, only to discover that the site was undergoing some changed that entailed anyone who wanted to use their services having to pay. Basically, all my blogs were gone.

For a memory-hoarder like myself, this sort of thing was simply disastrous. Heartbreaking! I immediately emailed the website admin. Paced about a few days. Then they replied back with a link to download my archived posts. Phew.

So then I downloaded the xml code. Figured I could import it to Blogger, but nope - for some reason it wouldn't allow the parsing. So...well anyways, this is the point: my old blog posts are now posted on Lucid Iridescence (my 'prose' blog) and going through them again was sort of like another revelation of remniscence. I had quite a few of the posts that I had kept as 'private' when they were on Xanga. I didn't want the public to read those emotions and thoughts. I thought about this briefly when posting to Blogger, but felt that since those emotions and contexts were detached from the person I am now, I do not feel so uncomfortable with having them see the light of day. Or rather, have other people see them. So they are all there in all their glory. If you are interested in this, I have done some simple organizing: the posts from my first blog on xanga are labelled 'Sapne' (that is what my first blog was called). The posts transferred from my second blog on another domain are labelled 'Read My Lips' (again what that blog was called). All my posts that had been posted since, directly during my time here on Blogger remain unlabelled.

The interesting thing to note is that going from each different blog phase, the difference in me itself is startlingly stark. Or, maybe it is for me. I don't know. Again it's quite amazing to remark on how the state of a person's lonesomeness can correlate to their state of mind.

Seena Pada

aaj main jism nahin aaj main parchhaayi hoon
har jagah bhir ka sailaab tere chaaron taraf
main apne aap mein simti hui tanhaayi hoon

What's My Point?

For as long as I can remember, 'a sense of humour' was the criteria I checked off in the answer to the question "What do you want most in your significant other".

The question is a bit ludicrous in itself since it requires the dismissal of all other traits in favour of your choice. But a much younger me had no problem - I was always so sure of my requirement - because I was (am) a person who survives on humour.

But then in another phase, when I was much older - and more subdued by life itself - I found myself questioning this choice. I would ask around among friends and colleagues to see what their choices were and why; an open-ended question where they could choose whichever trait it was they most wanted in their significant other. This was a time when I was thoroughly in my 'one day' waiting phase and was very much immersed with thoughtfulness and daydreams about this 'one day' and 'prince charming'.

Somewhere down the line, I started considering 'understanding' over 'sense of humour'. But it was tough to let go of the hope that one day my prince charming would be the one to make me laugh like no other. I'd chosen 'sense of humour' for as long as I could remember most likely because for once I'd have loved to be the one being made to laugh, instead of making others laugh.

But what these questionnaires never teach us is the fact that despite all the wants and requirements we would want in our significant other, it's never so simple when it happens.

Lately, I have been down in the dumps with respect to 'communication'. Or the lack therof. I have been feeling way too depressed with feeling that the things I say aren't important. And it isn't just that. I guess I need communication. I need the bond built with words - however mundane or trivial - the communication, the sharing, is a bond as intimate as any other. And when it's breaking down...I just don't know. I feel lost.

Maybe my seeking these things, sense of humour, understanding, appreciation, communication all stem from a lifetime of never having them.

I have always been made to feel that when I say something no one really listens, or that what I've said just goes unnoticed or unremarked. Or the things I say aren't deemed noteworthy because I was the one who voiced it. Or I feel this cold impatience from the other person. I've spent most of my life feeling like a ghost or a shadow. And I suppose, that is why I've ended up writing to express myself. A symptom of loneliness.


So here I am again: writing.

For Me

Sometimes I'm stuck in a rut, again suddenly confronted with this overwhelming sense of loneliness. And I end up thinking whether there is something lacking in me, that I keep feeling that I'm left behind, or lose the grip on a string that's just slipped out of my hands, or that maybe I just fall short. Sometimes I kind of feel maybe my problem is that I try too hard. I'm a people-pleaser, and of course that doesn't really work out too well when you're too much of one.

Then at the same time, I try to not be one, and I hold back. Or rather, I   hold back from stating things which are confrontational or overly sentimental, or way too personal. That's why I stopped writing the way I wish I could write. 

Today I got a huge, umm, not sure what to really call it - a wake up call? A shock it was certainly, because it hurt me immensely when I came across something that made me feel absolutely ridiculous. Not ridiculous only, because that sort of implies a self-consciousness grounded with ego. But further, a sense of betrayal. A sense of being taken for granted. Or of failure. 

