Confessions; preluding Redemption

How do you tell the people you’ve always fought for, that you’ve lost. That you’ve let them down. That everything you’ve blamed was a lie, to hold up this self-damaged fragile edifice of hope. That no one else is at fault, except yourself. That you’ve failed to do the only thing that you were in this for.

But, the next chapter cannot begin until this one ends. This dark chapter of misery and shadowy grey has gone on long enough, and the last page will only turn, with confessing to the people I’d always feared letting down, that I went on to do exactly that. This is not easy for me, far from that. If I could somehow correct everything that happened, believe me, I would. But that point is long gone. There is no denial now. No anger. No more will to bargain. I’m now stuck somewhere between Depression and acceptance. Trying to escape the Former. Preparing to leap for the latter. And it’s Frightening.

Frightening to know that what lies in between is a dreadful, grief filled river of suffocating muck, that i have to cross.

And knowing what lies ahead is the acceptance of grief, not the riddance from it’s haunting desolation

Yet, it’s still hilariously sad how, when everything falls apart, the scars you never wanted to see, reveal themselves with aching simplicity. Sometimes i like to think of it as Life’s approach to comedy, a playful attempt to humor itself after it got tired of being mundane for everyone else. Maybe, that’s what all this simply is; life’s crack at satire. The tragic irony kind; the kind that’s sad enough to seem funny.

That’s what I’ve realized these past few days. Because everyone I have reached out for help, has pointed out flaws that it now seems, had been clearly visible. That’s the thing about problems, you can never tell when they are problematic enough to fight. Of course until you finally can, but it’s always too late by then.

I am now at a point where I’ve made the same kind of mistakes too many times to count. And I kept digging deeper, avoiding any form of help, for a long time now. The hole is so deep now that the only way out now is “help”. That’s what I’ve been trying to get all this time. And as exhausting, this dreary act of revealing myself for the mess I am, may have been it has led to some hurtful yet necessary realizations.

“Part illness and part series of colossally stupid mistakes”

I have accepted my part in creating this mess. I was the one who made these mistakes and I will be the one who’s going to pay for them. Just like I’ve been paying for all the previous ones that contributed to this. But, the repetition of these mistakes has to end before everything else does.

And the only way, this can happen is by embracing the flaws that led to them. Accepting the failures you’ve been ignoring all along, in front of yourself but more importantly, in front of the people you were supposed to be fighting for.The people you’ve been lying to, hoping they won’t notice your fragile, broken self.

I have to come clean

“Spit it all out, De-clutter your mind, tell them everything”

It’s frightening. and it’s going to hurt.

But, it’s Necessary.

Fallen, Again.

“Write Hard and Clear about what hurts”

Everything, Mr. Hemingway. Everything Hurts.

The Past. The Future. And this dreadful In-between.

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A lifeless grey. But darker. More scary.

Once again trapped in the storm, I’ve tried so hard to run away from. But, it’s not just the Depressive grey shadow this time. This time it’s also an anxious suffocation. Like Drowning in Muck.

Will this never end?

Is this time, it is the end?

Where are the fucking endings when you need them?

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I’m a broken person

Held together with the fragility of a feather. One touch away from shattering into oblivion.

And this is why I don’t let anyone come close. This is why I have to be alone. Because I fear being shattered. Because I fear revealing the emptiness inside to anyone who comes close.

But at times like this. Every devil that I’ve tried so hard to hide inside this hollow seems to reveal itself. All at once.

And once again, I am forced to face with this weak, helpless reflection of myself. As I start imploding within the hollow inside.

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I drive myself mad: suffocated by existence.

The clergy keeps reciting tales of torment and agony.

Yet, here I am, tormented by existence and feelings.

So, at times I stoop to God; at times I seek refuge in wine.

When oblivious, I vanish; when conscious, I am in anguish!

Without the strength for peace, without the courage to agitate,

When I look all over, it is my own being, revealed and concealed:

I am the one who made the nectar; I am the one who made the pulpit.

