Getting By….One Breath at a Time

“The tragedy of Life is what dies inside a man while he lives” LACAS Relief Funds

 

If energy is something that comes in a capsule, I need a tubful. One reaches the brink of physical and emotional exhaustion and yet one has to plow thru life’s messes. A coworker told me yesterday: “One dies many times a day, one have to kill the self and ego many a times in order to survive, in order to live – every day!”

While taking care of the still ill parents, I have fallen ill more than once myself and I have to pick up myself again.

Sometimes it means putting up a show in front of everyone, smiling, even when you feel like dying from inside. Brushing up one’s bruised self-esteem, after every blow.

Laughing while recounting the tragedy of your life in front of someone new.

Still hearing upon others’ woes when you feel like not hearing anyone or anything else. Attending to others’ needs, summoning up the last flickers of strength.

Keeping quiet, curbing anger when the other person takes personal shots…

 

Struggles….One has to be mindful of detaching oneself from all this and enjoying a solitary cup of tea all by yourself, of taking into account the

Sky’s vibrant colors and the candy floss sky after a heavy down pour, beauty that exists in every grain, every particle of this universe and the ugliness that exists outside, in people, not in faces but in their constituents, in their attitude….  

 

The social circus was again in town. ….the wedding season commenced and all hell broke lose. It indeed was comic, very comic when the relatives reeking petro dollar descend from the neither lands and engulfed me in chummas and hugs, telling me how gorgeous I looked, how settled and fit I looked, obviously basking in the glow of new found happiness and bliss of the engagement , and the impending marriage. “So when is the marriage, who are you smsing, your fiancé, you look so obviously in love? No seriously, when is the marriage?” They kept asking and I kept smiling and smiling, arranging the silky ruffles of my dress, tweaking coiffured ringlets around my finger, wishing myself to be somewhere else. Hope grew in shape of some arrangement, and then it was amputated.  The performance was too convincing and yet the effort made me collapse towards the end. I slide into my own wasteland, submerged into my typical phase of silence. Faith yet again took a beating and cowered in a corner like a wounded animal. I sank and swam and then sank again. It really doesn’t have to get better, I am just praying that it stays tolerable….i am just praying that….

 

An Imitation of Life

We reach crossroads during certain phases of our lives, changing our outlook, our perspective, our philosophies, our relationships. They make us better or bitter – I don’t. At least, I am feeling the latter, and I won’t deny it. Mostly, it’s the combination and timing of things that get to you, make it difficult for us to be at peace with ourselves, what life has become for us, what it has offered so far, what it can’t / won’t offer.  It’s the deafening turbulence outside and the deadening silence inside; I twist and turn and curl and uncurl on my bed day after day in search of peace, in search of sleep. The tears roll off, so do the prayers, so do the curses. Yet they amount to nothing – or may be they amount to my entire life, what I was, what I strived to be, what I have become. Sick, lonely, pathetic. Wishing to avenge one’s honor, pride, dreams and innocence, by physically and emotionally harming someone, wishing something very bad to happen to him, to those he love. Life is going on well for him, I cannot believe. Karma, payback, faith? Bullshit and eyewash to appease someone who doesn’t have the means to avenge, to get even, doesn’t have the power to forgive or forget? Not knowing any better, I end up getting screwed over and over. Why i haven’t gotten over, why i haven;t moved on, why do i keep ending up at this lonely and dark corridor, which only leads to self-destruction, only to pain. Everyone needs something eventually to pin one’s hope on, to make it grow, to have someone, someone, someone…..someone…..yet decades after decades – one solitary figure ends up standing on that dock…waiting for no one and yet waiting….for a miracle, for peace and strength to carryon and be self-sufficient, if nothign else……

 I fuck memory over and over in a feverish attempt…. The heartaches of the past –gather like clouds, they thunder and pour down eventually like a storm; while the barrenness of the present slithers like morphine in my veins. And the dark murky abominable future is spread before my very eyes like a dessert. I have been meaning to gather hope, wishes, patience, dreams and faith, above all faith in a crumpled bundle and throw them in a dark ditch. Every path turns into a dead end. Something that seemed to be going somewhere falls apart – suddenly. Many friendships have died. Many hopes and dreams have died – hope that it would get better eventually, faith that after rough seas and storms, there are calm waters. In which fucking fairy tale???? Struggles and burdens only amass. All your formative years, you have been fed on the crap of values, responsibilities, sin and rewards. You readily end up taking all the responsibilities, fulfilling all the expectations, being congenial, going out of your way to help people, getting stung in the process – not getting anything in return besides more responsibilities, more expectations, more burdens. Your shoulder stoop and when you say enough, no one hears it. When you ask for help, no one comes forward. Your entire life becomes a question mark, a symbol of ridicule for everyone….. it very much feels like a melodrama to ones’ very eyes and senses as well. Decades upon decades of struggle, of being surrounded by one to many people and examples who ‘got it easy’ and yet still question you, snigger on your face and behind your back. I don’t question, I question the futility of questioning now! Not life but an imitation, when would this cacophony end?