On Losing Battles and Picking Up The Pieces

I am imperfect. For a human, that isn't an astonishing statement at all. In this world, as long as we are living these lives, until the Trumpet does not blow and the mountains do not become like carded wool, we will be imperfect. Once the dead have risen again and all have been assembled in a congregation of shame and remorse, and enlightenment, then shall the purification start - with fire and nails and iron weights; purified until Man reaches his most pure state, each taking his own time to get there.
The irony? Humans will still never be Perfect.

That was a little off topic.

Being confused about things should be something that I readily accept about myself, but too often I will find myself beating up my own self over this incapacity. It took a long time for me to realize that not knowing every single pebble in my path was okay.That it wasn't the end of the world if I didn't know what I was doing or whether my way of looking at things was right or wrong. I had to tell myself that despite feeling down in the dumps over things people said concerning my life, it didn't mean I was completely clueless, but it also didn't mean that I have everything figured out.

It's quite a familiar scenario: you are telling someone - or just quietly thinking away - about certain ideas of yours that are diametrically opposite to what they were just a short while ago, or about some life-changing decisions you made, and they just happen to say something - or that nag of a voice in your head speaks - and the words take your mind in for some heavy duty bashing. Yikes.
Self-doubt, confusion and stress are quick to follow until you actually start questioning your own decisions and wondering if you aren't just making a huge mistake.

For someone who gets easily influenced and affected by things people say, this is an ugly state of mind indeed. I mean, it took a lot of pondering and pluck on your part to just pick up and flip over pieces of your life, and you don't want to be second-guessing it all while you are still trying to figure things out for yourself.

One thing you have to remind yourself is that what is good for one person can perhaps not be the best thing for someone else. It makes it easier to deal with the doubt that you are doing things the wrong way. There is no wrong way. Everyone has their own paths to follow, even if the destination is eventually the same.

Sure. Easy peasy. With that kind of clear-headed thinking, I should be back to my normal, assured, sprightly self.

Nope. It wasn't enough. Fear had taken over - fears about losing time, being left behind, being ill-equipped to handle the hard knocks of life when they come - I felt inadequate, small, and terribly foolish. I may be on the right path, but it seemed like I was making all the wrong decisions and choosing things that weren't good for me after all. Strong conviction became wispy air-castles, and cheerful optimism became a Shiekh Chilli persona that horrified me more than anything else. I thought to myself, "I still think exactly like a child as if there is no hardship in the world and my dreams and reality are composed only of bunny rabbits and cotton candy and peach desserts."

It wasn't until many painful hours later that I realized the answer. I had known it all along but had just lacked the capability to articulate it.

I had been fighting the battle for so long - and losing it more often than I would like to admit - that I had forgotten to fall back for a bit to allow  my troops to rest and to reevaluate my strategy. No, I had gone on charging and fighting until I was bone-weary, pausing only to fall down into a ditch, drink water from the enemy's tainted supply, and loudly wail about my wounds. The wins became less, the misery more, and, well, let's just leave it there. Climbing out of a ditch is not easy, but when you remember to look up at the stars and breathe that air again, you can finally accept that you are done with sparring for a while.
So yes, I haven't slunk away from the battlefield like a thief in the night. I walked out tired, but renewed all the same, ready to heal my wounds and let fate take its course in shaping my trail.
I haven't given up or pushed away everything without reason. I certainly have not let myself be sucked into a vortex where I will hang limply until I am claimed by a quiet death. No, I am merely resting and preparing for the next onslaught of battles. This time, I am promising myself that I will win much more than I lose. Struggling to become a better version of myself, training weaknesses instead of just strengths, and knowing who I am and why I exist; I am still just on the first rung of the ladder, but at least this one is leading up rather than down.
Whether I have to forcibly push myself into the next round or fate will simply pull the carpet out from under my feet to let me fall into it, I am quietly preparing myself before I have to step back in.
Now isn't that something a Warrior of Light would do?


