INVERTED

I came across the book The Lonely City, and out of all the other choices I had, I clicked on “Want to read” only under that particular book. Immediately, I pondered what makes me do that. Why didn’t I bother to explore the other books? I am a person who spends a fair amount of time with people, and not to brag, but many are too close to my heart. But to my surprise, I find myself lonely right in the mornings, at times. Aren’t mornings supposed to be happy and refreshing? Isn’t the sun meant to be symbolic of a ray of hope? But very often, I find the sun to be depressing and the night to be healing. The sun, reminding me of the battles I lost yesterday while the stars seeping peace into my soul with each moment I spend staring at them. I find myself hating the sun. Shouldn’t it stop when it knows that the world had come to an end for me before the dawn? Shouldn’t it have refused to rise when I lost everything in one go? It was brutally selfish when it rose at exactly the same time every day, waking up the birds, encouraging them to chirp and move on with the daily chores but there I was, refusing to move ahead, begging for the return of what had been snatched. What happened then? Years passed by and I was pushed to live, though a part of me remained there. In that moment of epiphany, I could never really congregate the measure of my loss. I thought that the world would stop for didn’t the world know what had happened to me? But it didn’t. It took no notice at all. I began creating a cocoon of human activities- interactions, conversations, affections, travel, friends, work and even confusions. When I see people calling my name, or rather not too often relying on me for their work, I know I’m alive. The walls of the room at times encouraged the feeling of numbness in me. But so did the outside world. The places stop making a difference once you’re clutched in the hands of loneliness.

They say, “You can identify yourself in each person you meet and if you don’t, you’re not looking closely enough.” When I started looking closely enough, I just found the world around to be inverted. People I had known to be the weakest seemed to be strong, and those who were known to be the pillars of strength were seen falling apart. I witnessed the most mature people argue and lament like a four year old. When the lens focused to me, I saw nothing different. I was known to be the loudest girl in all the places I’d been so far, been bashed by elders for ‘talking’ too loudly, for ‘laughing’ too loudly and when I looked closely, I found myself to be more comfortable with silences, totally unbothered by the lack of noises around for all the noises I made with my friends, I was still not comfortable talking about my feelings in front of them. When I look too closely, I see myself in people I’ve hurt and that breaks my heart. It aches to know that I could cause such chaos, such misery, but I am trying to be as human as I can be and I think that counts, I beg it should.

You might find this article low-spirited. Encouragement, inspiration, motivation and positivity are what is trending in the first week of the New Year but at this moment it doesn’t work for me and I refuse to buy it. We think we can ignore the illness of loneliness and negativity by ignoring it. Well, how else can a child confront something it doesn’t like? It’s horrible to see yourself wilting and the coldest realization I had was that time was running out.  Do you take care of others or take care of your “inner child”? How do you know things are downhill? Nobody knows it but me. The picture can lie, the smiles can fool and the humour can mislead. “Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.” I am yet to experience the latter.

The things that we spend time on might not be as important. The run for materialistic things can make you feel hollow. We take the loving relationships and the core things in life for granted and then become unhappy. You need to make time for spiritual things. I wanted to go for Vipassana. Buddhists say, “Don’t cling to things, everything is impermanent. Detach yourself, but detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate fully. That’s how you’re able to leave it. If you hold your emotions back you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, and grief that loneliness brings.” I know that word of encouragement are expected, but like the title says, it’s all “inverted” as if ‘Joy’ has entered the part where the dimensions change.

Loneliness is like a monster that won’t leave unless we start loving it; unless we let it penetrate us and learn to deal with it. We ought to get comfortable with it no matter how. Just when people say things are coming to an end, I remember the sun that arose after the darkest of the nights. And that is the time; I embrace the sun, which I once hated. Dreams that give us a good sense of purpose keeps us going. And when I feel like giving up, I remind myself that there is still work to be done. After three days of meditation, I regained my positive self. I had contact with the outside world when I was going and immediately when I came back. Of all the people who know me, knew how happy I was to be there. How amazingly it served me! But only I knew how those days passed with no human touch, when the nights were depressing and we were not supposed to talk, when we had nothing to do but sit in one place for twelve long hours- I was no superhuman who could avoid thoughts for minutes together and those thoughts were devastating but there is something about spirituality that instills the positivity in you. I was happy to be back on track. I didn’t know what magic it did and I know this particular article had that lack of positivity in it, but you have that special ingredient of life now and now you can decide for yourself if the article is really inverted.