And After All This Time?
Some day you will face that spiritual mirror, why not do it today?
2016
I was in the ripe age of 18; skies were a bit bluer, water was a bit more watery, the Earth had this greenish-blue hue when the fragrance of young first love wrapped me in its embrace. I was happy, content even.
He was sweet and charming, like everyone’s first love is. He had these coal-black eyes that kept dragging you in and never let out. He was a shadow of my father, better yet with that smile. I hope this sentence tells you just how serious I was.
In love.
Let love drown you
Love, such a funny feeling, no? Long after I got over the enthusiasm of first love, I realized — love is like drowning.
Seriously, no kidding.
Love is like drowning, and you decide where and how you want to drown. You can choose one among pools, rivers, or oceans. My personal favourite is the latter.
But every choice comes with a conclusion.
You choose a pool, then know this — no one can drown in a pool. You go in, and you both are bound to come back, and when you do, that’s … break up.
You both might come together and decide to cut it off mutually. And then live with the irritation of wasting so much of your energy, because that’s what it is, irritation. No? Ask yourself.
Some people choose to drown in pools because they know they can come out anytime they like. And they like this freedom about this shallow love, come out whenever. Sometimes, unbeknownst to the fact that their partner had made their mind to move to a river.
What humans tend to forget about pools is, they are often dirty. Five minutes in, and you WANT to come out, you just can’t stay in.
Then some people make it to a river; however, they still want to keep swimming. Why are you so afraid of drowning, hon? Swimming together with them won’t keep you together forever, because you cannot keep swimming forever.
So just let go, let it all go and drown.
Love wouldn’t bind you unless you decide you want to drown.
And I had decided I wanted to drown, with the same person. But there was this one thing I was afraid of — drowning alone.
Drowning alone is suicide, love, a lovely suicide.
Love is similar to drowning in oceans, similar to flying in space. Weightlessness, aye.
When you let go of your inhibitions and give in to the fact that you are free, weightless, and happy. When you accept you deserve feeling this weightlessness, close your eyes and just … let it be.
However, if you are alone, then you die of lack of oxygen in an ocean, love. That momentary feeling of happiness and the weightlessness will kill you.
Choose that certain someone carefully, this knowledge would decide whether you are setting yourself up for dying or loving.
This knowledge makes all the difference.
And you will feel like the world is yours, and it is yours, that one person who is your world, is yours. Corny, but true.
We are always in love
Do you know what the most beautiful thing about love is? The fact that we are in love always.
Being in love is our natural state — when we are born, we bring natural, peaceful, calming and free-of-worldly-emotions kind of love with us.
When we are born, our love is not affected and effected by worldly things. We are just us, full of love, and we spread that love around.
That is our natural state.
Slowly, as we grow up, a containment breach occurs, and we start losing our natural state, we become more artificial. More synthetic.
We start to think that our love is affected by those around us; this knowledge takes us away from ourselves.
And then there comes along that one person/place/object/food in your life that brings you back into your natural space. You are in love always; they just make you realize you are in love. That’s why they are precious; they bring you peace, they make you, you.
They make you fall in love with you.
And that’s what I thought his presence brought to me.
The idea of having everything with him, the idea of loving him, the idea of making my dreams come true with him, all the while he’d be my row; I fell in love with that idea.
Thinking I was falling for him, I fell in love with the idea of everything I thought he was.
I wanted to go to him and scream and tell him how much happy he made me, how much in love I was.
I never said a word.
And just like that, he was gone, married now with a baby.
It’s all opposite, huh because in India the girl gets married first.
I used to think we didn’t work out because of the age difference — I was 18, and he was 28. All this while I had thought I was in love with him for a year, and he went ahead and got married.
While writing this, I realized it was a mere illusion of love. I was in love with the idea of him.
I saw in him what I wanted to see, not what he was. Illusion. First love. It all adds up now.
And that’s what writing does to you; it shows you the real picture, it becomes your mirror when everything is translucent.
Words always remain faithful to you, art always shows you the real picture.
Art is like that bitter dose of medicine, without which surviving becomes a chore.
Love yourself to be able to love them
2019
I spent the better part of 2019 understanding this emotion called love.