Troops: mental faculties
=p
Sheikh Chilli: Comic character from subcontinental folklore who features prominently in stories for children as a fool, daydreamer and simpleton.

Breaking the silence.

I had intended to be more regular with this, but ended up letting more than a week slip by before I could open the 'new post' page and let it out as I should have. Everyday I thought about coming here but only managed to go through all the blogs I follow that I hadn't read for almost two months. And stayed silent.
And then I had something else to talk about and this post got shelved for a little while longer.


It is hard, I have discovered, to express the way I once could. It is so much easier now to be silent about what I feel. If anything, I used to hide things within complicated and abstract words and sentences, but the need to express and share was always there. This new me is difficult, difficult to understand.


For a while I intend to go completely the other way in an effort to reverse the effect. Be more open that I was ever before, just so I can find the way back to my hidden-meanings-yet-saying-everything kind of ways.
Yup.

I kind of have started it already, in several minor ways. Opening up privacy settings and seeing how it makes me feel (NOT Facebook; never Facebook!). Trying to say things aloud instead of being the quiet observer who talks too much in her mind. Speaking through several media: photos, text and small gestures.

I have never cared before about letting people know anything about me, but now I am making efforts to put forward my interests and talk about them as much as I want. Religion. Loves. Hobbies. Opinionated stuff. It's a start.


I removed my 'About me' page from this blog for a little while so I can write up something that reflects more of what I am trying to do. Who knows, maybe I'll eventually open this blog up to search engines too.


The important thing is that we constantly strive for change. Always the change that will lead you to be a better person. Sometimes I am also unsure of my path, about which road I should take, but I know it is only a matter of time before that will be clear to me too. So I stumble on, just keeping sure that the path I am taking is not the one that would lead me to something worse, just keeping to the one that shows a better 'me' at the end.

Now

It seems like things start moving too fast, and that erratic motion is causing objects to drift further and further apart. Crashing into each other, then drifting apart.  You cannot tie threads and loop their ends around your fingers like you used to as a child; they won't hold anymore. Such bonds are no longer held. Jerky movements are what define your moods, and burrowing into the warmth of a bed to feel some shred of comfort. You burrow. Waking and sleeping are indistinguishable. Such restlessness: your mind is not at peace. Thoughts are swirly and hard and dispersed. Thoughts battle it out, axes uplifted, war cries aloud. How do you keep the rest calm when on top there's fire and lightning? Twist fingers, bite lips, and your stomach will never seem to unclench. Deep breaths, all will be well. Rinse, lather, repeat.

It has become something which festers and aches and heals over and then the scab gets picked too early and it bleeds and scars. Something uncontrolled, something that needs outlets but shudders to put out that toe and emerge from its dark cavern. Negative thoughts, negative emotions constantly swirl, thoughts which are damaging, and restless and repulsive to the soul. Thoughts one can be half-ashamed of.

You know you are that person who has had a lot to go through in life, situations created of your own doing that were impossible to run away from. And yet, run away you did. Whenever you got the chance, you ran away. You got yourself into a mess, panicked, and backed off. Sometimes you fought it out, tried to reason with yourself and your mind and your heart and with others, sometimes you could not convince them, sometimes you had to quiet yourself. You let yourself be kept quiet too often; too often, you let others make the decisions. All sorts of decisions, all sorts of things that would end up hurting you. Until you got used to following them, believing in what they said, doing what they thought ought to be done. And you did wrong with yourself, letting them hurt you, it was wrong. External pressure made you take initial wrong decisions, being 'too polite' to actually stand up straight (you always were a sloucher) and speak your 'mind', even though we both know it was your heart yearning to do the talking. Your heart knew. It always does.

