The Vastness

 "For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love" - Carl Sagan

One early dawn, I found myself standing in front of Lake Louise in Banff National Park. Bluest of the blue waters I had ever seen stood dark, with moonlight dancing on its surface. The peaks shook me. Words fail me when I try to describe what I really feel standing in places like this, especially in darkness. A pull that causes the me to be afraid of myself. I might just walk in. 

Dr Sagan in talking about the cosmic vastness, I wonder, felt it too, maybe? Or it might just be a bug of my own faulty brain. Kundera defined vertigo as our own desire of jumping from the height causing the fear and not the height itself. My fear is also alike. I have felt it driving through the mountains of South India, that morning on Lake Louise, and even in the Smokes. It is awe, respect, and also amazement at what all they have seen over centuries and millennia. A true reflection of my own insignificance in the grand scheme of things. An hour spent marveling at its beauty is not even a blip in its lifetime. As tourists, we visit these places, and maybe pickup a souvenir. But some places, such as Lake Louise, take a piece of you and there is no replacing it.

While Dr Sagan recommends love to face this fear and awe of the vastness, I am rather inexperienced on that front. I don't think I felt true love yet, at least not the kind that could stand with me on such lakeshores and hold my hand in anticipation of my feelings. I am not sure anymore if such love even exists. 

If you know of such love, dear reader, I suggest you hold onto it. Don't let it go for it must the rarest of feelings in the whole cosmos.

Overwhelmed

I have to leave this Friday to attend a thing in Canada, and I am dreading it. Taking a friend with me. She has planned a whole thing of going to 3 national parks and stuff. I don't know why I am dreading it. Suddenly, I feel like I don't want to go. Nothing brings joy anymore.

I have been thinking about how this friend is kinda two-faced. I don't trust such people. I feel like everything is sucky and I am the suckiest. I have been cursing myself for not mastering driving yet. I could've gone alone. Should have gone alone. I want to leave for a week and just disappear in some mountain cabin. I want to throw away my phone and live with no internet access. I dont know what can fix this.

Will I ever be happy?

Living in a Void

 I think there is something wrong with me, in how I conduct myself, that people betray me without consideration. People I gave so much to are now completely over it as they took all they needed. 

 A friend I basically spent a whole year, meeting almost everyday, not only forgot me for a better part of 5 years but also had the audacity to call me at 3AM to ask a question about geostationary orbits! Someone make it make sense. 

A woman for whom I destroyed my knees carrying her shit up and down 3 flights of stairs for 40+ rounds now does not even have to time to get a coffee with me. Her office is 5 mins walk from mine. 

The line is endless...

Now I fear connection. Life seems like a glass bubble. Everyone on the outside thrives, yet I only hear muffled noises of joy.

As the decades seem to fly by, I wonder if I will ever get what I truly wanted -- A person who was just mine. I have waited my whole life to be the priority of someone. Since my childhood, I felt the weight of every passing second, hoping that the one I was waiting for would be the one person I needed. It has now been 31 years, and I am still waiting. Maybe I am asking too much, and maybe that connection only exists in the faded pages of the books I inhaled. Sometimes, I also wonder if I am just unworthy of such a gift. I have no prized beauty or grace, I am a stubby girl who fits nowhere and with no one. All I do is try, and try, and fail. The void inside me grows as I question the very essence of this existence. How did is all go so wrong? Maybe I asked for too much, and lost it all. Or maybe it is just inherited. The women in my family just suffered all their lives. It could simply be an ancestral baggage I carry till I die.

 I want to give up hope completely. I cannot bring myself to read literature anymore. I cannot paint anymore, I cannot draw anymore. Fear is all I feel these days. One step forward, ten steps back. Yet, something inside me still fights. I laugh sometimes at meaningless things. All of this to say, all of me is tired and destroyed, and I don't know how long I have left.

 

 

Basic Vanilla

People have been calling me vanilla now! 

I don't drink alcohol as alcoholism runs in my family. It's just inviting the devil on a red carpet. I have never tried drugs or even any of the gentle stuff such as weed, because I am too scared of my own personality. I have no idea what I will say or do and to whom. It may irreparably destroy my life (maybe hyperbole here, but you get the point. It will invite unnecessary drama). My hobbies these days are walking, growing plants, and painting. While I am learning swimming and weight training, I am currently sucking at both. I have no man I am interested in, past or present, alive or fictional. So now I am labeled vanilla. Maybe they are right, but it hurts. It is insulting. Do I have to partake in vices just to be exciting?

What hurts me more is the fact that just because I am a woman, everyone thinks they can tell me that I "need" a boyfriend. The implication here being I need to be laid to fix myself (??????!!!!!!!!!!!!). I am sick of hearing this. I have been especially betrayed when this "friend" of mine said this to me last night. Fuck this! How can you call me a friend and use these adjectives? If you think so low of me, why you are here! I am not going down this route again. I have had it with men telling me this shit and I am done.   

