If you are reading these words, I have chosen to overcome my fear rather than accepting my grief.
My grief will be a part of me, there is no denying that. But today, it’s expression is its redemption.
My sadness is terribly lonely, and nothing makes loneliness more palatable than being alone. My loneliness craves freedom, the freedom to truly be alone.
I don’t know if I will make it through this night. There is comfort in the room next to me, I only need to open the doors but the darkness is a convenient excuse. You can’t see black swans flying at night. A beetroot never bleeds. My weight is an irresistible muse that keeps me chained to this bed. I have walked through life making sure that I don’t occupy too much space, my voice isn’t too loud, I’m not disturbing the air by too much movement. What makes me saddest is that I am no different now, still too worried about being heavier than I am allowed to- making sure I’m always convenient for this world outside. Only difference is that now I’m aware. My being has been carved deeper by the magnitude of grief it can hold.
With my whole being I have asked to be free. With my whole being I have craved solitude. Not because I love humankind less, but because I love them too much. Because they keep constantly rejecting my love in guises they themselves cannot understand. And I am sad, sad because of the misplaced bitterness I carry inside me.
Sad because the futility of a life that is not characterized by freedom mocks me in my face.
Everyday, I grieve a childhood lost too early. Everyday I grieve not knowing where to put all of my love. Everyday I grieve being so terrifyingly lonely in this crowd. Everyday I grieve not being alone enough. Everyday I grieve that I am not enough. Not yet. It is my weakness to be hopeful, at least in principle.
I carry this sadness from a very long time. I have carried it through my childhood into my teenage years all the way up to this moment. It would be glorious if I could tell you that in this moment, I am choosing to let it go but I know the choice will make itself when the time is right. All we can do is create a space and then watch what comes from it. This is not wisdom, I simply know it from experience. Perhaps the opposite of wisdom is simply inexperience.
For a long time, I have craved to be grown up, to handpick things to keep in my life, the harrowing desire to create a life which is my own kept me going. Now, I’ve reached a stage where I can begin doing that and the very things I coveted with all my heart, I realise I no longer want and that is an emptiness I am simply not ready for. Longing is a bittersweet thing, it’s the heaviest word to hold in your heart and the lightest to speak with your tongue. It’s carefully constructed ruse keeps you on your toes till you look at the destination with a doomed emptiness, at least the longing had filled your heart with the warmth of desire.
I feel like I’ve been doing life all wrong. The harshness of the world outside has caught up with the softness in mine. The quest for something beautiful is ongoing, I have not lost faith. Hope is a fast depleting quantity, but I’ve learnt that it is also something that replenishes fast. I will be watchful, I will be faithful, my cup carved deep by my sorrows, some imagined, some real- all felt. The burden of truth is something I cannot carry over the threshold of dawn with me. I need someone to pick it up so that I can carry my emptiness across unharmed by the realities that disarm. My loneliness will not allow it.
I feel trapped. Sometimes I think being fossilised in this little box wouldn’t be too bad, I might almost have a chance at beauty, at leaving a permanent mark, of being a reminder of something that was once alive. The opposite of freedom isn’t captivity, it’s defeat. I do not know if I will make it through the night and so, I am here doing the one thing I know how to do. I am here, writing about not knowing if I will make it through the night
My living room is a stage and the audience keeps murmuring. I speak in prose and demand answers in praise. I crave the applause yet detest the attention. Contradiction. The opposite of a profound statement may as well be another profound statement. My heart is too young and resists wisdom too much to understand this. I know how to spell the word hypocrisy now. Every space I occupy, there is somewhere else to be.
My writing saves me, my diaries guard me. I pour my heart out and then seal the secrets with ink. Some part of me hopes that someone will read it and hug me. That they will say they understand. I am not impervious to the longings of being understood, to that of being loved; no one is. Although we all like to pretend like we’re enough for ourselves. That we’re okay.
For a very long time I have dreamt of being understood. What would it feel like? To have someone look at you and see you, to have their questions answered with a glance. For you to admit to someone that you’re perhaps not enough. Tomorrow you will be, but today, you’re not and have a warm hand to hold.
Every two years I am convinced that I am finally invincible. Every two days I am convinced I was stupid a couple of days ago and between these two, time passes be my. My yearnings are stitched within the seam of this text, you must forgive me for that. I do not know how to exist separate from how I want to exist. The nature of a human is to long, long to be alive tomorrow, long to find someone to be alive with.
What is there to talk about in this life? What is there to say that may be worth listening to?
Talk of love, talk of freedom, the very ingredients of life.
The joy of belonging, the joy of being understood, the joy of purpose, the recipes of life.
Food didn’t always need to be cooked. It’s possible to simply eat raw. If you want the flavour, you must make a mess.
I'm so worried about fitting my entire life into these words that I am forgetting to take a breath. A full stop, a comma before the sentence ends. I am so worried that my words aren’t painting the full picture that I’m forgetting to render my strokes visible. As I write this I wonder what these metaphors mean and what they convey and I realise that they communicate a nebulous half truth at best but a sentence follows another, what I cannot find a place to say here, I can say in the next one. The words I cannot conjure now, I will conjure in the next moment.
The promise of a tomorrow.
How beautiful, how delusional.
It keeps us going until one day it doesn’t and yet, the only way to stay sane is to believe that there will be a tomorrow. One in which we will be miraculously wiser, stronger, better. In this promise we will learn to live in the present and then suddenly the promise of tomorrow won’t be such an important one. These are mere speculations, I am yet to live a day where the promise of tomorrow doesn’t haunt me. These are mere musings, believe in them only after you have experienced a grain of truth.
Till then I can only promise you, and myself another tomorrow.
A tomorrow
In which you will finally be yourself.
~Love
A day younger, a year older
Manasi
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