An array of books stacked on the shelf, dog-eared pages, dust covered and worn out.
An unopened dusty Bible at the bedside table, a suitcase of unpacked party clothes, and a dysfunctional clock hanging over the mantle, its battery never restored.
A quick scan across the room and this is what you see.
You are caught up by the sudden rush of long buried emotions. Hit by that crumbling feeling, you feel dilapidated and worn out.
This is how I have felt for a long time.
The room is but a reflection of a dripping away spirit and a vacant mind. There was no chaos. None whatsoever. You need to be alive and combative to be receptive of affection, anger, desire, remorse, joy, pain, passion, love, pride, shame, or warmth. I felt none. The senses were dead.
I am not the same now. I have somehow pulled through and here I am, writing.
At first I chose not to write about it. My argument was why dig up a closed grave, why speak about the times gone by, why speak about me and risk sounding narcissistic.
Ashish, my friend and cynic said why not. Why not acknowledge what is, resolve if need be, get it over and done with.
Invigorated, here I am with my story.
“So no one told you life was gonna be this way
Your job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's D.O.A.
It's like you're always stuck in second gear
When it hasn't been your day, your week, your month, or even
your year,…”
So the Rembrandts had sung…
And yeah!
No one told me that love would one day fly off the window and you find yourself trying to figure out what was it all about.
No one told me that the angel of death would come flying in through the window (was the window opened?), clasping its claws into the three people I’ve loved (and always will), denying them of a dignified departure. Cruel death!
No one told me that my self-claimed ‘fool-proof’ faith would be shaken to its very core.
No one told me that I would face death head-on, cheated it but marred for life, leaving me with haunting images, questioning if victory over death was worth every ounce of a penny.
My friends called me ‘the phoenix’. To them, amidst all this personal afflictions and anguish, I have still come out trumps! To quote one of them, ‘you rise up like the phoenix and you inspire’
(Origin and meaning of Phoenix - • Mythology. A bird in Egyptian mythology that lived in the desert for 500 years and then consumed itself by fire, later to rise renewed from its ashes.
• A person or thing of unsurpassed excellence or beauty; a paragon)
Touched, flattered I am. But let not my smile mislead you.
I am human. It hurt like hell. It still does.
My senses went numb not from the lack of emotions but from the ‘overwhelming emotions’ of confusion, anger, pain, and loss. Hell! And to top it all, I felt guilty if I weren’t grateful. For I am still alive, am I not? I can walk again, isn’t it? So why shouldn’t I be grateful!
Fate was mocking at me! Sardonic, contemptuous fate.
To say I felt ragged would not do justice to the lunacy of my emotions.
I was not a lone casualty. Helplessness engulfed not just me but my loved ones too. I was desperate to reach out and comfort them but how does an emotionally crippled me intend to do that?
And to think that my love ones wept cause of what happened to me that was torturous and even more crippling.
These tears stung my eyes then and burn my thoughts now.
So yeah, life has moved on.
I am back on my feet, back at my job doing what am best at, meeting deadlines, holding up commitments, traveling, singing, writing, gorging on books, continuing to love… its become even more important for me to do all these things, it’s like am racing against some force ….its like each day am cementing a brick on what I hope would be a wall or some kind of structure…I am less enlightened than what I was yesterday…but am doing it brick by brick.
At a flip of a coin or maybe at a turn of the wheel, I hope I don’t have to go through fire again, dragging my love ones with me, in order to rise up like a phoenix.
I am spent.
