Of A Comeback

Tags

care, cat lover, health issues, hobbies, human warmth, love found, love is a two-way street, ordinary, post-pandemic, post-pandemic consequences, priorities, routines, slow living, wellbeing

It’s been a second, friends. Not by choice, yet not by force, it just happened this way.

What have I been doing all this time, you ask? I wish I could tell you stories about wild adventures and one of a kind experiences, but I’ve been living in the same post-pandemic world as everyone else. Instead of joy blooming along with the trees, last spring was dotted with worries of war right next door. Then summer slammed into my brain with a heat more vicious than I ever experienced in my now close to 37 years of living. I’d been hoping for our very own roaring twenties, effervescence and glamour infusing our actions and our attitude; alas! there was only a pervasive sense of dullness and forced gayness of spirit. On the other hand, it may well be the awkward one was me – on account of years of social distancing or of simply getting older, I couldn’t muster up the energy to join the parties, the concerts, the festivals with the enthusiasm I’d imagined.

Autumn and the semblance of a winter season sneaked into the city and my life, bringing along bounty of health issues of the kind I hadn’t imagined I would experience so soon in life. Loss of mobility, though partial and temporary, is a hit to your self confidence even in the most stable and energetic of times, so for me it was a brutal awakening to the truth of needing to give the right importance to health, else other demands of life will be meaningless.

But the year was not all bleak and boring. I found the person who wants to care for me even when I can barely move my arm because of damaged shoulder tendons, or when I’m loopy with fever during covid. The one who’ll tell me I’m beautiful even when I’m barely woken up and haven’t washed my face yet. The one who runs out to buy me chocolate when he sees I’m low on energy and have a trying day ahead of me. The one I can laugh with about the silliest things and have serious debates with about the most niche topics. The one who’ll just sit with me on the couch and read in silence, with our orange tabby curled up next to us, and he’ll find that perfect.

This year, I’m giving myself permission to start slow and to listen to what my body and my mood are telling me. I’m working on stabilizing all the areas of my life which subtly fell away from me in disarray since the covid lockdown began. I’m toiling away at finding the routines that help me, because contrary to what pop culture and society nowadays is shouting at us – being no that much out of the ordinary, having hobbies we don’t especially excel at, having a moderately-paced walk in the mornings when the sunlight is just starting to shine above the horizon, taking the time to cook dinner from scratch and having a quiet evening in are all satisfying and fulfilling in their own right.

Of Returning To The Same Place

Tags

being present, breathing, childhood, friends like family, hopelessness, life lessons, meditation, nostalgia, presence, problem, respite, silence, solution, state of mind, stillness, stuck, summer, summer vacation, thoughts

Mind is hardly ever still. Heart is hardly ever unmoved. Even in silence, the undercurrents shift the being, mold it into shapes anew, send it into territories of uncertainty and excitement in equal measure.

A weekend filled with deep silence, surrounded by forest and sunshine and the kind of people one would write gratefulness journal entries every damn day. I made my body sit still, took a breath and stopped trying to control the river of thoughts. Even while meditation practices say it’s counterproductive to force the path, the realization in the moment is nonetheless surprising.

The last time I was in this state of mind was probably when I was 11 or 12, in my grandmother’s back yard at the late end of summer – sun high in the cloudless sky, mountain in the background, crickets making their music in anticipation of a winter that would reduce the dance of life to the bare minimum. If I tried to name it, it would be the state of presence – the heat of the sun’s rays in the moment, the faint breeze flowing from the mountain’s peak, the ruffling of the leaves saying goodbye to the heat of August, the smell of warm skin.

A respite. A full body breath. Not running away, but not running towards. Simply sitting with.

When the problem is that there is no problem, hopelessness becomes almost tangible, like weight tied to your legs making walking seem like trudging through wet sand. A problem I can find a solution for, something broken I can fix, a road that leads to a dead end I can make U-turn on. This, though, has me stuck.

Photo by Ben Hershey on Unsplash

Of A Longed For August

Tags

August, balanced, being present, books, chill, fever dream, grateful, grounded, human warmth, last days of summer, mid-day heat, mindfulness, summer moved on, sun, sweet spot

August again. Out of the blue of the summer skies and there’s nothing any of us can do about it but lounge in the midday heat, then surrender to the chill of the nights.

August again, and then overnight fall is upon us, hard as it may be to believe it. A respite from the fever dream, at last. A return to the sweet spot in the eye of the storm that these past couple of years have been. A path lost, found, then lost again to be rediscovered when the gingko tree leaves start to turn bright yellow.