I had a huge cry-out. And yeah I am actually admitting this here. I normally avoid opening up completely on this blog, and one of the things I had a good think about was this also; specifically, why I do this. Avoiding becoming too personal or vulnerable; opening up fully was something I had grown to avoid like the plague. Consequently, I ended up writing extremely vaguely, and furthermore, this resulted in loopy, wordy and vociferous posts that might have sounded profound and poignant, but must have definitely confused my reader.

But the point was that I wasn't supposed to be writing for anyone else, right? For myself? But that is something I lost in trying to balance the forces of expression and art. And I lost myself somewhere also.

So yeah, I had a huge cryfest. FYI: I have these often. I cry easily. I also laugh easily. I'm a softy, and this is something I try to guard like the crown jewels, because well, this was just another consequence of bad experiences. The more I opened up and showed how vulnerable I was, the quicker people were to lose interest and drop you like a hot potato - or, maybe worse: take you for granted.

Being taken for granted is something I have strugged with for...well pretty much my whole life. From being the eldest in a family with huge hardships, and having to take care of everyone - I lost the sense of being able to be me from a very young age. I couldn't be me, because I was busy being a mother/wife/sister/servant for everyone else. So I was molded into being a people-pleaser. This stuck with me in varying ways over the years. Trying to be this, or trying to be that. Working harder to do things to make someone else feel better or pleased. 

Anyways, all this is already making me cringe with how sentimental it all seems. I hate having to express myself or explain myself in the form of describing whatever experiences; as if in some way that's asking for pity. It isn't that I have ego or pride to not want people to pity me, I just don't want to use whatever experiences to gain it, when I feel that so many people out there have it way worse. I just gotta deal with it so I'm okay. 

But there was something else entirely that I had wanted to write about. Being taken for granted - I don't know. I already hesitate to label it as this, because I already know that the reaction of those who I would 'accuse' of doing this would be hurt. And there again, I don't want to hurt someone else, so I hold back from doing so. But isn't that already a symptom of the problem? I don't know.

Sometimes I wish I weren't the person I was really. I wish I wasn't so kid-at-heart ish. Because maybe my thoughts and words would be more meaningful. Or that I was more aloof and restrained with giving myself to others - maybe other people would want to try harder to please me. Maybe there is something afterall that rings true with this concept of playing hard to get. 

Much of this might be eye-opening to some of you - because I don't talk about most of this. My personal life story, the idea that I am a real kid (at heart), or how sensitive a person I am. Which is ironic in comparison to the previous paragraph, isn't it. 

Anyways. So post-cryfest, I decided to go slave in the kitchen (doing something I love, and also keeping me busy and productive) but of course, I had to think through everything. Who says I think too much? 

I had to first gauge if my reaction was overdone. It might have been, nevertheless, even if I cut away the extra-sensitivity, there were things which remained that still hurt. Then I considered, why must I keep trying to mould myself to meet another person's standards? And why was I putting everything of myself and my world centered around this one person? Was it reciprocated, equally? No. 

Then I figured, why was I doing all this, then? Just because love said that I shouldn't expect anything back? (And oh yes, this gets heavier, gee whiz, love.) I don't know. Something I considered long time back was that I put more into the pot so that it felt that there was enough in it to provide for the amount given by two people. Maybe I shouldn't have. Maybe I should stop.

Ah, I know - there is someone who's thinking I told you so. That's okay. You told because you cared. And I reciprocate your care by listening to you. So yup. I think I'm pretty much vented out.

 Today is (was?) International Women's Day, and the theme for me is loving myself. And I'm going to stop caring about whoever gives a damn about the things I give a damn about. It hurts but what can you do. Yesterday I was looking at this website for lyrics, looking at the lyrics of "Let It Go" from Disney's Frozen (because 1. I'm totally a Disney child and 2. I love the song, dammit)...and other than the aptness of the lyrics for my own state of mind, when I scrolled down to the meaning of the lyrics as interpreted by the commenters, I stumbled across a flame war by a bunch of 9 year olds. It was hilarious, in a way. In a sad, pathetic way, I grant you, but funny, because you just imagine these little imps tapping away into their keyboards with their tiny faces all scrunched up, and almost half of them can't spell, nevermind grammar, so they're arguing in between asking "wat dose unighted meen". But the gist of their argument was whether the song had anything to do with love at all or not, and one side was declaring that it was love for the self. So yeah. Let it go!

A kingdom of isolation and it looks like I'm the queen.
The wind is howling like this swirling storm inside.
Couldn't keep it in, Heaven knows I tried.
Don't let them in, don't let them see.
Be the good girl you always have to be.
Conceal, don't feel, don't let them know.
Well, now they know!
Let it go, let it go!