Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Adieu mon amie, je t'aimais bien

Its not something anyone wants to do, but saying goodbyes is undeniable & inevitable.

Some goodbyes are final and come with varying kinds of grief (or relief), while some goodbyes are temporary with a chance (however fleeting) of turning into a hello somewhere, someday.
But what about the goodbyes that we stretch out, like goodbyes that signal end of relationships.

So many of us hang on to some slim hope that what we shared with someone else will survive. We hang on desperately in the hopes of recreating past highs together, while the ghosts of lows haunt us from the edge of memory.

We are addicts who are at the wrong end of the addiction - not riding high on a new buzz but trying every trick to get the buzz back.Love is an addiction at the best of times. This is true for the feeling itself or the idea of it & sometimes, the hope of the feeling is the high itself.

We have millions of songs, books and poems about the grief, loss and sometimes joy & freedom that goodbyes are often accompanied by. There is a bittersweet release in the act of letting go; whether welcome or otherwise. This is an universal phenomenon, wholly complete in its humanity.

But I am letting go of myself, the versions of myself that lived in the past. The girl who couldn't grow up fast enough, the girl who was bullied and abused. That is not to say I didn't have a happy childhood, my parents loved me as best they could, my sister gave me everything she could. But I was just not capable of being the person I wanted to be -- like many tweens and teens both before & after me. I have been many versions of that person, many I didn't like, many I am ashamed of. I guess they are right when they say that childhood is wasted on the young.

It is today as I look back on my mistakes, I am trying to let go of the person I used to be in order to really be what I can be. I am saying goodbye to the small infinities that made up my past and looking forward to the infinite infinities ahead.

I am doing it in part with the help of my job that I love, understanding how I feel about how I look & surrounding myself with people who accept me without judgement. I am also trying to feel less like an impostor who is waiting to get caught. I am learning to like myself and accept my drawbacks and grow on my strengths. Love is still elusive but I am hopeful that if I am lucky to find it, I will be ready for it.

So this is both a goodbye & a hello, a goodbye to the neurosis of the past and a hello to the insanity of the future. 

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Miss Misunderstood

I am often criticised for wearing my heart on my sleeve; for being vocal about my beliefs and thoughts. I feel strongly about a lot of things and have a lot of opinions. I am open & honest and don't have much of a censor either.

All of these things & more cause me to ruffle a few feathers. Today was the day people got shot down for having satirical views that made fun of a certain organised religion. What can you make of that? Do we blame religion or just someone's perception of it?

We're living in a world where we start the day not knowing if we're coming back home. People are getting murdered in schools, offices, homes, getting coffee and while travelling. Nowhere is safe and fundamentalists are twisting around in their seats to find ways & reasons to destroy the world's collective sanity.

I have often been asked to delete my status messages, posts & comments because people think I'm crossing the line. But just as often, I get messages from people who agree with what I am posting but don't want to support my views publicly. They don't want to start an argument but also don't want to be seen to have firm opinions.

Who is in the wrong then? Me for having an opinion, the hidden supporters for not being open, those who want me to be calmer about what I say or the people who get offended by a few words online? This is a very complicated world we live in; fueled by greed, money & religion. Out of those three, two are human constructs that were established to bring people together & help humanity. They are now what corrupts the world & are at the core of all that is wrong in the world.

Religion was just a tool to show people the right way to do things, which was then embellished by god who had the power to make things happen and the promise of a happily-ever-after. Now it supersedes anything else on what divides humanity. If following religion is supposed to save our souls, does that mean we've now lost all chance of redemption?

Friday, January 2, 2015

Words in Motion

I went to the litfest last year and was surrounded by authors. They all have stories they want to tell. So many of them know what they want to write next and the ones that will come after. I wonder that's how I know I am not going to a good writer, or is that just another excuse I've found to not be all that I can be.

I like so many different kinds of writing, but I think the trait I admire most is the ability to weave a story. Being able to construct a story about fictional strangers that makes real strangers feel like you know their hearts. I tried writing a story once but got lost in the myriad ways I could treat my character. What would I have her do? What anguish would I make her go through?

I could base the heroine on me but how much? There are many small stories in my history, things that only I know, scars I have given & received -- would they make for an interesting yarn? There are small infinities in my life I haven't yet gone back to, they are just there, in the background, waiting for me to call on them and bring them back to life. But these infinities bring with them the pain of ghosts past, the mistakes I've made, the persons I was trying to be by lying to myself. So maybe they're better off where they are.

Then I could base the heroine in a situation I research about, bring a world to life in the only way I can. But then I have read so much, I keep fearing that I can never be good enough to write the way I would like to. More & more of the books I read lately are books that are derivative and want me to put a lot of work in to follow a story & I'm just not intelligent for that.

All I want to do is write a simple story that is all me & there is a part of me that wouldn't mind it if no one read it (somewhat like this blog). Which brings me back to the crux of this post, what would make for a good story? They say you should write what you know -- that cuts out so many genres or maybe I'm just making excuses for not being creative enough.

Maybe I maxed out my creativity making up the very many lies I told incessantly as a kid. Do liars grow up to be fiction writers? Or are fiction-writers just liars who are being paid for lying?