Breathing

I have been house bound these past two days. It started with a cold on Sunday evening. Dragged myself to work on Monday. On Tuesday, I decided I couldn't be bothered keeping up appearances and abandoned myself to the misery of the cold and a general low mood.
This has been the worst year. There probably were worse years but I don't recollect them. This one though has been the year of false beginnings, traumatic endings ,nerve -wrecking waits , false hope. There must be a lesson in here somewhere. I just don;t know what that is at the moment.
I said in an earlier post that I believed that there is no such thing as too much. I think I still believe it. Except that at the moment, I'm so tired I don't know what to believe.
I want conversation- uplifting, life-affirming, intelligent - conversation. I want to feel that connectedness that I haven't felt in so long.
I have been trawling the net looking for pieces of writing and I have discovered lovely pieces of writing . This one in particular called Orangette I found to be a lovely read.
In the meantime , I'm breathing...

No such thing as too much...

Okay, so I'm a fan of that show - Grey's Anatomy. I may not be a buy the box-set kind of person. But I have been known to switch off my phone and shut myself off from the world and curl up on the couch to watch it. Every once in a while, the voice-overs at the beginning and the end come up with startlingly accurate observations. Well, to be honest, so far there have been two which I identified with so much that they have stuck in my mind.
There was an episode in the first season when Meredith talks about how sometimes there is no such thing as too much. And then last night, it was about trading - trading people for dreams.Or more accurately about trading love for dreams.
The first part , I really truly believe now. Sometimes there really is no such thing as too much. I don't believe that you can ever love too much or dream too much or hope too much. Maybe , or rather most definitely, loving too much or dreaming too much or hoping too much can break you. It can really ,really incapacitate you for life. And yes, more often than not, some survival instinct keeps you from doing any of that. But every once in a while, or maybe once in a lifetime, you do. You do love too much and you do dream too much and you do hope too much. And also, because this is life and not a television show, things don't turn out the way you want it to. And yet,you cannot help yourself. You persist. Sometimes, I wonder why. And pat comes the answer - what else is there, really?
As for trading dreams for love. I can say in this moment,that in each of our lives there comes a time, when we would give up everything for love. I don't necessarily mean romantic love. But love. I never thought that I would ever be in that position. or make such a claim. But it turns out , I am capable of it too. There was a time when I thought that that would be a sign of weakness .But knowing what I know now, I can safely say that far from being a sign of weakness it has strengthened me in ways I am only beginning to discover...

Untitled

There are times when I wonder if I'll get over feeling a certain way. The weight of emotions become too much to actually believe that they'd one day go away and it will all be as if what went before never was.
There are times like today when washing my face over the sink before going to bed, I'm suddenly overcome and I need to stop and catch my breath. Sleep flees and I'm left wide awake trying to breathe through the pain. A friend told me once that's all that I'd have to do. Just breathe through the pain.
But what do you do when the pain overwhelms even breath? What do you do when you can barely stand up and what do you do when you feel tears pushing at you and threatening to break every barrier you have managed to erect?
I feel some days I can lower a veil of indifference over all that I truly feel.Someone said to me recently in the middle of a conversation in the dark, that maybe if the veil stayed in place long enough it'll become a skin. I thought I'd had that mastered. At least in the dark at that time, it felt plausible.And then I awoke to the bright light of day and realized that I was afraid of one day not feeling the things I feel as deeply as I feel them. What if when I stop feeling I lose everything forever? How do I live then?
There are some losses that will break me. I am sure of it. I am afraid of them. I do not know how I will live through them. And in the strange way that life has, I am made aware everyday that I am completely helpless in the face of them. How will I do it? Writing to faceless strangers in the middle of the night...and hoping for just one chance...just one more chance...to see and to hear and to talk... just one more... and then maybe more than just one more...

For one moment today

For one mad moment today I thought I'd tell you everything. In that one mad moment I was understood completely. In that one moment there was perfection. In that one moment there were no doubts.

The moment passed.

Now it is stored away. I will go back to it another day.

Musings at dawn...

It's 4 a.m and I'm wide awake. A cock crows somewhere. A distant door shuts timidly.My television emits sounds that are wholly alien to the hour - canned laughter, happy music- the volume is low and yet these sounds are alien to the hour.
In other time zones, people sit - people I once knew- or at least thought that I knew- their realities vastly different from mine. Some part of me resists the difference. And the more practical , "grown up " side, knows that this is what must be in the end.
Do I mourn the "loss" ? Honestly , no. But there is a discomfort. There is a sense of weight. Distances grow. Geography is the least of it.
After the weight, comes the weightlessness. The floating away of bits that once mattered more than life itself. Or perhaps that was only a feeling. In the end what matters really?
I remember an evening from a very long time ago when I sat on a low bench overlooking a valley , a friend by my side. We watched a full moon rise. In that moment , there was magic in the air. There was magic and that indefinable certainty of endless possibilities. I do not remember the words spoken.But there were dreams and hopes. All that remains now of that moment is a memory of the ethereal space we gazed upon. Life occupied the time between then and now.
I remember too a spray of purple flowers with drops of rain on them.I remember them resting in a little glass on a window sill. Their simple breathtaking beauty remains in my mind's eye to be retrieved in the in between times like these.
The constants...

Interlude

There is a place I can go and be myself. No pretenses . No fear. There I can go and say , this is I. This is exactly who I am. There is nothing else.
But that place now seems so far away. Now, I pretend so many things. I feign interest. I fake happiness that I don't truly feel.
My yearning for that other truer place is something I try to ignore every minute of every day. I know I'll go back. But it seems now to take forever.
I bury myself in the minutiae of a life that I have no stake in- not really.
I wait for my other life to begin. It feels just within reach- it feels just a little out of reach.
And I wait. I wait and wait.

Fear

I was taught fear. At an early age , it became part of my diet. The food came from every quarter. It came from all those who nurtured me. It would help me survive , they said. I had to be afraid. I had to learn to not trust. At least, not trust the first time. I was warned of dangers in every corner. I was warned of temptations waiting to jump out at me at every turn. These named and unnamed fears were written out on my heart , wired into the circuits in my brain.
Then came a day, now erased from memory or perhaps not erased but simply that it was a day like every other save for one thing. I decided not to be afraid. I decided fear had no place. I decided I did not want to merely survive or exist. I decided I wanted to live. An author , a very long time ago, wrote that he wanted to experience life.He said that he did not want to live the unexamined life. I have no such intense ambition. I do have the desire , though, to live and succumb to the temptations. I have found that the temptations hold no danger. At least not those that they meant.I have decided to trust until it should prove otherwise. I anticipate no danger until I can see it.
The landscapes of my heart were re-drawn that day. The circuits in my brain were re-wired.
I , to use a cliche, spread my wings.
There is one thing I replaced with fear - love.

And those who fed me fear- what of them? I hear they still survive.