Monsters in the Head

I got some bad news.

I let go of some dreams.

I rejudged and rearranged a whole lot of things in my life.

I lost a hero.

I've been through all this before.

The losses, the depression following the losses, the cuts and bruises, the panic.

The trying-to-copes.

It was always bad.

There was also something else.

A sense of...well...exhilaration.

Strange word to use here, I know. But it was there. Fighting the darkness, going under, coming back, fighting again.

It was almost fun, in a way.

Not anymore.

Now it's just fear and ebbing strength and more fear.

Fear of surviving.

Not the other way round.

Fear of surviving, and be left a living wreck, to look back upon all this.

Maybe it doesn't make sense.

Nothing has, for quiet some time, to be frank.

Whispering that everything will be all right.

Knowing it won't be.

I once had a talk with a friend.

About our favourite phrase “There's always a choice”.

About how quickly choices go out of the window once things go wrong.

We were too naive to draw conclusions then, but we know better now.

The choice is never whether or not you get shit. That is never an option.

The choice is only there for whether you pass the hurt on.

And whatever you choose, it's gonna hurt you either way.

Bring's me to my other favourite phrase “You shouldn't take life to seriously, you'll never get out alive anyway.”

Trying to Cope

Funny thing is I feel I have been through this before. Deja vu. Fancy word.

I had become a different person out of high school and into the world. Cynical, shy, often caustic, often faithless. And lonely, both as a reason and cause.

Then, with what I call, the elasticity of youth, I was coming back. I made plans. Still tentative, still paranoid. But I put one foot in front of the other, hoping the ice doesn't crack. And to my surprise, it seemed to be holding strong.

I told myself, half laughing, half relieved, "Too good to be true." Turns out, it was. I don't want to go into the details. Stuff collapsed. Like a pack of cards. Like a bunch of dreams. At this moment, almost all of it. Almost.

Am I fine? No.

Am I coping? Yes.

Is it going to break me? Probably.

Am I going to laugh at it maybe 10 years later? Probably.


It's one of those things that is going to be a companion for many years to come. One wishes that instead it would be over quickly. Like a thunderclap, so that I can rejoice in being alive after it's over.

Or maybe, I'm just tired.
Tired of understanding.
Tired of the pillow being the only thing I don't need to be strong around.
Tired of showing a courage I don't have.
Tired of finding out time and again that I care too much to say that I don't care.
Tired of, God forgive me, listening to people.
Tired of pep talks and inspirations.

Maybe if I had a good sleep, things would change.
Maybe if I had a good sleep that I never needed to wake up from, I wouldn't be tired anymore.

On Losing the Meaning

My childhood thesaurus put melancholy as a synonym for sadness. But life taught me the subtle difference. Sadness comes with tears, anger, indignation, denial. It blocks out everything else. Sadness heals. We give Time, time, and sadness heals. But melancholy? Melancholy comes with a tired acceptance. It stays. Softly, unobtrusively but it stays. It never stops anything, but like a tinted glass, it dims the brightest of sunshine.

“And everyday life loses a little bit of its meaning.”

Thus read a friend’s text message while we were philosophising on the phone. Strange how depressing observations reach across people. No one died today. No dreams were shattered. No one cried out for help. No shots were fired. There is melancholy, not sadness.

And yet there is a ever-deepening sense of loss. Each day goes by with the feeling that it left me a little bit poorer than the previous. Small, almost imperceptible, but undeniable. Every day I lose a little more and I know I will never regain it back.

For someone who grew up believing in the glory of life, the brittleness of the meaning of life in the face of the world is hard to swallow. As I pick apart all that is around me, everything unravels with an ease that is almost scary. And it all echoes emptily with a single question, “What does it matter?”
So is that it? I remember shaking my head, and thinking “Crazy fellow”, when I first read that life is something that happens to you on the way to the grave. Somehow, I don’t do that anymore. Shake my head disbelievingly, that is.

No one died, because no one lived. No dreams were shattered because we lost those long back. No one cried for help because they learnt way early that there is no one to hear. No shots were fired because there is nothing left to fight for. And there is melancholy, not sadness.

They say sorrow shared is half. Perhaps it didn’t hold good for this because as I said, there is melancholy, not sadness. There was small comfort that two people, miles apart in terms of geography, ideas, age and background, both shared this depressing (and accurate?) view. The walls the world builds between people effectively prevents any real exchange of emotions, except perhaps in rare unguarded moments. We did not talk about this anymore beyond those five minutes.

My reply was that “If everyday life loses a little bit of its meaning, and you are still not done with it, I would still call you lucky. Because it means you started out with a whole lot of it in the first place.” Old habits die hard, and the eternal optimist says perhaps, just perhaps, this is the meaning of life. That in spite of it all, we still had this conversation.

[photo courtesy:https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyqAGZnpAkWLNhFXbtd4udWjoFQBxvtvYhGaFBnl9BD0JMY_xwRdZJnqgGayZBME8V3fbL9769D2nSxa-2dVO-gab2MFMvw-UssZW3iXg-iNLhC-CK4fCfz4XNo_TSQnnUMpwm8ytnpTk/s1600/Lost-Soul.jpg]