My Nia, I don’t call you this for nothing. You dazzle my world! You are the silver line of my cloud, and that’s all you need to know. Cheers to your first equinox. To you & I. I hope you grow up to be fiercer, sharper, and more unforgiving than your mum ever was. You’ll need it. Thank me later!
I was born with you, the same morning,
The one in which I realized I would rip myself open for you!
The moment you were placed on me, I knew, I have my albatross!
And at the risk of sounding cliché,
I miss my time with me, my body, I miss being able to sip my poison too!
But I don’t miss the person I was before you!
You feel like my heart was cut out of my chest and placed on me!
The sleepless nights with you feel right, You feel right!
If you’re deluded that it was love that kept you going, no it wasn’t!
Let me enlighten you! Contrary to popular belief, I have always understood love as just another emotion, in-fact in my head rage is stronger than love. People push their limits harder in rage than in love, don’t trust me? Go back into your life and reiterate.
Love is given so much weightage because it carries many more essential, far-significant, and nerve-wracking chemical reactions in your head. And that’s that. It acts as an escape, a reason to vent, a permanent shoulder to cry on, self-consuming and nasty make outs, opening up without the fear of being judged, and a long list of other perks. So honestly, no love keeps you going, it’s the transactional benefits that keep you going.
A part of me was glad, I haven’t had a transactional, self-benefiting experience. However, I’ve had a loud and clear – Oh God, I want you! – kind of experience. And I wouldn’t trade that for something as small as love.
Personally, if I’m in a narrative, it would open with,
“If you still have a space permanently in my head, it’s not because there was love. It is because your actions enraged me and so did mine. Because I touched the dragon and made love with its spitting fire while it burned my nights and days for senseless hours, till our bodies turned into a fragrant carcass. I fought, screamed, and scratched the mental peace out of you, and so did you. I had found content metaphorically, literally, and rhetorically.”
So, honestly quit it, you can’t convince me and neither can I. Not on love is bigger than want for you and want is bigger than love for me. We do more things out of want than we do out of love. A raging desperate want, in my head is a purer emotion, far stronger than love.
You live through sunsets and I through sunrises. We are different, in ways hard to comprehend. So, for us to co-exist in one moment, together, even for a few seconds, it would take the sun, the moon, the stars, and the universe itself to align. Or maybe, just take a tans-Atlantic flight, the dawn and dusk co-exist beautifully (I say it with personal experience), and a for a few minutes you’ll know what I mean.
If you don’t make me angry, you don’t matter. Easy!
Have you ever felt a strange contraction in your mental muscles when you’re in a situation and you intend do to something and you end up doing something else completely because of some god forsaken reason?
In my case, it mostly will be only because of my eidetic memory that restricts most of my current actions depending upon what happened in the past (basically my idea of letting an incidence go is highly mothballed, I’m a major pain in the ass that way) I just do not let it go and its not like it doesn’t take a toll on me, it does but well what’s some sleepless nights over self-worth. It’s not intentional, this is just my make, i’m manufactured this way, guilty as charged. But practically speaking I cannot be held guilty for putting myself first, don’t we all… we do! ( And please don’t start with this whole – I put my family first etc.- in your head for god sake,- I’m not putting the obvious people in the same basket like others) I mean otherwise.
So, I have an eidetic memory with massive toppings of a PhD in how to never forget things. One I never forget and second it’s like a videotape that I can play in my head and watch it a million times if I want. Sometimes it’s an amazing feeling to recollect things and feel it all again but there are times it feels like an alien hand syndrome, you are the one choking yourself against your will. In moments of vulnerability, it will be at its spike to remind you of everything you want to forget desperately.
I have married (pretty loyally) the idea of revamping my mind over the years in a way that I intentionally forget what hurts or makes me vulnerable. My relationship with vulnerability hasn’t been that amazing, I hate the idea of believing that I could or will ever again feel it (again – because I have been there in my early adult life and it was scarring and of course a brilliant transformation point, but scarring). I was raised with way too much preaching of self-worth, and it runs through my veins now. I don’t feel a person is valued unless they value themselves, if I don’t hold my place high, you will not either. If I allow a certain emotion to seep in through a leaking spot, I left open, it will be put to misuse (and it has been, but I’ll give myself that I was just starting to grow up).
It has been almost a decade since then, and I have grown up to understand if I want something, I will want it on a simple term of acceptance. Acceptance of who I am, how I am and how there is no need for anyone to tell me how to live my life (unless asked). It’s significant to value the faith instilled in you by someone, the handing over of their weakest points, the very tough decision over permitting authority over some rarely sparked emotions, the irresponsible and maddening passion released without a blueprint of intimacy for once, the basic and the most obvious things – words!
The earlier it is understood that as much as language is beautiful, it is wrenching as well, the better. For a person of my mental ability who hardly ever gets impressed or agrees easily to anything, the agreement part means quite a lot. Agreement in language, in thoughts, in standing by words, in bringing the force of nature down when intimate, in being on loggerheads all the time but still knowing where to stop… there has to be an agreement that is respected and maintained.
And if not, I will always know my way to the door!
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.
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!
Longing is not how it used to be When fantasies are no longer how they used to be In their place are superfluous memories Of a life that was far from exemplary Looking back now only makes it gloomy Mourning a life that you wished for with the makeshift roomie The sleepless nights of wanting those keep you awake No, it’s not work, oh c’mon, for god sake The one that you remember, yes, the erstwhile Serve only as a reminder of when life was worthwhile Longing is not how it used to be So, little dove, try harder, maybe with a glee It was a paradox, that didn’t come with a slip of guarantee
It’s been years today to the first time we bro hugged, First time since we sat across tables freezing and bugged, First time since I noticed the color of your eyes, First time since I stole a sigh, First time since you switched places on the road, First time since we shared the dense smoke, First time since our jittery first nudge, First time since the Italian was a waste buck, First time since I decided on my cure, First time since all firsts pure, Here we are, today, in many of our firsts, Like the gold flames, at a pinnacle!
The closure I think comes to you in a million ways, Sometimes in ways of the world falling apart And sometimes with a chance to put it all back together, There will be baggage, of-course, But then you’ve aced the art of solo travel darling, Remind yourself of all the fiercer bulls you have leashed & shoo this little pup away, Remember,
You’re not the La La Land, You’re the Oscar for it!
We have run from clubs to beaches and back, Drinking poisons from bottles, Jumping into seasons of deep seas in our clothes, And making out on the rocks through thunders, Made promises over wildfires high fiving thunders, To never make sense, To hope the odds are in our favor, And I fell in the supernova of the moment, Oh the blast, And the following curl of smoky whirlwind will last forever!
Be A Paradox 