Time passed, and bonds developed. You were the peacemaker, they were the conflicts. Each of your little packages decided to create conflict with every other package you owned. Too many times you lost. Your pretty trusting packages had too much takabbur in their hearts; too much jealousy, too much hasad. You were owned, you were diced and divided and quartered. You gave out what you had, they slurped it up and asked for more. You began to feel like being sucked dry. You were told off, you were the sore, the festering sore that was raining on everyone's parade, the one doing so much wrong. If you could just learn about limiting factors, it should be alright. So they thought. They forgot to glance into their own misguided hearts, peek into their own curtained shortcomings. They forgot. They saw only you, and you alone.

Your guilt was insurmountable. Yet you ploughed on. You tried to don indifference as your newest tool, because every other emotion was faltering and failing. It worked. Only, they gave you new labels. Callous. Shameless. Cold. Stone-cold. Your heart, they thought they could read it. They thought they alone, each one of them, could read it like an open book. They constantly stood next to you, and then pinched the heart that adorned your sleeve. It was your habit. That became theirs.

You wanted happiness, you gave happiness, you got happiness. You also got much unaccounted-for pain. You took no toll on it, you reciprocated with no revengeful feelings, for you were softer, much softer. Wont to forgiving and giving leeway. Wont to letting the decisions be made and imposed upon you, letting yourself be used. Did it please you? I know not.

They moved on, suddenly adopting normality, often too cheery to be natural. They walked all over thoughts that had previously been theirs to begin with. You stood there confused, unable to figure out which was reality, and what exactly was it that they wanted. You knew you couldn't move on. You outwardly did, but inside you still felt pain, still winced inwardly at moments that they made out as 'jokes' now, still wished you could heal yourself as they appeared to have healed magically. You couldn't. You didn't. You were the abnormality, so you hid away the hurting bits and pretended to not notice them whenever they throbbed.

You saw them change, and worried. You repented your own foolishness, but now you started to feel impacts of your actions rubbing off on them. You worried constantly about your bad influence, because you had to take the blame, it was something you had always done. You were sure it was your influence. You tried helplessly to stem the tide, hold back the incoming waves of mistakes you saw surrounding you, tearfully tried to rip apart iron bands with your bare hands, but you could do nothing. It seemed the damage had been done. You cursed yourself, and in an enlightening moment, perhaps received the pounding from the curse. Fie on you, and fie happened.

Bitterness had been welling inside you for a while; pain had been secretly working away in a grimy corner, unnoticed by you, creating inside its workshop things like resentment and anger. Oh, so much resentment, that has taken years to siphon away, and is still lingering. Then, all this was happening so quietly you didn't hear a whisper of it for a long, long time. All you knew was the clingy film of pain that was coating all your innards and the breaking of pieces of you that floated aimlessly. You felt aimless.

Pleasures began to wane, purpose began to be lost. Things went from out of focus to bleary to full-on blurry like viewing through a rain-washed window. Helplessness was pinning you down as you struggled to breathe, struggled to feign interest in things happening around you, struggled to keep afloat, even as you were pulled below the surface again and again. You were the spectre, the dark shadow that affected everyone who was in your presence. Pain came again, distances were created by putting up walls, and you felt support slip away. You wondered again and again how your actions could be seen by them as a personal affront to their beings. But that's how it was apparently. They left. They took steps back, and then never came forward again. It hurt. More than anything, the leaving hurt. You didn't know what to think because it seemed you must have pulled back from them when they needed you, for them to be doing that now that it was your turn. Your memory shows you nothing of the sort, but it is what you choose to believe, to help lessen the pain and confusion and pretend, yet again, that your faults are what are causing you to reap whatever 'rewards' life is throwing at you. You take the blame. They sit back content, their hearts accepting with grim pleasure as you struggle with weights you're carrying around your neck.

