The Mirror Side! (5)

In the humble memory of “J’ s Dad” and my ability to sympathize!

I practically suck at lending a shoulder! I do, and of course, it’s not rocket science, it has got quite a lot to do with emotions and being there when one needs you etc. but then I don’t believe we are all good at it, I’m not at least, especially to people who I hold close to my heart, my sympathetic functionality nerve is more doomed than the international economic situation right now.  

A super close friend of mine – ‘J’ (sticking to his initial because you don’t know him, so take the liberty of picking whatever name you like) lost his father to a long battle of multiple organs giving up on him one after another. I mean, and this is one of the major roadblocks in his life he’s trying to overcome among a million others, but that’s a story for another time. He broke the story to me middle of the night, and I was sleeping like it was my last one (all my periods of sleep are like that, I cut off from the universe when I sleep, no beep-bloop, nothing).

I woke up to his text notification, and believe you me, if it was anyone else, I would have dropped a text of how I’m sorry about it and how they should stay strong and kept my phone to charge and continued my day normally. But no, this was not some random person, this was ‘J’, the person who has been with me in times I gave up on myself. He has been the strongest pillar of support cementing or thrashing (as and when needed) every right or wrong decision I took, with no judgmental passes, nada!

How do I tell this man that it’s okay, it’s not, I know it’s not… I know how many plans he had made to try each day to ensure that his father stands next to him when he marries the love of his life (which was supposed to be last month, but did not happen, because COVID-19) (remember when I said a million other problems, yeah). I know his world must have fallen apart, and I couldn’t make it because we are in lock-down and I suck at telling my people how I would want to fix everything for them but no I just cannot. It took me hours to text him ‘what’, just this word, and another ten minutes of writing and deleting and then finally sending an ‘I’m here’, and I cannot even begin to tell you what happened on the call.

I mean do you know those people who will crack a very wrong timing joke to avoid the awkwardness of not knowing what to say? That’d be me! I actually did that and felt so fucking stupid about technology not introducing a time machine to go back and fix the mess you make (not that this would be the only one I would fix, but whatever). But the good thing about having people who know you so well is that they know even if you say the shittiest thing to them, they’ll get it, and to put it into a perspective, it has been 15 years, he’ll get it.

I would be lying if I say I would work on this part of me and try to make it better, I know I will not. I will not change anything in me unless it is a decision, I take for myself. I have managed to earn the people around me being this person and I don’t believe I need to add anyone who feels I need fixing. If I do not demand you to fix, I will not deliver it either. For now, ‘J’ is doing better, and hope things work out well for him, he is still registering what happened but I’m sure in time he’ll come around.

If I should die and leave you here a while,

be not like others sore undone,

who keep long vigil by the silent dust.

For my sake turn again to life and smile,

nerving thy heart and trembling hand

to do something to comfort other hearts than mine.

Complete these dear unfinished tasks of mine and

I perchance may therein comfort you.

–Mary Lee Hall

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The Mirror Side! (4)

“Ever thine – Ever mine – Ever ours. ” – Beethoven…

There is a very sketchy difference in want and need, and this I have learnt over the years I have practically chosen to be delusional about my inhibitions. That, believe you me, are quite out in the open, and never, literally never in control.

I mean it works on very basic rules, my need for green vegetables can be fulfilled literally by any vendor out there, I get the right veggies, I’ll make my salad. But the sauce, the one that I absolutely love the taste of, no, not any walking brand can just replace my existing one, you cannot match the taste, and if I can’t find it around, I’ll make an effort to find it, I will! I am cheeky that way.

But suppose I don’t, and I am okay with whatever I get, I probably never liked that sauce enough, or it was replaceable, either way, the sauce will find its way to a different shelf in a kitchen where it belongs. While I will keep replacing the sauce, one after another, then another, then another… so on. Sad, very adjusting, but sad, coz adjusting!

See, I have always felt life itself is so small that if I spent it worrying about filtering everything, I would have wasted too many moments by the time I reach my pyre (or electrocution, whatever is environment friendly). My life has juggled between a very extreme set of parents, one ridiculously melodramatic mother who cried when Bambi’s mother died, and the other – my father, who was last moved, when 9/11 happened, that’s what it takes to move him.

So yes, I am the extracted perfume version of them both! Which I like by the way. Also, on that note, have you watched the movie, perfume, it’s amazing. What’s ironic is that, even while I’m a mixed breed, I’m a mixed breed of extremists, just imagine (Imagine, I’ll wait). It’s insane how I’d choose to be a want, over being a need, I mean I need my doormat, but I want my study lamp – You see the difference? I know you do. And in all the moments I have felt my space is being compromised, I have walked away, and left behind destruction that tends to seep in with time, never immediately. And believe you me, I never intend it, I don’t. I would rather opt for eating raw tomatoes (which I hate btw to death) than want someone to face that. Because I have seen it once, and it gets ugly.

Not that it doesn’t for me, it does but I have aced the art of ignorance towards anything overpowering. I’m a human driven by extreme emotions, if I was a graph on a Richter scale, I’d never touch a low, my mental earthquakes could tear the earth’s core. Well that’s what I am made of, extreme highs, definitely hard to handle, even harder to let go. And I’m not bragging, I am only stating theories derived out of years of incidences.

I recently was reading Beethoven’s letter (again, in the book – Love Letters of Great Men) to his immortal beloved in the times when she was leaving the city (the story behind it is quite beautiful) and I’m again dammed with a feeling, I am born in the wrong era! Legit!

“Ever thine – Ever mine – Ever ours. ” – Beethoven 

(PART-4) (END).