Bad choices

Life is defined by bad choices. Nobody tells you that growing up and it's too scary an admission to make once you are well and truly an adult; but it's true. Any body who has truly lived will know that successes or the lack of them might define what people think of you but it is your failures that play out over and over again as the milestones, the markers of growth.

I turn twenty five in a few weeks and a summation of my bad choices and consequent failures lead me to believe I have lived a life fuller than I deserve. Make no mistake, my gross miscalculations of risk have lead me to my every victory and there are enough of those to please the world, pity the world won't rescue me from my own voice every night demanding answers I don't have.  

It's silly, how each bad choice is based on one single miscalculation over and over and over again. I trust the wrong people. Repeatedly. I trust the wrong people t burn me to the ground and most certainly the wrong ones to teach me how to walk on water. When I got it wrong the first time I believed I wouldn't again. That I would somehow find wisdom in that betrayal and guard myself. My circle of trust shrank to a quarter of it's former glory and then again and again until it was just one person whom I would trust with my life and every thought, the latter more precious by far. No this isn't about my soul being crushed over and over again, well maybe it is but what of that?

I can only write when I feel choked by every emotion I have tilting to the dark side. It is this side a lot of people choose to believe is the real me, free of powder and lipstick. Somebody I trusted could see into my soul said that I was filled with darkness that would extinguish anybody else's light. I see how myopic she is now, mostly because she couldn't say it to me. I would re-write that sentence to take the sting of betrayal out of it if I could re-write my whole life. My bad choices led me every single time to my good ones but the pain and insecurity that they each bring before the clouds part hardly seem worth the trouble.

Have you wished, as I have to live joyfully oblivious to the duplicity in yourself and the world? 

World

The world is happy today. I can feel your happiness, dear world, in my bones- just as I feel the cracks in my skin, and the tickle of hair unbound but not free.

The world is happy today and I watch as you do a silent spectator. You are happy but you feel as I do only happiness in misery, you wonder as I do about a cruel world that will not wait to pick you up when you fall down running towards something you didn't believe would be. Cruel cruel world... oh how you mock me with you laughter and tickling bells while there is nothing but the stench of disappointment inside me, in everything you will let me touch.

I wait for numbness. I know from the muck you have forced me to witness that there will come a time when it will not matter, that the past. present and future will congeal to form a single moment that extends beyond the universe, where I feel nothing and hear nothing; I will be calmed by the unsteady beat of my own heart, numb to the pain it feels. You will take me there I know, but when? You have made me wait too long this time oh world of theirs, you heap your success on my failures squashing me lower than before and yet you will not let me escape.

Oh cruel cruel world, may you burn as I do. 

A complete life

Today a certain social media site, filled with advertisements that have no connection to me whatsoever, makes my life look complete.

I have a picture up that announces professional recognition- from speaking knowledgeably at a public gathering, many others that announce personal fulfillment- from travels across the country from different times, a new profile picture that make me look beautiful in the funny sort of way that only pretty people can manage.

There are congratulations and declarations of a brightly shinning future. Words I'm soaking in while laughing at the truth that I know- that there are smaller details that make me up- details scattered so far and wide I can't put them together yet.

But today I will believe what everybody is telling me, I will believe the illusion of myself that I find so easy to believe of everybody else. Today I will convince myself of having a full life and laugh secretly at everybody who will believe that illusion like me.
--

I'm listening to Bob Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone

A litany of things that don't exist

I feel a sadness engulf me everyday, a loneliness that I doesn't deserve encouragement for all the wonderful people who fill my life and yet it's a there built brick by brick of every hour of a knowing the dream I allowed myself to dream, was encouraged to can no longer be.

In my mind's eye this wall with it's mossy, desolate perfection- a thing of beauty, is covered up by pretty curtains of embroidered goodness through the laughs I share and the smiles I construct. But it isn't real, I know this as much as the wall does, mocking me for an attempt to create an illusion that I depend so much on.

There are things I hate now. Things I loved and cherished but were built around another illusion that I was then too naive to disbelieve. I can list them from the thoughts that flood my mind every minute and so I will but every person who is me knows that it this isn't all, this isn't any.

