Fall

As the nights grow longer again, that creeping sense of dread returns. Another autumn, another year slipping away. Like the leaves on my lawn, it was real once, and now it is dead. I cannot change the past, nor can I bring back what is gone. And yet, much like the trees, I must go on living.

Beneath the gray clouds of dawn, I see the people around me differently. Their failures and shortcomings, their kindness and love. The things they have done, and the things they have left undone. This time around, I see them as people like me. I cannot change what they think. Perhaps I never could.

Soon, the winter chill will settle in, stirring that familiar ache in my heart. An undying longing for this loneliness to cease. But I cannot keep waiting for what may never come. Another winter will pass, as will another spring.

Looking around at all the misery in the world, my problems seem so small. So insignificant, so meaningless. Yet they weigh so heavily on me.

I want to know what it is to start living. It will not be everything I once wanted. But perhaps I can still have what I need: a purpose.

Love is beyond my control, a stochastic aberration. Purpose is mine to define. I have the privilege of choosing how to live my life.

If I live it.

 

 

 

I Can't

 Lately, I have been wondering what is the point of everything. I feel like getting in my car and driving till the end, wherever that may be. Screaming without a sound, while color bleeds through my world. There is a not a single person I want to call or be with. I have no hope I will ever be happy because I just don't know what is happiness for me anymore. Everything feels like boiled rice. 

No One Warns You About the Responsibilities

 I am 32. I have a job, a car, a house, and furniture to fill that house. I pay electric, sewage, water, gas, and phone bills. I pay for insurance for me, my car, and my house. I even got my drivers license today. While I am grateful for everything, I know things can be very very bad in this world for someone of my color and gender, it just feels like a weight. You could say, I don't have to have these. And you'd be right. I was doing the sensible thing. Investing, budgeting, building. But for what!  

One day you're 15 and no one trusts you with a rock. And one day, they let you buy a house! I am scared every day that I will lose it all. My title is serious, people my age have kids and pets, and I am supposed to be serious-- a grown up. I don't know when it all ended and I was handed all this paperwork and taxes. 

Part of me wants to live a life of no attachments. Wandering from one city to another. I imagined a life of me in a New York City apartment, sipping tea from my window overlooking the shimmering life. Or, walking down the streets of Prague with my hands in a fuzzy woolen coat. No responsibilities, no cooking, no ties.  

Now, I live in this little village...........with all these things. Everyday is a struggle that I somehow manage to survive. The one thing missing is joy. Or maybe something even greater--purpose. 

Too Sweet

 At 32, I now drink black coffee. Just a few years back, if you gave me black coffee I'd make a puke-y face. My coffee was sugar in liquid form. Four of those tiny creamer packs and six packets of sugar. Twice a day. 

I used to like chocolate ice cream with chocolate chips and chocolate sauce on it. Now I prefer vanilla. In fact, I used to eat boxes of sweets in a day. Now, even a chocolate can feel too much sometimes. 

I used to wear all black. Now, I add some color. 

I am stunned just typing this out. 

So much can change so fast, yet much remains the same. I still want a true love. I still want to feel like I belong. I want to want to wake up. I want to forgive myself and love myself no what what I achieved or how much I failed. I want to be happy.

I expected to be happier by 32. I expected that I'd have my shit together by now, yet I am more messier than I have ever been. I still feel like that 18 year old wanting to run but nowhere to run to. Some days, I feel like that 8 year old, standing in my school, feeling utterly alone and helpless all over again. 

Thinking of the future is scary. What if I keep declining? What if the peak is behind me? What if they were all right that I didn't deserve anything? What if my regrets turn into a boulder on my chest and finally crush the air out of me?

It is hard for me to imagine myself at even 35, or 38, or even 42.  

But I am here. I have a body that remembers these 32 years, and a wounded mind that catastrophizes. My life looks good on paper, and still cuts every day. But I’m still here. And I’m learning that surviving isn’t the same as living. I want the second one.

The Seeker

 About 12 years back, I wrote the post on this blog: The Search For Absolution, anchored with the following lines from Henry Miller,

“I see myself forever and ever as the ridiculous man, the lonely soul, the wanderer, the restless frustrated artist, the man in love with love, always in search of the absolute, always seeking the unattainable” 

― Henry Miller, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird

 

 wondering what absolution will be for me. Miller sees himself as the wanderer, a seeker. Impermanence is the very essence of his being. I was seeking relief. A young little kid, I wanted unconditional love and joy. I thought we were the same. 

 

I know now that we were different. I ran halfway around the world. I thought if I just ran far enough, fast enough, I could outrun my pain, as if it were geographically localized. But now I know, it festers within. Miller was content with seeking, without ever finding. My suffering compounded in the search for some absolution. This wanderer, this lonely soul, with a broken heart, grew tired of the chase. 

 

Now, there is nowhere left to run to. A heaviness hangs thick in the air, and the whole world feels so small. With bruised knees, I sit and let this pain wash all over me.

 

 

 

I Have No Words for This One

I honestly don't know whether to laugh, cry, or be angry about this one. 

 I was talking to a mentor, explaining my series of unfortunate incidents. He listens quietly, then says,"you know, helping you is actually frustrating for me. I help others a little, and their problems are solved within hours. For you, I keep trying but your luck is so bad that I don't even want to do it anymore". 

 How does one recover from this?  

I Wanna Go Home

"I wanna go home, go back to small things

I don't belong here........" 

 

A song about wanting to go home found me, and I understood every line without having lived its exact story.

I don’t have a home. There is the house I grew up in, where my parents still live. I fought with blood, tears, and the fraying edges of my sanity to get out. Not that they’re horrible people—just a toxic mix of personalities that vacuumed the oxygen out of every room. That place erased my coordinates. Leaving was the only way to survive.

My dad used to say when I was a kid: “Do this when you go to your own house.” “Own house” was supposed to mean my husband’s house. Even in elementary school I knew I needed my own deed, because what if that dude said the same thing? Fuck that. And now, after all of it, my father calls this place “our house.” Suddenly, “we” have a house here. How convenient. 

 

Now I have a house. I bought it with my money. I sign the mortgage. I found it. I painted the rooms. I hung the bathroom doors. I fixed the sink. I hauled 40-pound soil bags to build a vegetable garden with my own hands. I planted a lilac and a blue moon wisteria that now climbs the pergola posts like it knows something I don’t. It is mine (and the bank’s). 

 

But is it home? I don't feel like I belong here. I sit on my green corduroy couch, in front of my blue brick fireplace, and watch the world go by without me. A figure frozen in my own snow globe. This town has felt like a mistake since the day I arrived. I remember choking back tears in Walmart while trying to get a phone line.The silent cries on the sofa I was crashing on six years ago never really stopped. My gut knew I chose the wrong town then.

 

I almost got out too. It wasn't the best exit but it was a solid option. Maybe I could have been happier in that place east. I could have moved and explored further. But I stayed. WHY?! Now, I don't even remember. I guess I am trying to prove something-- that I am, I can, and maybe that I am worthy. No matter how many times I try, it will never be enough. This hollow, sinking feeling in my gut will persist forever. Maybe I am not meant to belong anywhere.