Currently
Playing: A Girl Called Eddy-Girls Can Really Tear You Up Inside.
It is almost as if you were frantically constructing another world while
the world that you live in dissolves beneath your feet, and that your survival
depends on completing this construction at least one second before the old
habitation collapses.
-Tennessee Williams
Precisely so.
Sometimes I
fear for myself; for how I’ll turn out once I’m let free into the real world,
and left to fend for myself. There are times when I feel so very beyond repair.
I find myself spending more time in my head than in the world as we know it
(most of us call it Reality, although that is more of a common perception
rather than actual fact), more time building up other lives for other people
with its miniature details and history, all complete and complimentary. These
people come in different shapes, sizes, characters and each have their own
peculiarities and quirks. I have their names, their pasts, presents and
futures. Their dialogues with one another and their dialogues with me are
constantly on a roll.
Sometimes I
forget that I live in this world and not in my head, because it’s so easy to
withdraw and shut everyone out and have conversations with myself. These talks
can sometimes get out of control when there are so many things I learn from
them that it just keeps on spilling out to the extent I end up looking like I’m
talking to myself.
In the
technical sense, I suppose I am.
I used to
be able to read books at lengths during long car rides while travelling, but
nowadays all I do is stare out the window and watch everything dissolve into
stories spinning on endlessly. My inventions and creations starts going into
hyper drive.
I know what
you’re thinking—dementia, schizophrenia, whatever it may be, there’s only one
response to this case: the asylum beckons.
We’re
always trying to find rational reasons to everything.
I’m still
able to draw distinctions between what is real and what is not, but the
seriousness of this problem is because of how strongly comforted I am by its
vividness. It becomes such a respite that there are times I never want to come
out.
Scary, huh?
I don’t
want this one weird eccentricity to render me completely incapable of functioning
like a proper person. All my gears are jamming, and I’m stuck in this twilight
limbo zone. Pretty soon, I might not even be able to draw that line between the
real and the unreal. What’s worse is I might not even want to attempt to care.
Perhaps I
should start by looking for reasons that make this world such a bad place that
all I want to do is escape to some imaginary far-off place.
Escape.
It’s ironic, because I hate that word. I’ve grown to learn that the best way to
get over a problem is to just deal with it, head-on straight.
So just
what is it that’s got me packing off to some planet that only exists if you
believe in it that much? A planet that isn’t on any chart, universal map, data,
record?
I really
wish I knew.
People are
funny beings. You can never tell what to do with or without them; they’re so
typical yet unpredictable that you give up trying to figure them out midway and
descend into this game of always second guessing them. Upon meeting new people
for the first time, the most honourable amongst us would try our best to
refrain from passing absolute and conclusive judgments based on first
impressions, yet we sometimes subconsciously do. Upon reflecting on the people
whose acquaintance we make, there are times when we can’t help but stereotype
them into categories and groups. It is in our nature, and that is a reflexive
mistake that we need to rectify time and again. The first step is to realize
that we have that tendency to judge wrongly in the first place.
We’ve all
had our share of injustices. We’ve been subjected to unfair and biased
judgments before, and we’ve been mistreated based on those misconceptions,
whether directly or indirectly. We’ve had times when we were the ones who
victimised others, and we admit we’re not proud of our black histories but we
learn from them and we move on.
Despite the
pain and hurt that sometimes comes along with human transactions, does that
really stop us from reaching out to other people, from befriending strangers,
from widening our social circles, from liking, from loving, from falling in
love, from any form of contact with anyone other than ourselves? Time has shown
that no matter how much disappointment we experience after encounters with
those who take us for granted, we do not stop from reaching out to others. That
is in our nature too.
Ibn Khaldun
once said that human society is necessary for the individual acting alone could
acquire neither necessary food nor security.
I wonder
about the emotional aspect of societal necessity.
No matter
how much we boldly stake our claims to the so-called rally cheer that “being
alone is a form of self-empowerment and independence”, there is no denying that
human interactions does a whole lot of good for the human soul. Choosing to be
alone doesn’t mean that there’s some sort of declaration to embrace Hermitdom,
but more of a decision to be emotionally self-dependant. Some of us make that
choice as to never rely on any one person to determine how we feel: happy, sad,
silly or serious.
However,
here’s the real crunch: you don’t have to be in a relationship to know that
other people’s actions; family, friends or foes, affect the way you feel and
behave, and there really isn’t anything you can do about it. You can
rationalise your feelings all you want, but there is no way to completely
stabilise what lies outside of your control.