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Everything happens when it should.

Storms don’t end early

But they don’t end Later, either.

Time is continuous.

This too shall pass

One of us has to end before the other

 

Until this passes.

Goodbye.

Excerpts and Sandstorms

Even though I’ve always associated myself with that avid literary fanatic bunch that reads any good piece of literature they can get their hands on; “fortunately” the truth is I’m not.

Yes, I do start a lot of books, but only a few chosen ones end up finished.

Tells you a lot about me, doesn’t it? Incomplete, unfinished, inconsistent, dispassionate.

But that’s not how I see it. The reason why, I’ve gone on to finish very few “books” in my life is because, unlike the sane one’s out there; I’m not in it for the satisfaction of knowing how it ends. I don’t crave that closure.

Ambiguity, for me, is a beautifully crooked necessity for life.

I like to witness how the story is told. Regardless of what happens before or after. Regardless of how “monotonous” the storyline is. Of how “anti-climactic” the ending is.

If a few pages, paragraphs or sometimes even sentences are written with the kind of beauty that you can feel hitting you; this destructive beauty is all that counts. Nothing more, nothing less.

Hence, my love for excerpts. Incomplete. Ambiguous. Unfinished. Excerpts.

Just as life should be.

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Read this, a few days ago. Still cannot get over this utterly dreadful, beautiful composition of words.

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.

 

And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You’ll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.

 

And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”

– Haruki Murakami, Kafka On The Shore

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Because  sometimes, the most beautiful stories are the ones, left unfinished.

Reminders

Life is a circle. An infinite circle of events within a dreadfully finite span.

Ironic isn’t it. Countless anti-depressants and eight months later, standing at the edge of that same gloomy grey abyss. A scary reminder of what I’ve tried to leave behind.

And there seems to be control.

Being alone for so long, I fell in love with loneliness. And now that the curtain has risen, the same voice speaks of anger, frustration and escape. The same screaming person I’ve tried to murder with craving hands.

Sometimes, although visibly scary, we are seldom prepared for the arrival of change. As if, not looking will somehow stop it. Sadly, It never does. And when it finally hits, it leaves you desperately scrambling to pick back the pieces of your old self.

But something has changed since the last time I crashed. Faint echoes assuring that somehow it’s all going to be alright, that some strength still remains. Sometimes, these faint echoes are all you need.

“And yet, the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me….
…Unafraid”

The Beginning ends now.

Adventus Invictus Sancti

This poem has perhaps been the most helpful combination of words to get me through hard times.  I felt that this blog, aimed towards understanding myself would be incomplete without perhaps the most beautifully relatable poem i’ve come across, and the impact it still continues to have on me.

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What Ernest Henley wrote 127 years ago, still has the same effect on the reader as it it did then.

And perhaps that is the beauty of the written word, it stands unaffected by time. Time, which strives towards the destruction of everything in it’s path to prove it’s majesticity, seems to be rather helpless against the written word.

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“Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul”

Until Later,
Captain

Beginning Again

It’s been quite some time, eh?

Time.

My struggles at understanding time still continue. Sometimes I think Time is God.

No end. No beginning. Just Vastly Continuous. Consuming, Creating Life and everything else. And maybe, somewhere down the road, the hope of reparation.

But, this is not why I fail to distiinguish God and Time. No.  The reason for that is, that both Time and God are perhaps the only thing that although shared so explicitly with everyone, are also perhaps the most closest things to us.

__________________

A thousand thoughts are running through my head right now. Constant distraction. And even though words seem to be trickling grudgingly slow, I feel like I need to write.

__________________

I’ve never felt good about beginnings. A year ago, the explanation for that may have been an excuse filled with bullshit and lies.

No lying now.

It is because I’ve never been good at them.

Relationships. Schools. Writings. And the dreaded “Fresh Starts”. None of them began the way they were supposed to. None of them ended the way they were supposed to either.

