Every Goddamned Morning

Moments from your past are picked up and thrown back at you, unsolicited, unwanted, unasked for. Moments that may or may not have been significant to your story but in their popping up, take you back.
When all you've been struggling to do...
In the books you read...
In the prayers you pray...
In the act of war you perform with your will power...
In the resigned surrender of your heart...
Is to return to the current, to stick your feet in the moment, to not look left or right or up or down or even straight ahead or directly behind - to be okay with the hysterical blindness it brings.

Your goal is to know that 'this-here-now' is not a trap, even if it feels like it. That it is the looking back, the sudden recurrence of a feeling, a look, a whispered breath on your neck that's the trap.

And so, every goddamned morning - would you please stop?

Low Angle

It's been a difficult couple of days and I knew I had a solid cry coming. 
This evening I went to a screening of a documentary on Henri Cartier-Bresson. Once the lights dimmed and opening credits rolled across the black screen, I found the darkness & comfort I was looking for. I had me a quick & efficient weep.

And as the folks around me nibbled on their popcorn, tears fogged my spectacles and I thought - "It's been a difficult couple of days and I knew I had a solid cry coming...."

"There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment" - Cardinal De Retz

Tantrum

Much as I appreciate people visiting this blog, sometimes like today, I wish this was my private nook in the crowded Internet, where I could tuck myself into a corner and spend the day feeling sad, writing ungrateful & wildly incorrect stories about how pathetic the state of my affairs is. To let this sad music playing in the background become my reality and not have anyone see how selfish & sniffling I can be. I want to feel tortured without being reasoned out of it. I want to feel torn without good advice getting in the way. I want my mundane tantrums to take on the epic proportions of tragedy. I want to be buried under the full weight of this hopelessness. I want no one to come to my rescue.

Except that perhaps...I do.

Dying

Last night I dreamed I was dying. Not fast and painlessly, but slow. I'd just found out that cancer was ravaging my cells and that my body was gradually, yet uncontrollably, heading towards its own destruction.
It was a long dream, it went on for hours. I walked around the city, unrecognizable, barren and desolate, weeping desperately. I had friends around me - no one I recognized but people who said they loved me. I had a week left to live.
All I knew in this dream was: I want to live, I want to live, I want to live. I want to experience love, I want to give and receive it. It's the one thing I have not done in this life near enough and I can't leave without.
Yet, what do you do when something beyond your control is eating away at you, regardless of what your desires may be?...
Not a fun dream, I can tell you that much.

Internal Medicine

Chum pain and heartache make for a killer combination.
I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
Ouch. And I mean Ouch.

(Mimi HeartAche - Michelle Spiziri)

Between Cup & Lip

I woke up happy this morning. I made a plan with my mum to go watch a film. Then had the world's best cinnabun...the kind that melted on my tongue the second it landed on it. We proceeded to see Julie & Julia - possibly one of the happiest films I've seen in a long time. Meryl Streep's joy was infectious; every cell in my body was laughing with her.
I thought I'd blog about how good I felt but then I fell asleep.
Woke up feeling unsettled, restless and dying to get out of the house but without the fight of finding an autorickshaw and wearing thirty layers of clothing to protect from the cold. I struggled between these two conflicting emotions, feeling more and more frustrated by the minute. The familiar, helpless loneliness (always, always waiting in the wings, waiting to swoop in when I'm not paying attention) descended.
Suddenly a near-perfect day had turned into one of hopelessness. As if a switch had been turned off.

No More Familiar

A couple of days ago, someone gave me a gift. A two-inch tall action figure. Then we had a conversation that took me into spaces that I never share with people I barely know. I went with it, fought the discomfort and had an ok enough time. It brought up stuff for me that this person knew nothing about. It had been an effort but well worth it - I came a little closer to making a new friend. But I had no idea how exhausted it made me.

This last month has been a longer version of that day spent with the new person. My closest friend, my sanctuary in many ways, has moved cities, my professional life has taken me into spaces that scare & challenge me and bring up old things from the past, I have man problems (always fun) and I have run out of places and people to run to when I'm going stark raving mad.

Through it all, I have not cried a drop. Not even when my best friend hugged me goodbye (I got teary but no big sobbing). I have thanked the universe for keeping me busy. I have hung out at film festivals for hours on end, alone or with a bunch of people I vaguely know from work. I have made an effort to penetrate the shells of people who normally I would have left to themselves. All so that I could feel a little normal. All so I could clutch onto a little piece of the familiar.

Then today I had a really shitty day professionally - the ONE goddamned space where I am not confused, the one part of my life where I don't feel incompetent and ill-equipped - and it shook me to the core. It was the straw that broke this trying-to-be-sunshiny-happy girl's back. I felt the final facade of my well-meaning bravado fall apart.

I clutched that two-inch doll like it was my last ally and sobbed my heart out.

