I realize that I have lately been talking to myself quite a bit; makes me wonder just what is it that I am trying to achieve? It’s like a hive of thoughts are cramming in the tight confines of my mind, bursting and pushing to explode and release itself. Thoughts. Let me not put this as an attempt at writing a story with a definite plot and a definite predictive ending or beginning of some new doctrine of living.
There are a lot of ideas that tease and chase, meandering into my mind and flowing out into nothingness…a vast desert of dry, scorching, brown, sandy plains of nothingness, wasted as a drop would be in such harsh terrain.
So, what is it that fills my mind so, bang in the middle of the night, awake and unwilling to wake? Perhaps, I talk to my self because I am the only one who is willing to listen to me at this moment or has ever been willing to in my life. I know what I go through, surviving each day with a sense of fatality. I am not even afraid of death. Sometimes, life leaves you just as purposeless.
Relationships, a friend of mine said this evening, are always complicated. All of us complicate relationships and it is like a sort of deliberation on our parts to make a simple relationship complex. I agree. To add to her statement, I say, maybe that’s because we know our lives are mundane and to continue to exist it we want to make it interesting. I wonder if that is it. For the moment, it seems like the profoundest truth that’s ever come out of an intoxicated evening. Do we complicate all our relationships deliberately?
Earlier on, this evening again; this seems to be one of those evenings when I have plenty going on in my head; I was telling another friend that I do know that somewhere, something is definitely wrong with me. I do know the truth. I have a series of unsuccessful relationships to prove the fact that men never can stand up for me. No matter how much I love my man, there seems to be some kind of eternal flaw each of them see in me which they find hard to live with. Why do I keep blaming them? Yet, I do not remember demanding my rights. Like a complacent domesticated pet, I am around till I have some usefulness and then I am given up on; sent to the pet store to be claimed by another owner whose latest fancy is to keep a pet. Do I even exist?
Some days, even now, I feel a need to bring upon myself a cutting away from this entire existence. Or, do I get into these phases when I find myself completely unable to help myself live through the moments? What kind of moments I ask myself and then I feel I cannot dare to drag myself into those dark corridors which pass on and on, endless, filled with shadows, darker.
Why did I start this off? As if I don’t know that one fine day it will end up getting trashed, deleted forever, because I cannot bear to have someone else understand who or what I am. One can indeed end up wondering just what one has become. I do that. I do not know myself sometimes. It’s kind of funny because you are going through the motions and you know this really isn’t what you want to do.
So, what do I want to do? I want to probably be needed, in a way that makes me feel yes, I am wanted, wanted so much that the person wants to spend each day of the rest of his life with me and does it. May be that’s not such a hard thing; may be possible; may perhaps.
Why is it so difficult for people to stand by me? What is it that I do not give that makes him run away? Why is it that I do not push or demand like any normal person would be in a relationship? Is that why? Is it because I project myself as a convenience just because I give the person enough space? Is it because when I do that all hurt and pain gets validated and becomes a part of what I get because I try so hard to make him happy?
How do I manage my life without him? It’s empty; way too empty. I cannot think of any other person in my life I know more than I feel I know him. Perhaps I really don’t know him and all I do is fail miserably in understanding him and he simply humors me by making me feel I do understand him. Perhaps. I’m lost without him; so terribly lost. I simply find him flashing in my mind, moment after moment, pictures in my mind, like a mind camera taking in, and freezing frame after frame where the pictures tell so much more because it’s a lifetime iced up in time.
I wish so many times I could remember the first day, the first moment of him meeting me. I wish I could remember if the season was dim or bright. It just went past so unrecorded and slipped away, while I stood blindly. I wish I could have marked those moments of a world that was forming just then…it seemed so insignificant then and now meant so much more! Do we ever recall that first touch of hand, or that one glance that topples your world over? Do we even consider just when it touches us like a soft breeze and smashes our world like a storm, squishing emotions and walking all over our mind and soul?
Do we ever know? We never know then.
We are never prepared to feel and to remember until much later when it all comes back like a flash of déjà vu; spins your mind, twists your heart, leaves you cornered, breathless. I know now. I know my life had no complications. Why does the warmth of love bring with it an endless bounty of chaos and complexities for the rest of your life? Love goes away someplace else and all it leaves you with is the chaos, the complexities that came with it; souvenirs of a time that seems so surreal. I mean, until it hits you for the first time, you don’t even know. Nothing prepares your life for the pandemonium after.
A gift with a catch! The catch - a person’s life entwined with yours until it goes away leaving you addicted and parched; ever so slowly, ever so surely, ever so fatal. So, today, when I am bereft of that elusive feeling, I want to believe in myself, have faith, and win the one big fight I never in my life want to lose…no one can live an unloved and unshared life because we are not islands, because we are human, with feelings.
When you love someone sometimes it’s real hard. When he is sad, you are sad too. You want to take the grief that you hear in his voice. How do you love right so that he is happy? How do you return the twinkle back in his eyes when he smiles; all his smiles are never reaching his eyes. His soul is far away or simply neglected over other more pressing demands life has doled out; shut from everything. How do you open the doors to his soul again? There is something that has bound you together and you feel close to his heart as though you have known him from eons gone by. When you are that moved, tears flow; soul hurt and mind bruised; the feeling lingering in whiffs of a bitter sweet perfume long fading…
I have a way with words I am told. That is not true. Perhaps, I do have a better way with words on paper rather than through my voice. There is so much I wish to say but I somehow never get to because I halt in the process of saying things. The words are there, ready, coming up and then mid-way as if there is a wall, it halts at my throat, hitting an invisible wall of fear and deepest emotions that threaten more to flow as tears rather than words from my mouth.