1. I hate that I am now less than a number, less than $120,000
2. I hate that I can no longer feel happiness in seeing blue- not the blue of the sky, the blue of the ocean or the blue of a t-shirt I loved
3. I hate that every article of clothing I wear is a memory I want erased
4. I hate that I can't take a holiday without thinking of the many things that would be done differently in that other life
5. I hate that I will forgive so easily to reclaim the life I had
6. I hate that I have no center, that I can crave no longer for one because if I do find it, I will question it's validity
7. I hate that I cannot hate  
8. I hate that I would turn back time and do things differently if given the choice
9. I hate that I didn't know when I was being tested
10. I hate that  I could spot a lie and allowed myself to be convinced I was over-reacting
11. I hate that I overestimate how much I mean to people
12. I hate that I can't turn off my mind 
13. I hate that I can no longer be happy for other people, comparing their happiness to one of mine that was probably only an illiusion
14. I hate that it feels like every happy memory was a construction that was never real
15. I hate that I no longer hope and hate so much more the relief in that hopelessness

Some days

Some days I wake up convinced I will be fine.

I'm woken up by the ring of my alarm instead of another dream of you. I'm chained to no memories- not good nor bad. My clothes- washed over and over again since you last saw them, bare no smell of you on this morning. I don't feel the phantom of your touch every time I feel the wind on my skin nor hear your sigh in every rustle of leaves.

I know for certain on days like this that I will be fine; that it will get better. I have reason to believe that with time I will find every shard of my crushed soul and glue it together transforming into somebody more breathtaking and complete than you ever knew.

On days like these I'm told there's a skip in my step and a tune to my laugh.Nobody asks about the colour of my eyes or why I won't smile. They ask instead of my childhood- whether I climbed trees and pulled pranks. I laugh in response, my love for the universe bursting out of every pore of my being- gratitude for the many gifts I have received that I haven't earned, the many opportunities that seemed gift wrapped with my name on the label. The world is perfect under the bandage I've plastered on and I feel the mile deep gashes in my soul begin the slow process of healing.

Just as I settle into my peace, a corner of my mind unlocks- I see an image of the inevitable future. A future I want with all my heart for you to have of happiness, success, joy and most of all, of peace. I see that future without me and that isn't what reminds me I will never heal, it is seeing somebody else in every dream we shared. And so I begin again, from the very bottom, tying again to forget, not hope, not believe and to stop praying to Gods who won't listen anyway.
---

I'm listening to Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd

To be ugly

When I was a child, I was a professional dancer. I don't think anybody who has seen my stiff response to music in the last few years would believe me but it's true. I was a professional jazz dancer, or something like that anyway.

I was part of a group called the <insert famous dancer whom I will not embarrass'name>'s Junior Dance Company. Stage shows, music videos and dancing with South India celebrities was part of my everyday as a 10-11 year old. We wore shiny sequinned clothes, spent endless hours every week perfecting choreography and even left school early every once in a while.

I guess I was living the dream. There was a purpose to my life, however trivial, before most people discovered there was even need for one. I didn't grow up with social media, I wonder if it even existed then, but there are pictures in a trunk somewhere of a group of 15 awkward adolescents, our faces full of make up posing with confidence that only comes from being a child.

It wasn't such a happy run though. In a world that demands perfection- manufactured or otherwise, it doesn't matter how young or innocent you are. I knew I was ugly before I even knew that was the word to describe me.
I loved dancing. Every bones in my body would thrill at the sound of music and I would dance because it was my natural reaction to music but when you're a professional dancer, that is not enough. The popular girls, the pretty ones would always get to dance in the center where they weren't tripping over cables or breathing in smoke from "smoke machines". Us uglie-s tuned out of the world, tuned into the music and filled space.

I didn't hate it. I don't remember ever realizing I was being slightest despite family and friends asking all the time why I wasn't dancing in front. Truth be told, I was glad to dance in the second row. I didn't have to remember any of the steps really.
But it was upsetting when people would walk into rehearsal asking to "audition" for something or the other and the instructors would only point to a few people. It isn't nice, knowing as a child, that you're ugly. That you- because you are too skinny, too dark, have weird hair and buck teeth, don't deserve every opportunity to shine.

I stopped dancing in the eighth standard. I can't remember if I missed it, I was too busy sailing to notice. I can't remember if I felt different for being seen for more than my scrawny adolescent body.

I wish I could still dance. I wish I could forget I'm ugly but more than anything I wish I could erase my ability to see people as ugly and pretty.    

Sadness

When my heart is cracked and bleeding, a rainbow forms in the sky. You look at it and smile not knowing the pain that painted the sky.
When I cry, big drops of rain quench the thirsty, baked red mud and little children run out from under tin shades to dance with smiles.

I will be happy again and the sun will shine again. It will happen but not soon.