I have always tried to make this blog a space where the lighter side of life steals the limelight. But an occasional variation doesn't do much harm, does it? I don't have a positive highlight for this post... it's just me blabbering yet again. Happy reading!
I am told that writing is my strength and that I should write often. But nobody tells me how? How do I write on days when I can't even feel things I desperately want to feel? How can I be creative on days when even doing the basic chores feels like a task?
I am blessed to be living on a central university campus where I get to interact with people my age from the entire country on a daily basis. My conversations with some of these people have made one thing clear: mental well-being is one of the most important issues the world needs to address today irrespective of gender, age, profession and other classifiers. I feel that along with driving, swimming, financial planning and sex education lessons, psychology should also be one of the life-skill-enhancing subjects taught in our school curriculum. That way, we're at least preparing people for real-world challenges!
It's mind-boggling to realise that human reactions to everyday problems are largely triggered by their past experiences, heartbreaks, traumas, setbacks and pain. Everyone is healing. Everyone is scarred. From a five-year-old kid to a ninety-year-old elderly....nobody here is writing on a clean slate. We deal with broken colours, faded prints, unclean boards and consequent moods around us. So while we must be kind to one another, we should also acknowledge the fact that we too are human and might come out as rude, insensitive, unkind or mean at times and while that may be unintentional, it's still heartbreaking for the recipient.
I can't go into the details, but lately, I've realised that love is a myth. Love is an obligation, love is a duty, love is a need, love is codependency, love is a habit, love is showing up when all you want to do is run away. I started this blog as a sixteen-year-old girl stuck in tears of unrequited love. Today, as an almost 24-year-old, I realise that the first blog post I wrote here was perhaps the purest form of love I've felt. As you grow older, you realise that love isn't always the romantic image that movies, novels, reels, poems, society or our vanity feeds us. Love is different for different people. Love languages are different and sometimes, in fact, most times, we end up with people who don't share the same language as us. But we don't stop loving them, we just make our peace with the mutual unintelligibility of our love languages.
Love is routine. Love is boring. Loving is dull but passionate. Love is empty but fulfilling. Love is painful yet the most peaceful emotion you'll ever experience. Love is the poisonous elixir that keeps us running while making us tired of it all. Perfection in love is inexistent. But love itself? It's the perfect oxymoron of all things right and all things wrong.
Having said that, it's also true that not every love story reaches its happy ending. Sometimes, the love we share with one becomes the roadblock to happiness in our relationship with another (childhood trauma coming in the way of our adult relationships is a classic example). Love can become the pinching weight on our fragile hearts that makes us yearn for the 'what ifs' all the while knowing that that picture is never going to be 'complete' or even 'happy' for that matter. This is what happens in modern-day relationships too. We all bring our pasts, and that one ex we regret losing, or perhaps regret never having and that memory comes in the way of our relationship with our current partner. In other cases, it's the expectations of flawlessness and the realisation that 'I don't need to take shit from another.' By now, you must have understood that I've really just come here to rant today. So hear me out some more.
I come across rude, mean and insensitive people and begin to wonder: why is he/she being mean to me when all I've been to them is nice? Anger and bitterness is the first instinctive response to unkind behaviour, but trust me, every person who's gone bitter on the world has had someone close to them spit the seeds of bitterness on their face, or experienced some incident grave enough to impact their core beliefs and behaviour. Grief left unexpressed often manifests as unkindness or coldness to those around. People often don't realise that they are yet to heal from past scars.
So, all this rant on love and pain is just to say the obvious: human actions are always logically explainable and often emotionally charged. At this point, learning the art of forgiving the other and the self seems like the key to a peaceful night's sleep after a day of analysing one's daily actions and reactions! And with that, I lay another burden off my chest, dear reader. I don't know if any of that made sense to you. I'll be honest, I've been cruel lately, rather, fate has been cruel and unfortunately, I'm cursed to live with the repercussions. I'm gradually learning the art of smiling while being stuck somewhere. This piece was really just me getting some writer's respite. Thank you for making it till here!
P.S.: I've recently added the 'Leave a message' field to this blog. So go ahead and text me the things that make you mad, sad, happy, angry or anything today (it comes directly to my mailbox, so no broadcasting happening)! Feel free to drop me a text!
I probably cannot stress enough on how much I relate to it and needed to read this—your words, the emotions, the love, the pain, its redundancy and the subsequent cruelty. Almost felt like someone went inside my brain, probably understood a thing or two and gave the jumbled feelings some words. I just want to emphasise what you've already been told: writing is your strength and you should write often. Anything be it!
ReplyDeleteSending love!