I take a breath, deep to the marrow of my bones, to the brain cells that throw a party every night, to the blood cells that fall in love with the oxygen molecules that keep me alive and kicking, smiling and crying, running and standing firm, kissing and holding souls in embraces awkward, furtive, warm.

The sun still shines, only a little gentler. The day’s still full of possibility, only a little more subtle. I do love the madness, but it’s so quick to dissolve in the salt water the sea splashes at me. Just like the sandcastles little kids insist on building even though they see the waves drawing closer as the day moves from morning to afternoon.

Not even September, and I’m finding myself wrapped in my blanket with books and tea by my side – odd, but I’ll allow it. I’ll allow it to ground me and steer me back to my roots – my family and friends – my dear ones, my corner of the world where to be seen and accepted, loved requires no prior proof or justification. There will be summer again, but this August is to be lived and reveled in no matter the temperature or state of the skies. As is tomorrow, next week and whatever next might be in front of you.

Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

Of The Right Time For Love

Tags

be curious, being present, being seen, curiosity, daring bravely, daydreaming, knowing smile, love, lover, openness, smile, star gazing, summer is a mistress, summer madness, summer nights, vulnerability, warm lips

Lover, you smell of summer rain at eight in the evening and your lips are warm like the sun sneaking out from behind the storm clouds.

It’s starting again – the madness, the bright chaos, the upending sleeplessness of these months when daylight rules the world. I can feel it washing over me in waves and breezes – all it takes is one smile for no more reason than the scent of acacia flowers and I know I’ve fallen into it. This year gave me no notice, to at least play pretend at fighting it. I closed my eyes, smiled a knowing smile to myself and there was no more to it than accept the daydream, the heat in my blood.

Let’s play a game, lover. I’ll stretch my hand out to the sky, pretend like I don’t long to hold your hand. I’ll show you my most bubbly smile, pretend like I don’t long for my lips to brush against yours. I’ll look in awe at the stars, pretend like I don’t long to see myself in the mirror of your eyes.

Few people understand. Even fewer dare – to stay a while, to listen, to be curious to know even though they may never understand.

I don’t know you yet, lover. You seem far away, but you may be close. So I’ll stretch my hand out for your – you’re doing the same, aren’t you?

Photo by Arjunsyah on Unsplash

Of A Warm Weight Of My Own

Tags

being present, defense mechanism, feeling deeply, joy, love, poetry of nature, selfless, showing up, soft heart, summer dreams, summer is a mistress, vulnerability

The weight of days is equal to or larger than the weight of your heart. I wrap words around the Saturday noon nap and spin threads of dreams that I only half remember upon waking. But I open my eyes smiling, it was surely a good dream to wish into reality.

I’m starting to believe that goodbyes are real. To some, they come easily, as natural as the movement of covering your face the split second before a runaway ball smashes into your nose. Same principle, really; both reactions serve the purpose of defending a precious asset – in the first case, your facial architecture, in the second, more often than not your heart.

The question of whether I am willing to show up fully again in front of another human being came up last night over a glass of gin infused with summer berries. Who else would have the lack of inhibition and the warm concern to ask such a direct question than an old friend: ‘Loving is supposed to be a selfless emotion, can you still offer it?‘ No hesitation. Yes, I can. I’m as sure as I’ve been in the surest of moments of being blindly, deeply in love that I can.

My heart’s grown big again over the years, it’s grown gentle even in the face of disenchantments and frustration. But it’s also grown confident in the overflow of love it can generate.

The days smell like lilac and acacia flowers and I can’t help smiling – it’s surely a good dream to wish into reality.

Photo by Alexander Sergienko on Unsplash

Of Pushing Through The Block

Tags

#pandemicdiaries, acceptance, April sun, being present, being thankful, emotional blockage, excuses, facing your fears, hurdles, kindness, life lessons, little joys in life, mortality, people like sunshine, self awareness, sunshine, wisdom, writer's block

I scowl at the blank page in front of me. Words have not been friends for weeks now and I’ve been blaming it on writer’s block, but I’m starting to acknowledge what that really means beneath the clichéd excuse we throw in the world. There are times when I edit myself at a subconscious level and the reason is usually the same – fear.

I’m not afraid of fear, you see; it’s a healthy mechanism most of the time, but when if misfires it needs to be faced with determination. There’s another thing I’m realising more than one year into the pandemic and one parental broken later leg (that could have easily been something more serious, but thankfully wasn’t). With age comes the recognition of our mortality (personal and applied to the ones around us), and as a result the gentle acknowledgement that our parents have given us not only hurdles we need to jump over or dismantle, but also gifts we’ve been misinterpreting. It is my mother I have to thank for the grit I approach my fears with, for both the rational and the emotional sides of the arguments I present to myself in those moments.