But Maybe I’m wrong

Maybe, I’m looking at the picture from a different end, the darker pessimistic one. Maybe, the reason beginnings frighten me is because they lead to endings that are completely different from what I make up in my mind, never in a “good” way.

Maybe, beginnings are so scary because you can control when they happen, but not the eventuality of them leading to an end. An ending, which is seldom what you imagine.

But isn’t that the beauty of it all?

The beauty of being able to select what matters and what doesn’t, from this Vast, Dreadful, Majestic Continuity.

Yes, you can not control how things end but maybe, that is perhaps the reason it is called the End. Because what follows is completely Divergent. Because everything that happened before ceases to matter.

Isn’t that the beautify of Time’s vast continuity?

That as soon as you cross that point in time when things end, Things Begin. And as long as Time exists, You can never run out of beginnings.

Yes sometimes they may be followed by frightening, dreadful endings that may loom upon your existence forever. Haunting you in lonely nights.

Yes, at some point it may feel almost useless to “Begin” again.

But as long as every beginning is followed by an ending, there is hope.

Not the kind of hope that blinds people, making them chase things that don’t exist.
Not the hope that refuses to accept our helplessness against eventualities.

No. The Hope, that somewhere in this mighty chaotic unrest, we have some control. Control over what matters to us. Control over standing at the edge of en ending and refusing to be frightened of Beginning again. Control over accepting the presence of this unrest, but rejecting the fear that comes attached.

And at the end, isn’t that what matters most.

So, here I am. Standing at the edge of another beginning.

Another beautifully chaotic ending, awaiting.

Somewhere trying to control what happens in between..

Until then,

Truly Yours

Unoriginal Reality

I am not an original person. This is something I have feared for a very long rather-stupid period of my life. Merely a composition of the words that I hear, read and seldom listen to. What makes this depressive thought induced period “rather” stupid? The fact that no one is.

I often quote words by other authors in my writings. And even though no one except perhaps my psychiatrist views this blog, I have often felt guilt at the thought. Somewhere down the road, when I started to study people. I realized that originality is not real. Or perhaps the originality that I had envisioned was not real. Whatever the case. Here goes another unoriginal, guilt ridden beginning to another entry.

 

Time, as a concept has allured me since the day we were taught to measure it, some fifteen years ago. And to this day, I still am trying to figure out a way. We live in time—it holds us and moulds us—but I’ve never felt I understood it very well. And I’m not referring to theories about how it bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary, everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly: tick-tock, click-clock. And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time’s malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing— until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return.

Sometimes we don’t measure time by the ticking of the seconds hand or the dreaded movement of the hour one. Everyone has their own personal way of being reassured of its passing. Every word I write here makes me think of the first time I posted on this blog. Then and now has perhaps been the longest time of my life. Not by the seconds, minutes or the hours passed. But what I deem to be my own personal measure.

Change.

What sat down to write the initial post and the person that just put the apostrophe at the end of “this” are separated by long, dreary, revealing period of change. And this change has come in many ways. From the Depressive Gray to the color laden sceneries. From a person who found comfort in his dreaded past because he was scared of battling storms, to the person who now enjoys the present, accepting the reality of a storms passing. The misunderstood loner to the understood one. From being feared of judgement to acknowledging it. A lot has changed.

A lot hasn’t.

But It doesn’t matter anymore.

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is for certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person that walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.

Another unoriginal ending.

Endings

Exams just ended. Another year checked off. Another step closer to inevitability.

Personally I’ve never believed in endings. I’ve always liked to think that things don’t end, they continue. This maybe the truth, but that does not make it any less grieving. Sometimes, you don’t want things to continue, you want them to end. Fresh starts and what not. And even though I’ve always preferred continuity, the last few days have shown me that endings do exist. Time does not flow backwards. And so, here we are. Another end. Another beginning. Three years of my university, spent.

I was waiting for this day for a long time.

But it’s here.

So here I am. Glancing back before time reminds me of the direction it flows.

You know why I don’t like endings?