Suffocation is next, or perhaps was even there before. You try to throw off the pillow, try to ease your necktie, but breath is limited and your mind isn't doing so well without the oxygen. You feel again those binds holding you down, feel resentful at the mistreatment and long to shove it into faces as hard as you can. The expectations branded into your skin like a prized animal, the expectations need to be torn out. You tear it with so much force you leave half of yourself behind. You are free, but only half. It is frightening to not be whole. You cry. You wish for the agony to end, but when you turn around to share the anguish and try to put out the many fires burning in your wake and within you, you see nothing but fog and haze. There is no one. They have left. You die inside more. You know now you are alone.

You set about trying to figure out the winding road, picking up scattered pieces of yourself you find on the way. You are desperate and want to cling on to something, your nature is not so easily undone. You find, you cling. You begin to feel like a cup having hot tea poured into it. You feel better. But the pain-blankets are now heavier than ever, the chains around your neck ever more menacing. You weep. It seldom helps.

You reach out again and again, trying to desperately tie threads with your swollen, blistered fingers, unable to see through the blinding screen of tears that will not cease to flow. The threads keep breaking. You try it again with a smile on your face. They break again. You keep trying. Childhood insecurities begin to snake their way into your consciousness, and you start falling prey to them like you haven't in a long time. You start to retreat, to places inside of yourself where pain is already residing. It is not a happy abode, but it is the only one open to you now. Once-welcoming arms have now closed and you are alone.

Slowly you start cutting down on the bitterness and slathering on coats of a hard material you don't quite recognize. But it is serving your purpose. Coat upon coat of hardness. You start closing your eyes to telltale signs and pretending you cannot see, cannot feel the looks, the actions. You tell yourself you are not alone and can get through this. Your heart knows that there is no going back, but you tell it to yourself anyway because you know you have to bide time on empty words, for there is no other comfort to be had, nothing else is coming from anywhere.

You start to wean them off of you, pushing yourself into crevices when possible, let yourself stay unnoticed, reduce the shadow of your presence. You know you are the shadow. You realized they would be happier, better, without your influence and your constant presence. Or so it seemed. So you let them move on, let them revel in their happiness, their achievements, their big plans and goals, while you quietly try to snuff your candle and sneak off. You slowly let go, feeling yet again at fault for being the one always holding them back from being their great, amazing selves. They apparently do not think you need them, so you decide for them that they do not need you. Too late, they didn't need you anyway. You are flickering into invisibility. It hurts a lot, but it must be done.

Resentment and anger are finally given birth to, and they are staggeringly overweight. They flare in uncontrollable waves and some part of you is scared, but unable to understand how quickly the changes inside you happened. You spent broken moments, then pulled yourself up and made yourself stone-cold, and then all this happened. Underneath all the anger, you want to yearn for their absence. Your cold side ruthlessly suppresses it. It has had enough of pain. It doesn't want you moving towards it once again. You know you must give them up. Nerves scream, but you ignore them. You cry. You try to move on.

You want to question all those empty places, want to ask them to account for all the aches that surge through you again and again, but you know you no longer have the right to ask questions. That door has been closed. Not slammed shut, just closed slowly with a horrible creaking sound that dragged on forever and clawed at your insides. You want to ask who changed, who didn't, what changed what, what happened to who, questions and questions and questions. You want to plead for sincerity, want to rebuild and reforge. Nope. Nothing. None for you anymore. They are gone. So will you be soon.

You know you are on the right track, if there is any right and wrong. You know if you have lost them along the way, if you have found Allah, if you have found a measure of tranquility, of peace and stability, then you have won. You are no longer the wanderer, the helpless, the lost. You can't keep track of everyone anymore, but you know where you are. Right here. Now. This.

"Please pass the panic."

Various authors in their various books use various descriptions for a character who is panicking. They may say "he felt as if something large and wriggly was trying to force its way out of his stomach", or "she felt the blood rush to her head and there was a ringing in her ears in tune to her pounding heartbeat." The truth is, I have never felt like something large and wriggly was trying to force its way out of my stomach and I feel ... deprived. Like I have been cheated out of a great experience. I mean, yesterday's session of panic was SO wasted. Jeez.

