“The days have taught you not to trust happiness because it hurts when it deceives.”
“We are captives, even if our wheat grows over the fences/ and swallows rise from our broken chains./ We are captives of what we love, what we desire, and what we are.”
And you became like coffee,
in the deliciousness,
and the bitterness,
and the addiction.
~ Mahmoud Darwish
It’s been a while since I have written and that’s mostly cause it’s summer and I feel like it’s been a while since I have felt the need to type things out so I can really experience what I have been feeling. However, I am here now because I know there are things I want to really just write down and look at. I want to look at myself in the mirror and just breathe, and know I am still the person I want to be; that my mind hasn’t taken over me in a way that I have always been afraid of. The fact that I can stand here and feel like a horrible, altered human being because all I need is to just talk it out and feel heard. I am a flawed human being but there isn’t a bone in me that wouldn’t turn to dust if I ever strayed from spreading love and kindness as much as possible. I do think it takes a deep breath and a staunch belief in one’s own mind to really hold ground because anger can blind oneself and it’s so much harder to converse and talk through the pain but it is so much better than shoving it all away and wanting to just call things off as terrible. I want to take it slow, evaluate situations and not become the crazy person I know lives in the depths of my mind, the same that I have realized is just my inner child that has been unnecessarily subdued and lashes out in unwarranted manners. Rather than reprimanding myself, I kind of talk to myself in the voice I needed when I was a kid, soothing voice and soft firmness. I think the main thing is about understanding how much is pushing versus overextending. Readers, I am on a journey to be okay with myself because living for others is beautiful but sometimes when you are sitting alone and it’s just you, then you realize that you’re just playing the floor is lava with inconsistent, unreciprocated attachments. I am twenty three years old and I love everyone in my life but I don’t think I can work on growing the love if I don’t heal my inner child, who constantly suffers from abandonment issues. I don’t want anyone who offers me a helping hand to be scratched by my nails of desperation, of finally being saved from always being the one who is left behind. Love is violence but it shouldn’t be, it must offer respite from this cruel existence. Incidentally, my father bought me two new plants and I named them Lilac and Thorny. My older succulents shriveled up and I am trying to understand how to love and care for things without choking them. There’s a lesson there, somewhere or may be I am just a cruel god with no understanding of my mortal beings.. Or maybe just kinda dumb.
I am not sure where I want to go with this post but I feel like ranting about how I have been doing yoga challenge with my B and it’s been interesting. I am on the train back from New York to DC and I realize there is so much that I don’t really talk about as much anymore. It’s not that I don’t feel all that I used to but I realize that as we get older, we stop giving importance to lot of what we feel. Often times, I find myself just waving something off due to the lack of criticality and maybe that’s why life gets easier and we slowly start dying on the inside. I think I really need coffee, sometimes I find myself being particularly extra existential without it. There is so much of me that has begun to rot and I can feel it dragging me down sometimes; maybe it is time to replant sentiments and not let old insecurities make me heavy. It’s funny because I am happy, don’t get me wrong, there is a simple ecstasy in seeing where I have gotten to in my life and that I am healthy, happy and satisfied. I am grateful but empty; there is something in me that is like a snide sneering voice, whispering in my ear, “You don’t deserve the good things in your life. You can break yourself over people and lay your life down but at the end of the day, you aren’t worth staying back for. You are not worth an explanation.” This is just the side of me that likes to overestimate her pain because I know that it’s not true; I am worthy of the love I receive and I am a honest, kind woman who has made mistakes but always works towards making up for them. I guess what I am trying to say is that there may be a few people who left but there are more people who never saw leaving as an option, and they continue to prove how much I mean to them. It teaches me that I should mean as much to myself; I take so much care of myself, which is definitely worth me giving a little kiss to myself, on the forehead. I was reading about how our hurt and grief is just us being stuck in the inner child who faced pain, so to really face these insecurities, we must talk softly and sweetly. I don’t know if it is working but I guess life is about trying different coping mechanisms because sadness is a snide thing; we must be vigilant, we must be ready to fight it all the time. It gets tiring but I feel strong when I look into a mirror. I know my life isn’t as hard as it could be, honestly it has been quite sweet for the most part but pain has no measurement, it’s all baggage and it’s all heavy.
I feel like I have become such an existential and preachy person, so maybe I will talk about my general life. It’s been a while since I last wrote so let me see what I have done in the last 4.5 months. I went to Portland, Maine and had a really fun time with my friends, sailing and eating amazing food. My dad lived with me for over two months and it made me realize that it had been a while since I had faced constraints and it was really agitating. We went on a fourth of July cruise, which was amazing and I discovered a love for cranberry juice mimosas; orange juice is amazing too but it was nice to experiment. They also played a Punjabi song which was so funny for all of us and I remember dancing so much and just feeling like I was really there for the first time. I played laser tag for the first time, which was loads of fun cause I realized that I am horrible with accuracy and just an aggressive player. Me and my friend AJ convinced a bunch of random people at a party that our other friend A watched hentai, which in retrospect was a lot funnier cause he only found out at the end of the night and was quite comically infuriated. My brother took me for painting on Rakhi, which was fun and he gave me a gift card for bath and body works, which was also nice. My friend T visited from New York and went around DC and then we went to New York. He is going back to India for a while and it is quite evident he will miss the great city of Manhattan but change is inevitable and sometimes it hurts but it’s important in life. I also went to Vermont, which was equally an equally amazing experience. I purchased my first car about two months ago and named her Artemis. I have been learning how to effectively drive her and I think I feel like I am getting better. She is patient with me and well, I know she is a car but she is my first and I feel like the mindfulness that goes into driving is almost like a quiet meditation. It feels like I am running or just focusing on my breathing. I enjoy it with all my heart and I absolutely love driving. It makes me feel so in control, in a regulated way. I probably sound like a control freak but I like being in control of the small things so I can go with the flow of the things which really matter.
Readers, I just wanted to kind of also kind of present a inner turmoil I have been dealing with. I am doing something new in my personal life, something that vaguely scares me but also makes me breath easy because I feel like I am facing some of my greater fears in life and really trying to work towards being a better and less childish and hurt version of myself. I hope I do a good job of it. I have become really bad at talking things out and maybe writing here helped me with that but now I have people to talk to so I don’t need to always rant. However, this is where I started and I can’t imagine ranting to the world about my petty, existential problems of love, life, friends, family, and work. I love being in love and knowing that for the first time, there is a lot more in the picture. I am now an active participant of my life, which I guess makes all of it so much more active. I am letting myself feel things and also sleeping a lot. I am not sure if I am sad or if I am incredibly happy. Sleep for me has always been about happiness and calmness, because if I am angsty then I definitely can’t bring myself to fall asleep. Regardless of what I am, I know I am feeling soft and excited for my life. I am ready for new experiences and emotions; I am ready to feel all the things I have waited my whole life to really feel. I hope you let yourself feel things too, Readers; I think it is beautiful and also relieving. Until next time, Readers.
“A bench in a park,
Hand in hand, the leaves turn red;
we wait for fall-time.” (steps, a haiku)
GreekGeek 