Leftover anxiety, internal oppression and the life that passes by!
“Everything I love is light years away. Anyway, I’ve not seen light in years.”
I am wooed by life’s animosity and love and how quickly it changes the colours of all your days. Fair to say that this has been the toughest in all my recent life. There are no fruitful feelings or any fresh meals, and the only leftover is the crippling anxiety I have been dealing with. I used to believe that depression is the worst thing to have happened to me when I spent almost three years in bed doing nothing.
“When you do nothing not out of want but out of forcefulness, you realise how much that nothing takes away from you.”
Anxiety, however, is the worst thing to have happened to me. If you couple it with epilepsy, god bless your soul. I am never not thinking about this excerpt from Andrew Solomon’s Ted Talk -
“And then the anxiety set in. If you told me that I'd have to be depressed for the next month, I would say, "As long I know it'll be over in November, I can do it." But if you said to me, "You have to have acute anxiety for the next month," I would rather slit my wrist than go through it. It was the feeling all the time, like that feeling you have if you're walking and you slip or trip and the ground is rushing up at you, but instead of lasting half a second, the way that does, it lasted for six months. It's a sensation of being afraid all the time but not even knowing what it is that you're afraid of. And it was at that point that I began to think that it was just too painful to be alive, and that the only reason not to kill oneself was so as not to hurt other people.”
So much of life then becomes about other people. We do things for other people; we live for other people, we eat because someone reminds us to, we go on walks because a friend says that it is important to get out of your room at least once. The truth is that no one has ever made it through life without someone whispering in their ears that you’ve to make it through this life. The voices of the whispering keep changing, but the love remains the same.
I lost my job on 12th June when I received an email from the company that my services are no longer required. Since then, I have not taken a breath. I have constantly been applying for other jobs, giving interviews, and spending all my time creating opportunities. Nothing has worked out so far. I don’t want to leave the city, but I feel like I am on borrowed time now, and I can hear every tick of the clock right in my ears.
“What a sad thing to be alive. To be alive out of internal oppression and worldly coercion.”
As a kid, I felt that I was not a part of my own life. On most days, I still feel that way. I can recognise my childhood sadness just by looking at my face. Sadness is a patient I am assigned to nurse.
“I stand at the side of the road and look at my life pass by. Sometimes I wish I was a part of it.”
The truth is I am tired. I think I need an extremely hot shower with my face buried in my hands. I need to go away and see a life that does not require making ends meet. It is terrible how the culture functions and even more terrible how it affects your day-to-day life. I mean, at least for a month, I don’t mind watching ants helping each other with directions, infants sucking their thumbs, or drenched umbrellas drying in sunlight.
Also, it is nice to experience the familiar smell of a person after not meeting them for long. Familiarity is such a feeling; it governs half of me. As a person, as a friend, as a writer, as anything, the only thing I want to do is to feel secure. It is very easy to come to a big city and feel you’re missing out on things, but I really want to be okay with missing out on things. I really want to be okay with who I am, what I do and what I am trying to become. I think your grace and humanness come through when you begin to feel that way. This is what I wish for each one of you. I hope you never feel you’re missing out on anything.
Sharing a piece of my heart with you -
“None of us understand what we’re doing, but we do beautiful things anyway.”
— Allen Ginsberg
I hope the house of your life is always filled with the beauty of old love, the one that made you believe, the new love, the love that is ever-present in day-to-day events. I hope it's filled with the laughter of children, the possibility of personal confrontations, small joys of laziness, the smell of your limitations, your friends and everything they leave behind, and most importantly, sweet milk and something to eat to keep you full. Wishing you a goodness that begins and ends at you.
“One more cup of coffee for the road,
One more cup of coffee 'fore I go
To the valley below.”
Some poems for you:
“Dust” by DORIANNE LAUX
Someone spoke to me last night,
told me the truth. Just a few words,
but I recognized it.
I knew I should make myself get up,
write it down, but it was late,
and I was exhausted from working
all day in the garden, moving rocks.
Now, I remember only the flavor —
not like food, sweet or sharp.
More like a fine powder, like dust.
And I wasn’t elated or frightened,
but simply rapt, aware.
That’s how it is sometimes —
God comes to your window,
all bright light and black wings,
and you’re just too tired to open it.
“Untitled” by Franz Wright
Will I always be eleven,
lonely in this house,
reading books
that are too hard for me,
in the long fatherless hours.
The terrible hours of the window,
the rain-light
on the page,
awaiting the letter,
the phone call,
still your strange elderly child.
“Heavy” by MARY OLIVER
That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying
I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had his hand in this,
as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,
was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel,
(brave even among lions),
“It’s not the weight you carry
but how you carry it–
books, bricks, grief–
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it
when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.”
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?
Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?
How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe
also troubled –
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?
“My Dead Friends” by MARIE HOWE
My friends are dead who were
the arches the pillars of my life
the structural relief when
the world gave none.
My friends who knew me as I knew them
their bodies folded into the ground or burnt to ash.
If I got on my knees
might I lift my life as a turtle carries her home?
Who if I cried out would hear me?
My friends—with whom I might have spoken of this—are gone.
Something to read for you:
Something to watch for you:
A big thank you to my friend Shobhit Narang for this <3
Until next time, my lovelies!
With love,
Prashant.