Came across an ancient journal of mine today. It was endearing, leafing through it, the happiness smeared, tear-stained pages, the anger marked, gloomy and depressed letters, bits and pieces of poems that I've started writing but never finished slanting through pages and pages in red, blue, green and black carbon. Those were my footsteps, my naive and innocent journey through life into the known, the unknown and the never to be understood.
I realized that I had always been a romantic, its just not some incurable sickness that I had developed in my pre-adult years under the influence of too much of literature as I had imagined, I had been born with it. Well, like they say, you can take the girl out of the romantic, but you can't take the romantic out of the girl. Even at such a tender age I had believed in the sort of spiritual, all-consuming love that takes over your soul, I had believed in soul mates, I had believed that I was half a soul wandering the earth, searching for that other half that would complete, refill and radiate my existence (yup, something like a scene from an adventure movie where someone finds the missing piece of a broken magic tablet and fits the two pieces together and wham! There is light!) I had so much of hopes, so many dreams, gotten them shattered, some of them were realized, suffered heart breaks, glued it all back together again and still managed to be myself, untainted, unblemished(Well, perhaps a liiiitle bit) I had cried a thousand nights, cursed, hated and sworn never agains, but yet, I had loved, again and again, for I had never given up hope. Hope had always been there, hope and belief that I deserved the kind of unfathomable love that I yearned for, and the belief that I was capable of giving the same back.
I had been a fighter. I had never given up, not even once. I had suffered perhaps a little too much and been loaded upon far too much weight for such a young heart to carry but I had braved through it all with my head held high and nose stuck in the air. I had been strong, I had not always been smart but I had accepted my mistakes, my faults and other idiosyncrasies with open arms and I had come to terms with them, always forgiving myself. I had been strong. I had always emerged out of it all, perhaps a little teary eyed and worn around the edges, but I had never killed hope, not for a single moment.
But I I had killed my feelings at times, I had braved heartaches single handedly by doing so. I had strangled, starved and beaten those culprit feelings to a pulp. Killing feelings does seem a little too cruel, but I did it because I could not bear it anymore. My all too sensitive nature was breaking under the weight, the heart was threatening to burst and there were times that I had thought that I was dying. I guess I've always known the power of my emotions, had always been afraid of what they could do. I had been afraid of letting the intensity of those feelings and emotions engulf me, drag me to the bottom of a dark, morbid well where I knew that I would suffer forever and whither away, slowly and painfully. Killing my feelings had always been the best option, though not the easiest. It took time, it took effort, it took boxes and boxes of tissues, a whole load of movies, ice cream, chocolate and hours and hours of slobbering all over my girlfriends and torturing them with minute details of my suffering existence but I had done it somehow. I am proud of myself. Not to mention, eternally grateful to those amazingly patient sisters that I call friends.
I found a letter that I had written to my would-be lover, (obviously this had been the age when every little girl dreams of her first kiss, her knight in shining armor, etc) telling him to take care of my heart, to not hurt me because once in love I will love him with my heart, body and soul, more than I had ever loved myself, ever loved anyone or anything else in the entire world and that I wouldn't be able to bear it if he deceived me, for I would lay my life in his hands (believe me, those were my very words). To my dismay, I find that I haven't changed much in this supposedly sage age of twenty-something wisdom. Well, to be fair, I did expect some sort of improvement to the years passed by but I find that even today, I love completely, naively and self-sacrificially, putting everything I've ever had in the hands of that one person that I love. Because I believe that nothing should be held back in love. Even if you know that it will kill you afterwards, it is worth every bit of blood you shed while you slowly bleed yourself to death.
Yes, love is pain. It is pleasure and it is, by all means, not always easy. It is a gamble with the devil where you put it all on the table and risk your soul. If you win, you win everything; its pure magical, heavenly bliss from there onwards. But if you lose, you lose it all; your happiness, your sanity and ultimately, your soul too shall be devil's property. Falling in and out of love is hard business. Feelings are still there more or less, only thing is, the pain is not there anymore. Only memories remain, the memories I ran away from, afraid of confronting them, afraid of letting them engulf my soul. I do not need to run away anymore. I am no longer afraid.
My journal tells me that I am, indeed, a survivor. I had survived through tough times, through pain, burn and heartache, I had never flinched at the face of a challenge, rather looked them in the face and carried on, head held high and made it right through. I had been human. I had felt, experienced, seen and done a lot of things. I had made numerous mistakes and I had learnt from them. In every sense of the word, I had been human. An unbelievably stupid one at times, but nevertheless, one that takes pride in who she is and revels in the simplest joys of life. I have and will always be, a voluptuary.
And I had never given up on love and hope. Those had been the very essence of my survival, through good times, the bad, not to mention, the ugly. Love and hope are the very elements that still continue to carry me through. This girl is strong. She is strong because she has a big, big heart, a heart full of love, joy and the simplicity of a child. She will always make it through. That's what my journal told, and that's what I had believed in all along :)
No comments:
Post a Comment