Scowling at the blank page, something shifts slightly, just enough to push through the emotional blockage. Yet the only thing that keeps coming back to mind is ‘Would you look at that big, blue sky!’ and ‘Thank goodness for the sun!’. Thank goodness for its warmth in the chill of these early April mornings. Thank goodness for those people who are sunshine in the dreariness of the daily trudge. You know, the ones who no matter the catastrophe will find a way to look ahead, realistically and hopefully nonetheless – and they will drag you along for the ride even if you weren’t explicitly asking for it. When clouds are covering up the sun, look for your sunshine people.

Life is more than a collection of breaths.

To act as if it were sounds both heartbreaking and arrogant – can you really believe it’s just that when you look at the beauty of a rose, the complexity of a pinecone and the softness in the eyes of your beloved furry companion? are you really so confident that the value you bring to this constantly rearranging chaos named the Universe is non-important to such a degree that you are unique in your lack of value?

You may blame the sunshine for my buoyancy, but I choose to thank the multitude of the little things for it.

Photo by Christian Widell on Unsplash

Of How To Drop It

Tags

acknowledge, armour, awkward kind and brave, being brave, emotional growth, emotionally guarded, fear, joys in life, keep trying, letting go, moving past your fear, openness, practice what you preach, putting up walls, rationalizing, shield, sit with the hurt, unhealthy patterns, values, vulnerability

I’m not one to brag. Still not sure if this is because of my introverted temperament or due to the way I was brought up – I can still hear my mom’s words whenever I felt that my academic efforts weren’t being seen: ‘You don’t need to prove yourself constantly, people will recognize your value’. This helped calm my nerves about the expectation to be highly participatory in class, but at the same time it made me work that much harder to make sure people saw all the blood, sweat and tears I was putting in. It also engrained in my mind the false belief that people would just know without me showing up at all.

For a handful of years now, I’ve been actively working on myself in attempt to become a better person and not to fall back into the same patterns of mistakes I’d been blind to both by circumstance, but also by choice (oh, how the mind can rationalize the worst of situations just to avoid the anxiety of change!). I’ve become quite skilled in conversing with the people around me, in being curious about them. I stand by the idea that one of the greatest failings of today’s society is the absence of true curiosity, the one that requires us to be patient in the way we probe, ask questions and, more importantly, listen.

Having reached this point in my journey of better understanding the world and myself, I came to believe that knowing something is equal to being able to act the way you know to be right for the context and for your values. Wrong! I’d become an expert at preaching the gospel of vulnerability (just search for this tag on the blog to see how many times it comes up) while being scared out of my wits whenever I came close to it in my own life experiences. Needless to say, when this fact sunk in, I started to feel deeply ashamed of my hypocrisy, but what’s a girl to do than keep preaching and trying, and trying, and trying even in the face of mounting evidence that her shield might be too well put together to be dismantled anytime soon.

Wondering where the bragging part comes into play? Right about now, because it turns out I am capable of taking off the plate mail armour and being vulnerable, and not shattering completely in the process of falling on my face. The bruises and the pain may be real, but so is the strength to rebalance myself that I’ve worked on silently and steadily for years. It was there all along, I just didn’t trust myself enough to test it in real life conditions for fear that another crash would break me beyond repair. If you’re wondering what prompted the gain in trust, it was from an improbable a source as one could imagine – someone still struggling with their own ability to let go and face their vulnerability in front of another.

Does this mean vulnerability will come easy to me in practice from now on? Absolutely not. There are knots in my throat to untangle still. But this single proof of the possible was enough for me to drop the shield and armour again when life will demand a leap of faith on my part.

Photo by Brittney Burnett on Unsplash

Of Ghosts of Lovers Past and Present

Tags

absurdity, armour, being enough, being guarded, comfortably numb, cowardice, disappointment, falling, ghosting, inflicting pain, introversion, introvert, keep quiet, openness, running away, senseless situation, souls, trying, vulnerability

Running away has never felt more appealing.

Seems like so many do it without any qualms, so why should I hesitate? Walk – no, run! – away from the disappointment of people’s duplicities and inability to be open and vulnerable in the truest of senses. Tell me, if pain is real and you fight to assuage it when caused by others, then how can you inflict it yourself so casually? Why should I be capable of enduring it, while others must be protected from it?