Please Write

Unanswered phone calls,
Unacknowledged texts,
Uninspired filmscripts
Unexciting blogs
Unfinished stories

The not writing is killing me

Meri Aarzoo Kameeni

It is past midnight. I have downed a lot of alcohol. There is a lot of sadness that's taken residence inside me.
As I play this song on loop:

Kya kare zindagi isko hum jo mile,
Iski jaan kha gaye, raat din ke gile
Raat din gile…
Meri aarzoo kamini,
Mere khwab bhi kaminey,
Ek dil se dosti thi, yeh huzoor bhi kaminey,
Kya kare zindagi isko hum jo mile,
Iski jaan kha gaye, raat din ke gile…
Kabhi zindagi se maanga, pinjre mein chaand la do,
Kabhi laanten deke, kaha aasmaa pe taango
Jeene ke sab kareene the hamesha se kaminey,
Kaminey kaminey kaminey kaminey,
Meri daastaan kamini, mere raasten kaminey,
Ek dil se dosti thi, yeh huzoor bhi kaminey…
Jiska bhi chehra cheela, andar se aur nikla,
Masoom sa kabootar naacha to more nikla,
Kabhi hum kaminey nikle, kabhi doosre kaminey,
Kaminey kaminey kaminey kaminey,
Meri dosti kamini, mere yaar bhi kaminey,
Ek dil se dosti thi, yeh huzoor bhi kaminey…
- Gulzar & Vishal Bhardwaj

Tonight, I want Kansas

There comes a time when you stand face to face with your psychoses and you have nothing and no one left to blame. You've read too many books, attended too many workshops, had sufficient hours with a therapist and had too many genuinely enlightened moments to go back to being a victim.
Oh, but it was so comfortable there.
Tonight, as I pray for sleep to come, as I pray for someone to cosmically clue into my misery and reach out, as I pray for chemicals to magically materialize in the palm of my hand, I wish that it was simply enough to feel wretched in order for the miracle cure to appear.
I feel angry and confused tonight. I cannot reconcile myself to the idea that I must have the courage to pray yet I must learn not to expect.
I must not shy away from my desires, yet I must not wait for them to be fulfilled.
I must not be a silent witness to my life, yet I must learn that I cannot control it all.
It's like trying to brush your teeth and wipe your ass with the same hand, at the same time.

How simple they make it seem - these self-help authors, these wise men & women on Oprah. Oh yes, we know The Secret, they all say, Let us give it to you. Click your heels thrice and say 'There's no place like home.' They lull us into the complacent belief that it's really that simple, this business of getting happy. No one tells you the hows, whens and the how muches. That's your deal, sucker. That's life.
Because some nights, like tonight, there is no logic, no Grander energy and no softness to this feeling that settles in my belly. I have tried all the home remedies and I've tried to banish the familiar aloneless and self-loathing that infects my insides. I know full well that I will wake up, if not tomorrow morning, then the next one, feeling as though the world is right side up again. I will no longer remember this restlessness crawling under my skin. I'll even look back on this evening and dismiss it as just another one of those moods.

But tonight, all I want is to crawl into the arms of someone safe and make my brain stop. Tonight I just want Kansas. Like Dorothy, I'm sick of Oz.
And while we're on the subject, let's not forget how she came upon those ruby slippers in the first place. She dropped her house on the Wicked Witch. The original owner of the shoes and Dorothy's first murder victim.

Blogging the Blues

Ma baby done lef' me,
Took ever'thang but his boots.
OH ma baby done lef' me,
Took ever'thang but his boots...
He took ma money, he took ma pills
He lef' me here,
Jus' bloggin' the blues....

Falling Back

Today after many, many days I tried to handle a difficult emotional situation with a big ol' bowl of chocolate ice-cream, shovelling spoonful after spoonful, long after the body's signals had raised the red flags. Today after many, many days I felt the unnecessary substance churn in my gut, rebelling and resisting every effort of my recently-strengthened metabolism to neutralize it, to tame it.
But it wasn't to be. Out it came, hurling itself in undignified sludge as I kneeled in a most humiliating way, in supplication to the toilet bowl, knowing, knowing that I had once again returned to the poison.

For anyone who has relinquished control to something outside themselves and regained it back, a relapse, any relapse feels as bad as your lowest moment - that moment when you realised that this was no longer working. And as the days and months since then will have given you the false sense of your own super powers, you realise that this is a disease you will always grapple with.

Even after you've understood your own vulnerability.
Even after you've comprehended your own history.
Even after you've forgiven.
Even after you've surrendered to the unknown.
Even after you've proven yourself a million times over.
Or maybe even if you've only just realised how very angry and scared you really are.

There's no way to do it but to do it. And so we start again.

Blurry toes

I've got me a bad case of blurry toes,
The purples, greens
And the blues