Because they make you grateful. The year I’ve had, I should not be exactly that. Sometimes though, it’s better to look back one more time and relive memories, good or bad before you start walking forward again. This year has been hard. Heartbreaks and crashes. But however painful it might have been, sometimes endings do work their magic. Sometimes being glad things happened is the only way to accept their demise.

Even though this year can in no way be called a good one, I did teach me a thing or two. They say that the lessons you learn when you fall are the lessons you need to rise. This fall has taught me a lot. I’ve learned that friendship is something unconditional. That your family, is always there. That hurting people, hurts. That accepting is sometimes hard, but necessary. That expectations, falter. But most importantly that, as soon as you cross that point in time when things end, Things begin.

And so here I am. Bidding farewell to everything that happened. To every good, bad, ugly, sad, joyous occurrence that occurred.

“Good” Bye & Fare Thee Well

Time to Move forward.

Acceptance

Still listening to Penderecki. Still lost.

It’s hard to understand where you are going when you don’t even know where you are. And that is perhaps the closest I can come to understanding my situation. The day I started this blog, was perhaps the lowest point in my life, I’m not saying that these four days have changed me, but I’m definitely not where I was back then.

It’s calmer now. Serene. The dust has settled. That does not mean it’s less dirty. Just livable. Like the day after the storm. Broken things, debris all around but the comforting assurance that the destruction has seized.

I think I’m becoming an economist. Not the numbers kind. The behavioral kind. The one thing I’ve come to realize is that people are inherently selfish. Morality is a farce. Exceptions may exist. They should. But there’s a reason they’re called exceptions.

Do people matter though?

Not anymore.

Isn’t it funny? Forming hasty generalizations about people when you don’t even know who you are.

I need a fucking break. A Cigarette.

_______________________________

So where was I?

Ah, yes. Broken.

I don’t think there’s anything down the road now. Just pitch black. I need to start over. I need a restructuring. I need some time alone.

This is what I’ve decided my next two months are going to be. Rehabilitation. Because frankly, the decisions I have taken thus far, the principles that have produced those decisions have led me to this point. Crashed. Broken. Lost.

Were these principles flawed?

Maybe. Maybe not. But they were most definitely not Battle-tested.

This calm feels comforting somehow. I think I’m going to enjoy it for a few days. Before I start thinking again.

Until Next time.

God Help Me.

Who am I?

Three words. Why is it so hard to explain it then?

I don’t know.

This is not new though. A good memory is perhaps something I’ve yet to classify as a flaw. It was kindergarten and the teacher gave us a simple homework. Write five lines on “Myself”. The instructions were pretty simple. One line about your name. Two lines about your family, and the last two lines, anything about yourself.

I’ve been stuck on the last two lines since then.

Twenty one years old. Did my O levels in my hometown. Then my A levels from another city, and now, living in yet another city studying Accounts and Finance, or at least trying to. Don’t have any “dark” secrets, except maybe one, but we all have our rights to that, don’t we?

I don’t know what this tells you about me, but it doesn’t tell me anything about myself.

Twenty years is a long journey. And along this path I have picked up stuff that I deem helpful towards figuring myself out. Its funny how we attach ourselves to stuff, classify ourselves through music, friends and attitudes yet we still frown over people who judge us.

So why am I sitting in my room, listening to Penderecki, and staring at the keyboard. Well, because one thing I know is, I like to write. This year has been tough for me. And what is occurring right now can quite accurately be called the Crash. Yes. I have crashed. Depression. Addiction. And a deep hollow that keeps eating me inside. The last few days have been the epitome of all this. This whirlwind of thunder, debris and dark thoughts kept circling over the notion of giving up, but not yet. So here I am. Trying to change. Trying to Unlearn. Empty the cup.

The posts that may follow this one, may look like complete nonsense. The blabbering of the downer. Or they may seem quite good. But the reason behind keeping my name anonymous is that it doesn’t matter.

To Starting over.

Cheers.