The double standards of human relationships confuse me to the point of falling numb, to the point that my brain shuts down: any logical thread to make sense of a senseless situation hits a wall of an absurdity that cannot be surpassed. So I slide down, back to the wall, and stare into the distance surely containing some sort of explanation that will be revealed to me, to clear my mind of thoughts of irrational guilt over nothing at all – if I only stay awake for long enough, try hard enough. Keep trying, always keep trying, as if I’m the only one who should.

Don’t ask why we’re guarded, us introverts. We feel in ways words can’t describe, so we decide keeping quiet is better than not doing our feelings justice with our misshaped words. We’ve got mail plate around our hearts because they’ve been bled out enough times over to fill a blood bank for a century. We tread carefully because we think other’s souls might be just as skittish as our own, so when we stumble into another human whose eyes sparkle at the same dorky nothings, we don’t jump, we smile wryly and pull them just a little bit closer into a tight hug. Be patient with our skittish soul, for when we’re good and ready to drop our armour, you’ll find a heart as ready to love as a teenager’s first fall into the whirlwind.

Photo by Karim MANJRA on Unsplash

Of The Warmth Of Spring Sun

Tags

curiosity, effort, fears, groundhog day, happiness, keep your heart safe, letting your guard down, love, openness, people like sunshine, smiling, spring, stuck in a loop, vulnerability

Do you know exhaustion? Utter, bitter, seeping through every cell of your body exhaustion – but not from physical exertion; from too much hope and too much trust. Idealists have it rough in this world of minimal effort to understand, of curiosity in the Other being squashed under muddied trunks of baggage we drag behind us from frayed relationships with family, friends and lovers.

A year of trying, the same month lived over and over and over again, like an awful rendition of Groundhog Day where we all know we’re stuck in a loop, yet are still unable to escape it – it would take too much effort we’re not willing to put in.

Running doesn’t help, but neither does sitting still. Then just when you think you’ve found the way out, that ray of sunshine to guide you out from the fogs of winter, you realize you’ve been too greedy for your own good by trying to rely on outside forces to brighten the skies.

‘Smile more,’ they say. But smiling is a luxury when disappointment is the rule of the game and your heart’s been bled out more times than you can count. On an average day, you try to keep it safe by folding it in wit, irony and laughs that don’t sound quite like you, all the while praying to divinities you don’t believe in that someone will see through the ruse and inspire a laugh so honest that nobody could deny you are happy to the last cell of your being.

Photo by Anders Jildén on Unsplash

Of When It Snows

Tags

acceptance, detachment, emotional storms, facing your demons, forming connections, hugs, human connection, marketable skills, meaningful conversations, openness, pandemic diaries, patience, popular, post-pandemic, roaring 20's, snow, society, talents, telling stories, triggers, vulnerability, warmth

I had missed the cold, and more than anything the cold of the snowy sidewalks in a city devoid of people running breathlessly from here to there, from somewhere to who knows where. The air goes still when snow falls and all that feels wrong spins on its head – can you honestly tell me you’re able to stop yourself from smiling when it snows?

A heart under the influence or a mind stuck in loops of pattern analysis – which is worse in this cold?

I’m certain we’ve all got talents beyond the definition of marketable or utilitarian skills. I make people acknowledge things about themselves and their lives that they’d have preferred not to confront. Not exactly an ideal one for winning the school talent show or the popularity prize, for that matter.

Bundle up, darling, this winter is just beginning, the snows are piling up and hugs are in higher demand than the supply. Market prices are bound to go up by the day.

Photo by Steven Wright on Unsplash

When it feels like all’s been said about the pandemic times we’re living, still the penchant for musing isn’t something I can shake. I may not be original and my thoughts about what I want from my life may not be my own, but the grasp of telling stories in whatever form the day beckons is too tight and too gentle to want to walk away from. So I linger in this self-indulgence as if I weren’t aware of my failings and the mundane urgencies in my life which demand my attention and energy.

In grappling with the exacerbated disconnectedness of these eleven months, I’ve gone through phases. Denial and rebellion in the beginning, apathy and resignation in the middle, and now curiosity and a pull towards understanding, but slowly moving back to rebellion as the one year mark draws near. Hugs aren’t the only thing in short supply these days, patience is also harder to come by. Conversations are short and our fuses are shorter even, to the point that anything could be a trigger for the other person to either explode or retreat from the interaction. Both emotionally taxing for the person on the receiving end and probably equally painful to go through for the one enacting them.

I miss hugs and the festival crowds the most. Back when hugs were not epidemiologically questionable, they were catalysts for more acceptance. The crowds hypnotized by the same musical gods were bound to lead to planned or accidental encounters and to embraces freed of past and future. If it’s true that the post-pandemic years are expected to be flamboyant and filled with relentless social interactions, then let the roaring 20s come!