Humiliation

There will be a lot of back & forth about the 'whys' of what went down.
There will be endless analysis of how you behaved and how the other responded. How the other behaved and how you responded.
You will think a lot about the other's context, history, subtext, station in life, morale and spiritual grounding. You will try to connect the dots with their actions.
You will attempt to do the same for yourself.
You will give all parties involved every conceivable benefit of doubt.
You will plan how to leave. You will cling to the idea of staying.
You will tie yourself up in knots. Then you will stop.

You will utter a word. Perhaps that word will be 'Humiliation'. Perhaps it will be 'Cruelty'. Or 'Disrespect'. Something that rings truer than any rationale you have tried to apply to the situation.
It will become untangled. And you will stop.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentionally_blank_page

In Defense of Shit Writing

The post below is unmitigated shit. I know it. I knew it as I was writing it. It felt wrong but I couldn't stop...sort of like when you eat that slightly off mayo sandwich on a hot summer day. You repent after it's done but that doesn't prevent you from spending a significant part of the next day on the crapper.

Why don't I delete it?

Because there's no shame in being mediocre. At least not when I'm mediocre. I want the post to remain online, in the public domain so that I can maintain perspective. To remind myself that sometimes I'm a bit crazy and all over the place. That sometimes I do things without caring too much. That I'm only blogging, not curing cancer or building cryogenic engines.

That I spend too much time explaining myself after.
My therapist is on holiday. That might be it.

And might I add...Dey-AM, Sendhil Ramamurthy is smokin' hot.

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.

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.

Colour Me Jobless

I'm super paranoid about being jobless.
No, it's not the money - got enough to last a while.
No, it's not the boredom - nothing entertains me more than the lack of a job.

I think it's my mother's index finger wagging in my face, "At home? Again?"

And although I think - yeah, ma, even when I have a job, I'm at home. I'm a writer, remember?; I still feel real, real bad that I Don't Have A Job.

Now, the finger wagging and guilt is all in my head. (I don't think my mum's ever wagged her index finger at me. The guilt? That's a story for a whole other therapist session.) It's this damned society I tell you. It won't let the jobless be.

I have a friend (a freelancer like me) who, when I called him in the second week of January to ask how his New Year was going so far, said - "It's going really well. I haven't had a job since 2009 began." And he wasn't being sarcastic. He felt real joy at being jobless. Said it gave him more time for his Wii.
I think his general sense of ease with unemployment popped a lightbulb in my head. Dammit. Why the hell not? Isn't this what we all crave? Isn't this why we work so hard in the first place? Isn't this why Gandhi fought the good fight?

Ok...you get my drift.

Fortunately the battle between joblessness guilt and joblessness joy abates from time to time. That's when I enjoy marathon sessions of tv viewing: This week, I have learnt craploads about the Swi-Imean-H1N1 flu, I have wept over Hometown Baghdad, I have indulged in Seth Rogan's raunchy (but open hearted) humour. I found out that Beyonce's new single is no. 5 on VH1's countdown.

When the radiation from the television becomes too much I head for my books. I'm reading Ravipaar by Gulzaar. I read it aloud, proving to myself that I can read the devnagri script comfortably enough. Thank God it's a collection of short stories because after a while my throat gets parched and I need a break. Besides, I'm craving the radiation of a monitor again. So I switch on the computer.

Ah, what WAS my life before Facebook? Nothing but an empty, empty existence, devoid of any meaning. Never have I felt love the way I have felt it through my friends crammed into inch-high boxes, giving me the thumbs up sign every time my musings amuse them (if I tried to be half as witty in real life, I wouldn't get so much as a smirk). It's very affirming...in a distant mere-baap-ka-kya-jaata-hai kinda way...

I have also taken up Yoga. For real, no jokes. It helps a lot with the lower back pain (which I've been told is the seat of happiness and creativity, so if that's screwed, what else is left to live for?). Unfortunately, all my feelings of inadequacy get triggered during the meditation bits. My instructor (on the ipod) tells me to go deep within my body, to go deeper and deeper until I'm only focusing on my breathing and nothing else. Then after around 15 minutes, she tells me to come out of it gradually by reconnecting with the external sounds, 'the chirps of the birds' etc. Great. Except I never left. That jackhammer from the construction site outside? It makes going within a bit difficult. And that darn fly... Of course, I'll never still my thoughts enough to go within, I'm just not spiritual enough, I'm so useless at this, I'll never achieve inner peace...I could go on all day but I don't think that's what Swami Yogaratna had in mind.

I am also trying to expand my social circle. So, people I arrogantly ignored for a bunch of years are suddenly getting smileys in their facebook inbox. Long forgotten acquaintances are finding my number pop up on their cellphones. It's great to keep in touch. The only problem is they're all busy through the week, whereas I am Not.

At the end of it all, I think unemployment is a life-experience that can teach me a lot. It can teach me how to spend time with myself, not skirt around things that need to be looked at. It can help me clean my closets (literally and figuratively). It can bring in a lot of fun stuff - like new music, new flavours of ice-cream (that I'm otherwise too busy to try - coz when you're swamped, all you want is chocolate), new friends, new skills like making friends.

How can that be bad?