The blood-rushing and the ear-ringing and the unsteady harsh breathing and the totally suddenly dry mouth (eww), I get that. It happens. I'd describe the blood-rushing more as it rushing out of my head rather than towards my brain, because it feels like a full-on downward trickling of blood. I wonder, when you have a moment of panic, why is it just for a moment? How long can someone be in that total-frantic-going-crazy-light-headed-blood-rush-panic mode before they have a fit or burst into tears or both?

P.S - When will I ever get half as much patience as my mother has?


Currently re-reading: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Watched: Kungfu Panda

Turnabout

For a few days now, I've been trying to live full out. That means I've been working on my thesis but also doing whatever it is I feel like doing. Whatever it is I can do. It's led to this strange sensation that hit me yesterday that I felt like my old self. The old rida. From two years ago. And it was liberating. I felt like wild crazy me!

I have my bad moments that start during the quiet afternoons which I now hate. They are the times when, if my mind does not sleep, it rapidly descends into irrational thoughts of the mind-puddle type. Slimy, ugghh puddles. Hurtful things, u*ly things. Insecurities. Self-loathing. Strange images of deaths and pain and anger. Justified and unjustified frustration. The self-loathing is the worst: the idea that I despise myself and cannot gain the acceptance I need from myself to even make me get up and move.

My life two months from now is a large blank. It's scary. It's actually got gaping holes right now even, but I've been sloppily filling them up however adequately possible to feel whole. Hence, I have somehow subconsciously called in two-year-back me, the one who knows how to wear the armor and do all the required moves in it. She likes to be wild and spontaneous. She's the wall builder, and the one who resorts to being numb as a method of self-defense. It's an important aspect of my personality that I had lost while letting down my guard, letting it down quite, quite far. So for now, not feeling too deeply, or rather, not delving into places where my mind can stop to catch a breath and just ponder, is a good thing. I provide my head with enough constant background noise so it is not able to hear itself think (ugghh I know that was terrible).

I can spend most of the day, as a result, in a happy fireproof bubble. It kinda makes me wonder at how much of a sappy weakling I had become. All weepy-teary. Now I'm all unfeeling and wacky. Who wants caring sentimental me anyway?

The Cry.

Negativity we must conquer. Climb up on and on, forever and ever, buffeted by despairing winds, pushed backwards, and then pulling up and against it, and wheezing through each semi-movement.

Feed not the wrong wolf, I hear her say. I believe it, but is it enough to abashedly brush things under the carpet, or should one somehow extract it out like a dentist in a good mood? I must get out of the dung-hole before it's too late. Somehow. Soon.
I am trying, I tell myself. Over and over i repeat it, whisper it, scream it into my own ears, wail and gasp and screech and tear. I repeat. But is it true?

But the heartache will not lessen.
It will not.

Help.

Today i learned..

Today i learnt

That there are some things out there that will shape your destiny and the best thing you can do is love and have faith in Allah.

That there might be a cure to the feeling of helplessness, but the problem is that at that moment you're too darn helpless to think of a cure.

That sitting between ppl and hearing, seeing and feeling that they do not understand is one of the worst and saddest feelings in the world.

That the realization that one thing is going to create distance is heart-rending.

That sometimes, you really are wrong.

That some things will never change, but there are still many things that are in your power to control.

the crutchy life.

The Crutchy Life

1. You have lots and lots of time to contemplate life, but you don't.

2. You experience every mood you have ever known, all in one day, everyday. Except perhaps embarrassment, because you start getting immune to that one.

3. You leave the bathroom door wide open most of the time.

4. You master the art of balancing trays on your lap..

5. ..while eating, texting and/or using the laptop.

