Is This Supposed To Be Life?
I don’t mean to be sitting here complaining. I know that this is supposed to be life. But it just doesn’t feel like it on some days.
Those days when I see comforting places from my childhood taken over by people I don’t like. They draw me there in the darkest of the night when I am asleep and tell me things that break me. They trap me in the endless moment of their gaze, hypnotising my pain and sending it to every fibre of my being. I wake up and find tears and think, it doesn’t feel like this is supposed to be life.
Those days when I wake up with a throbbing head that warns me of a forthcoming migraine. It mostly never grows into the migraine, but the throb is almost like awaiting the hatchet to fall on you, waiting hours and hours looking at your killer paused in motion. Between the throb and the migraine, it doesn’t feel like this is supposed to be life.
Those days when I want to meet my oldest friend in the world and tell her that I am sorry about the loss her family has been mourning, but I know that I can’t even process things right, let alone emote. I am mentally incapable of even sitting across the table from someone and meaning any real sympathy. Forget about empathy. When I feel like there isn’t space in my mind or body for even one external force of sorrow to enter, one external force of anything to enter, it doesn’t feel like this is supposed to be life.
Those days when I cancel plans for dinner dates that I set up and was looking forward to, when I say no to chai which I can drink like water, when I have to think “Is this too last minute to cancel?” it doesn’t feel like this is supposed to be life.
I could cancel on the monthly brunch and the family dinner saying that I have work. I do have work. Lots of work. But I know that I won’t do the work.
I’m not lazy. I don’t glorify it. I stay indoors because the world outside is just too much for me to handle sometimes. It’s draining. There are just so many things, so many places, so many people, so much conversation.
What I need is a vacation. Not the kinds where you travel to some place with a beach and water, although a beach and water does sound good.
I want to go someplace quiet and sit there for a month. But I’m too young to be on a sabbatical and too grown up to get the kind of summer breaks that children do in school. Those one month/three months breaks. I need that kind of a break. My body tells me it needs it. My mind tells me it needs it. But the world I am in is like a broken record that alternates between tunes of hustle and meditate.
F*ck, I cannot meditate. Meditation seems like a luxury kept aside for someone whose mind can process, focus and quiet itself better. I’m cursed with a different type of mind.
Or maybe people are just better than me. They can work harder, work smarter, take care of themselves better. I don’t mean to wallow in my misery. I don’t want to survive or exist. I want to live, I want to thrive. And I try every single day. Some days I succeed. Some I barely scrape through.
Some days, like today, it just doesn’t feel like this is supposed to be life.
Listen, my sweet, life isn’t supposed to be any way.
People will try to trick you into believing that it is. They will tell you that you need to be like them, think like them, feel like them and want what they want. But there is nothing wrong in feeling and thinking how you do. There is nothing wrong in wanting or needing what you do.
Hold on to your right to be you, even the tougher parts of you. It’s the only thing that you are supposed to be and leading your life as you is the only thing that matters.
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