It is this inability to further say what I want to that makes me write thoughts down. Do not look for ulterior motives in what I write. There is nothing beyond the fact that I want myself to be able to understand me. I am my own contradiction; inadequate, insatiably longing to make a home someplace from where I shall never yearn to walk away.
Yes, I am a grossly insecure person, hiding behind layers and layers of façade. I put up acts, survive behind masks that make me seem a fortress of strength. Little do I ever dream that I will meet someone who will instantly see through the layers and layers of pretence and bravado and see me for who I really am; a frightened girl, so afraid of her own self and the world around that she does not let anyone even get near her shadow.
I am most afraid of falling in love because it never really seems to last. Perhaps, I, who chooses to believe that the meaning of love is known to me, really have no accurate understanding of what love is or should be all about. All I know is that I have been hurt often enough in life. Not that it’s easy to understand love…I have my own understanding of the meaning of love, distorted, clear or otherwise.
What is this relationship I am in all about? It is my reality check on life and love and soul-search. This relationship is necessary for me. I am tired. Am I stupid? I guess so. I know I need him in my life. I know how much I miss him. I know I want to share little things that happen. I know I want to wake up with his face in the pillow next to mine for the rest of my life.
There are days when I think of what I want in a relationship. What we want and what we get are seldom the same. Perhaps I have only myself to blame for that. I hold no cards when I love someone. Perhaps, I never really had a man who has truly loved me. I do want my man to be able to stand up for me. I do not want a man who is embarrassed to walk beside me in public, to hold my hand and support me in what I believe. I want a man who is able to take me for who I am; someone who can make me see the real me and hold my face towards it and assure me with the warmth of his love that it is okay to look at me.
I want to be a child one moment, a girl the next and a woman yet again another moment. I want to be able to switch from one to the other without having to fear being hurt again, without having to be judged all the time, without having to keep up appearances, without having to brave it out when all I want is to cuddle up to you and just know that I can let go, that I can cry and not have to stop until I have actually stopped.
I dread using the words “I need you”. Yes, it’s true I need him. I need him to always be there for me, completely. Then, I think…what if he does not need me. What if I am the one who needs him and it’s not the other way around? I need to be needed. For me that’s the security of my daily existence. My sense of worth comes from the fact that I am needed.
I do not wish to lose my faith. I do not wish to push my feelings onto him before he has sorted out his own. And yet, I being the person I am, I do just that. I am pushing my feelings onto him. Perhaps he was not ready and perhaps this went too fast. Perhaps he needed his own time and space before he said anything or committed himself to me. Perhaps, I know, I am only fooling myself with that thought.
I am entirely insecure. I don’t hear from him; I fear that. I find a gap in his communication; I fear that. I get a voice mail instead of him taking my call; I fear that. I fear it all. It makes me insecure. I should understand him. I should know just how it’s like to be at work. I should but I still get the fears.
Life has its strange ways of coming back to make you change your outlook. Over and over again, it lets you see miracles in its strife, hope in its despair, love in its indifference, magic in the humdrum of routine things, a balance in what is thought as a raw deal. All of it is the truth of life; changes, changes and more changes.
Have I learnt all there is in life? Today is never enough, yesterday never was, and tomorrow is but a test of our understanding of today and yesterday. As I sit, gazing out to another of those pretty scented candles play on the wall, I dwell on things, linger a moment longer on the mundane and usual and find that it is extraordinary in itself. Each of us, and all that we do, are ordinary things done by ordinary people, and because of its commonness, are extraordinary people doing extraordinary things.
Just what did I learn with his presence in my life? I learnt that you could be dejected one moment and feel better the next. I feel that we can pass on our warmth to another person without really even trying sometimes. It just comes naturally most of the time. I learnt that no matter how cold we are, there exists a humanity in each of us that lets us reach out to complete strangers and make them feel better, even if its just once in a while. I learnt that there is a reason why things happen the way they do. I learnt that it is within each of us to find our self worth.
I also learnt that I continue to find excuses to validate my existence in tandem with his as if it really is there. In the middle of the night, like in bright sunlight, my relationship with the man I love is in a haze. Over the years, my heart has ached and yearned for perfection in relationships and I have discovered that as we get older the dynamics and definitions of love changes. It’s a rather complex issue in itself and yet in its complexity dwells its inane simplicity.
Life has this sick habit of handing me a pack of cards I cannot but hold and cannot but pack. I want to simply pack off, show the world the finger and say I’m doing just what I want to do, to be with this man and not ever go anywhere. A part of my mind even as I type, is pleading so much to just be sitting next to him. It’s a kind of warmth that spreads to my whole being when I think of him. It’s that cozy secure feeling that I can actually, today, sleep without any thought of even disturbing dreams touching me. I feel that I can let go and all will still be right with my world.
That’s how he makes me feel. The sound of his voice soothes me like no other. I feel so intensely about him. I am afraid of time that will take us apart instead of bringing us together and then, what will I do? How will I survive?