6. Walking in squares is not that fun anymore.

7. You get room service.

8. You discover the true meaning of the word/object 'bed'.

9. You choose Grey's Anatomy over The Ten Commandments (totally loony).

10. You sleep alot.

11. You start respecting your family more...mostly their level of patience.

12. You run through messaging packages much more quickly, and still feel emptier than ever.

13. Once you sit down, you tend not to get up. for-like-freaking-ever.

14. The day you don't fall in the bathroom is epic.

15. Things like taking a shower, having lunch/breakfast/dinner/tea/brunch, and moving from point A to point B, becomes an event.

16. Yes, you start having lunch+breakfast+dinner+tea+brunch - everyday.

17. You have messy pathetic moments much more frequently.

18. You have messy lovey-dovey/mushy moments, much more frequently.

19. Your sense of humor becomes directly proportional to ... nothing.

20. You can never be fully comfortable out of the house with 'them'.

21. You really really really start hating stairs. Seeing them, hearing about them, climbing on and off them.

22. Final exams may or may not be a blessing.

23. Room service comes with its own call bell.

24. You like to think you're all murderous and can scare ppl at night when they're alone, you think you've got that image now, sans the eyepatch.

25. Your attempts at being a ninja are hopelessly marred by the pretty clinking and clanking and 'thunk-thunk' at every step.

26. You try to be a ninja anyway.

27. You envy ppl who are doing good workouts and wish you could be doing the same even though you know you wouldn't if you weren't in the crutchy life in the first place and won't once you get out of it either.

28. You feel pathetic, but at the same time you feel pathetic for being pathetic, and angry at feeling both.

29. Flowers eventually wilt.

30. You don't do chores. You devise new ones for everybody in addition to all the ones they are doing already in your place.

hope

Is it your turn to lose control yet? I keep waiting for you to slip so I can stand up and claim my falls.

Picking flowers

Sometimes I cannot figure out where the beginning is and where the end. Endless words and feelings pop up in my head and images flicker back and forth like entire film reels. Emotions.

I’m just a silly little girl who thinks she knows a lot but actually knows nothing about anything.

I make mistakes everyday, and now it seems I have started a chain of mistakes that are linked to each other and keep going on and on, a chain reaction I cannot stop, a trail of problems that will not end, a withered daisy-chain that my fingers will not, cannot, stop building.

So help me, God.

It is difficult to point my finger at a single point and say that this is where it all started – my daisy-chain is deceiving…it looks the same wherever I look at it from. Every flower is innocently alike. How cute.

Pathetic is one way to describe me. Foolish is another. Feel free to pick more.

Strength from you to me

I need strength. I need it now. I want it to flow from you to me. You forge a connection; hold hands. Warmth flows. Strengthens. Me. You.

Tears dry. Throats unchoke. Laughter returns. But the feel of your hand on mine remains forever.

i am bitter...aaho!

-

I was goth today. It felt strangely liberating. It meant I could be however I wanted to be and not have to face any of the ugly, stubby fingers people like to point at me. Yessir...that is my definition of it!

I've gotten back in that race, when time begins to matter. Your pulse races along with every tick of the clock, every second, and a single misstep threatens to throw you off balance and turn your world upside-down.

I want to write in flowing ink, watching the black fluid spread across the page in chinese runes, every dash of the brush elegant and smooth.
I want.
But I am bitter.

No wants with bitter.

End bitter
first

Hard.
Very hard.

*sigh*
-

Let it drag!

-
There is nothing more strange than thinking about something passively and then suddenly seeing it erupt into existence right before your eyes.
*smile*

I believe in slow, passive thoughts at the moment. Thoughts that are slowly swished around the mind; watching them sparkle in the light, grow, and change shape with each turning movement; thoughts that leave this satisfying warmth as you watch them mould into new ones, leaving that stardust impression in their wake on your subconscious.

I need more flexibility, and more freedom. I haven't yet let down those walls around me, and the stiffness is painfully visible. I wish to flaunt, but am held back. I don't know if it will just take time, or the right kind of atmosphere. Or maybe both.

I can wait.

-