I can do it by myself. I can buy my own car, my own house, my own plants, and support my own life. I can control numbers and manage my failing career somehow. But what I cannot do is control people. Fuck people. You trust someone and this is how they judge. What is this questions of "this is your problem, you don't think anyone is right if you can't see it yourself!" It hurts but I guess I found this out early enough. 

The fundamental flaw of our existence is the very fact that you cannot know what another is truly thinking. No actions, no words, nothing is reliable. A person can be with you for decades and still might think absolutely low of you. I don't want to show you my scars. I just want to be left the fuck alone. I never thought life would turn out to be this way. 

Do You Think of Me?

I wonder, often, if they think of me? Or am I just somebody that's forgotten in the faces they once knew. Do they even remember my name?

I find it disturbing that we know people for years and suddenly they are gone. Not dead, but just gone from your life. Like a summer that ended too soon, before you could even say goodbye, it was over. The last words were the last words, and you can't change any of it. Someone who seemed so significant was reduced to just an afterthought. 

Call me sentimental, I think this is a great tragedy of life.

I remember everything, but I never said anything. All those who meant everything momentarily, I still remember vividly all the good times and bad. For some, I know I left, but I hope they know that I tried to hold on as long as I could. When they threw jabs, used me, berated me, and shattered my heart into a million pieces, I still hung onto the thought of them. All these ghosts are still mine, and maybe it is time to let them go, yet I don't know how. Each of them took a piece that I'll never get back. And I wonder if they know. Do I ever cross your mind? What do you even remember? What was the point of it all?

There is wisdom in forgetting: no burdens to carry, and I cannot blame them for it. It wouldn't matter

A Week Left

 In about a week, I turn 31 *barf*

Imagine pulling a sweater apart. At first, the strands will fight you, but soon they disintegrate. Each hank, that once kept you warm, now falling apart into a cloud of particles. 

That is exactly how I feel. Disintegrated. 

I am sick of hearing myself talk about it. I am sick of complaining and nothing changing. I hate my own reflection so much that I covered up the mirror on my wall. I hate it all, and I hate being here. Everything is a huge pile of disappointment. In this fragmented existence, what is the meaning of ambition? Or even connection? I have nothing to offer anyone, much less a partner. I keep trying to put it altogether but I keep failing. 

With days, weeks, and decades passing me by, what is the point of continuing. I bought a car over the weekend. I just felt like crying and I don't even know why. I might have to buy a home and I am dreading it. 

-------------Side note---------------------------

FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER!FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER!FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER!FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER!FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER!FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER!FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER!FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER!FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER!FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER!FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER!FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER!FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER!FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER! FUCK THIS PAPER!

I hate this paper so much now. More than the paper, I hate myself that I cannot complete it. I hate it and I hate breathing! fuck this!

-----------End Side note--------------------------

Dear Reader,

If I get more unhinged in the future posts, please know that I wasn't so from the start. I was a kind, happy, bright kid. But the world fucked me over multiple times. Fuck all those people who destroyed me. Fuck the decisions I made. Fuck the responsibilities I must dredge to survive. And overall, fuck having to survive the most!

From the desk of an exhausted 30-year old going on 31,

Forgive me,

Yours Truly

The Life I Wanted to Live

 As I teen who grew up watching Hollywood rom-coms, I dreamed to be like the girls in the big city. I grew up in a big city, but my space in it was tiny. A 6'x6' room was my world for the most part. With caged wings, I just boded time till it was my turn to be free. It took 24 years, but I was finally free. The flight wasn't long then but a massive weight was lifted off me. For the very first time, I felt like I was something. But soon that proved to be a temporary stay, and I flew much farther to my current state in life. 

As a teen, I thought that I will live with a passion for life. Much like the dreams of the 90s, I will travel all over the world, my whole life in a suitcase, chasing all that this world has to offer. I dreamed of fancy dresses and even fancier parties, all to make up for the lack of them in life thus far. A tiny studio in New York City, a classic apartment in Paris or London, will be my abodes. Never one to crave material things, I wanted the experience of somehow feeling like I belonged. 

Dear Reader, I am disappointed to report that none of my dreams have materialized thus far. I will turn 31 this year, and I live in a college town of the US. It's all farm and fields here, no brownstones of NYC in sight anywhere. I have a what most people want, a sort of stable (piecewise stable to be accurate) job in a low crime area. I do not feel like wearing shirts here, let alone fancy dresses. imbibing the Gen Z spirit, I roam around in cargo-pants and cartoon t-shirts. I was fortunate enough to travel to NYC and Paris in 2022, but that was just a blip. I wanted joy, adventure, and purpose. I have nothing. 

All this to say, that life had its own plans, and I just floated along. I question myself almost everyday if this is what I want to be doing? Is this making me happy? Maybe I am so used to surviving that that is all I know. I purposely choose challenges over joy, in the hope that overcoming them will bring me greater joy. They never have. All I feel is numb, isolated, and alone. 

When I close my eyes, I think of myself as an island under the endless sky, slowly drifting away from the known shores. No bridges left, no sailor in sight. What is the point of all of this?