“We have
to distrust each other. It is our only defence against betrayal.”
-Tennessee Williams.
And yet we
go on trusting and believing in people because we have no other choice. The
risk of non-reciprocation and non-response to our self-sacrificial offers to
seal bonds in whatever form of relationships, platonic or otherwise, is a risk
we’re all exposed to, and at times we take the risk of opening up and
establishing new ties because we have to rather than want to.
We rely so
much on one another for affirmations, assurances, second opinions,
confirmations, compromise, comparisons, competitions, confrontations, collaborations,
care, comfort, concern, confidence, celebrations, clarity and certainty,
chemistry…its all rooted and embedded in what we call the human connection.
It’s the innate exchanges of the jagged pieces of our souls, to put it in a
more dramatic light.
It is these
exchanges that put us in either powerful or vulnerable positions. There are
those who are at our mercy while we are at theirs. With all the continuous
rapidity and constancy of human transactions, it is inevitable that somewhere
in the middle of all that buzz, someone somehow will get hurt. It cannot be
avoided.
They say
the mind is a dangerous thing, but let me tell you something about the human
heart. No matter how hard or cold or unfeeling it is, the human heart can only
take so much before it starts dying. It is capable of having the biggest
capacity for hurt to fill in.
Take a
human heart, pump it up with hope, and then promptly deflate it. You will find
that the heart is resilient; it can take the beating and it would still have
some room for hope to enter after each and every puncture inflicted on it.
But just
how much can it take before we reach the level of “the blunting of human
emotions”, as Jewish writer Viktor E. Frankl put it? Just how much can the
human heart take before it starts giving out and leaving us indifferent and
numb? Just how many more punctures can it withstand before we find that it’s
been slowly shredding all this while? Just how much further do we have to go to
eventually discover that in the end, the human heart has been reduced to
function as an organ alone and that it has no other purpose than to sustain the
living human being? We’re left with a person who, as that line in a Jewel song
goes, is “half-alive but mostly dead”.
The human
heart may be the most resilient, but it is also the most fragile.
For me, I
am at a point where I can’t even tell the state of my human heart. Certain
people have been responsible for it, and I regret to say that. Although I can
say I’m happy that I’ve had the courage to step out of the whole Lone Ranger
persona, there are things that have made me reconsider the worth of taking that
step.
What do you
do when your opponent is the one who’s standing at your army’s frontlines,
instead of being behind enemy lines? I don’t recoil at direct attacks, but
rebound with every blow. I fight when I need to fight. The point however is
that he’s supposed to be on your side. What the heck are you supposed to do
when he hurts those whom you love dearly with sadism so despicable you wonder
if he’s human at all? How much longer can you keep on fighting when the whole
situation is so twisted beyond comprehension?
What do you
do when a trusted one makes a decision to be involved in a past chapter of your
life that you thought closed and wished it remained that way? What do you do
when you care for her and her happiness, but can’t come to terms with how
things have turned out because it’s so ironic and unlikely? Suddenly, you
aren’t so sure you can trust just about anyone anymore. There are no apologies
required, but I don’t think I can forgive it. I’ve tried, but to simply accept
it for the convenience of everyone is too much to ask of me. What you did to
me..its like being been punched in the stomach, even though I know you didn’t
mean it.
And finally,
what do you do when there are people so determined to be aggressive towards you
with absolutely no substantial ground other than a general dissatisfaction with
the friendship? Let’s face practical facts. Friends will always be there for
you, but there are times when that can’t happen. The sooner we realise that,
the sooner we wake up to the fact that we’re going to have to lower our
unreasonable expectations towards those who care for us.
What with
all these offensives coming from all directions, we might as well stop
wondering why I spend more time in my head than with people sometimes. There
are those who have just done too much damage.
But.
I guess
I’ve been endowed with one heck of a durable, stubborn,
puncture-proof heart, because I still have the capacity to hope for the
best in people. I’ve met many who still give me that hope, and Insya Allah will
continue to meet more who will strengthen my resolve to not quit just yet on
those around me.
Aih.
Sometimes, hope is so illusionary that it seems more of a curse.
I’m stuck.
————–
Everyone
is entitled to their own happy endings. Therefore, if you’re having a rough
time right now, do not fret because your story has yet to come to an end.
Enough said
here.