After this one bad episode, I closed myself to all the mushy feelings of the world. No love poetry, no romance novels, and everything I said were laced heavily with sarcasm (it is a proven remedy to keep everyone at bay).
I had decided I needed to focus on myself. Make me a better person, smile more and live, just live, without drowning, of course.
I was walking on the path of self-love when HE strolled in my brain. Yes, strolled, like he has all the time in the world.
I was not one of those people who like to swim in pools; so with the onset of these feelings again, I questioned. Everything.
What was this and why now? Why, after so long? Why, when I was sure I did not want it? Why, when I thought no one would even look at me that way anymore?
Why when I decided to make myself a priority?
There were so many questions and no answers.
So I did what I did not do the first time, I told him. In the hopes that we could sort this together, I told him. In the hopes that we would talk, I told him.
There is one thing I have learnt in the twenty years and five months that I have spent on this planet — everything happens for a reason.
I am saying this because I have experienced it. I have found closure in the death of two of the most beautiful humans I have known. I cry, but I am at peace, their memories make me smile just as much they make me cry.
So I wanted to know why again, and why now? When I knew I wasn’t ready.
I am still learning to love myself; how can I love someone else when I cannot love me?
Universe has this simple rule if you cannot love its most beautiful creation, that is, you; it does not believe you will be able to love the person made for you. Period.
So before you go to love someone else, do yourself a favour and love yourself.
You are your own responsibility
A prevalent misconception about love is, you keep each other happy. You take away their sadness, pain and bring happiness in their lives. When you are in love, it is their responsibility to make you happy.
I think something else -
It is not his responsibility to make everything right in my world; it is not my responsibility to take away his worries.
It is our responsibility to make ourselves happy and then celebrate our happiness together.
(Perhaps, I could’ve used a better word than responsibilities.)
This is another beautiful thing about love and self-love — when they are down, you don’t have to go to the Moon to make them happy, you cannot make them happy until they decide they want to be happy.
All you can do is just be with them and tell them you are with them.
If they cry, wipe away their tears; if they are happy, celebrate it with them. If they are sad, sing them a song; you can’t make everything right in their world, you can only be with them when everything is wrong in their world.
It is not their responsibility to mend your broken soul, their responsibility is to be with you while you are mending it.
And when it is love — drowning in the ocean, flying in space, kind of love — then all that matters is you being with them. Period.
And you can’t be there for them unless you know how to be there for yourself. You cannot love them unless you can love yourself.
Conclusion
So imagine how puzzled I was, when he strolled in, spreading sunshine and rhythmising music. Puzzled because I was still learning to love myself.
I didn’t want anything, and I told him that. I won’t consciously love him until I am sure I love myself enough.
He doesn’t deserve half-assed love. He deserves me in all my glory; battered, beaten, tired with glasses dangling off and poking my nose. Ice cream in one hand, and a smile on my lips, a sincere smile on my lips — that’s what he deserves.
But I am not going to put him through an experience where he is forced to love someone who cannot love herself.
I am still learning to love myself, love the pimples that come out of nowhere every morning. Love the extra fat that loves me back so much that it is not ready to go anywhere. Love the taste buds on my tongue that keep demanding ice cream. Love the fact that I am messed up, love the fact that every day I am trying to be who I want to be.
The process is never easy; every day, that old pimple gives birth to a new one. Every day my memory seems to be slipping away from my clutches. Every day my clumsiness brings me new bruises. Daily I realize I still haven’t gotten that email. Every day I always do less than I want to. Every day my posts perform better, yet they seem to be going nowhere. Every day I realize he is so close, yet so far away, and every day I want him around, all the fucking time!
There are confusions, irritations, little things make me angry, and even littler things give me a smile so big.
My emotions are haywire; I am forced to live without ice cream. I still only have 18 hours a day, which is not fair because others have 24.
You see where I am going?
Half of my problems don’t even exist, they are just there, inside my brain where my neurons keep feeding them unnecessary energy.
So when I wake up, my other body parts don’t have enough energy to function.
It is all the fault of those neurons, always feeding energy to the wrong stuff.
Find out, are your neurons also feeding energy to the wrong stuff? Knowing is the first step toward winning.
Do you know what’s missing in your life, though? Some good music.
