Of Complexity of Emotions
Today was a day of a purge and my target was my laptop. For years now, I have hoarded numerous documents, photographs, videos and whatnot on this piece of tech and decided not to avoid it anymore. And the result of that? This earlier version of my previous piece “Losing Rationale”, date stamped to October 20, 2018.
For those of you who have not read that piece yet, it is a dialogue between me and my depressed mind. I wrote it as a way to make sense of what had happened to me, so it was something that I polished after I had mostly gotten out of it. Whereas, this one was written when my depression had taken over my life. Completely. It hadn’t paralysed me yet but it was always there, biding its time.
As I was reading this, I couldn’t help but notice the difference in my perspective. You can see it for yourself where this one clearly regards depression as a reflection and part of me while I was fully capable of separating myself from the disorder in the final, polished one. But the piece doesn’t stop with the free verse: there are paragraphs of rather convoluted and disjointed writing where I am trying to write out what is happening within me in an attempt to make sense of it.
But that’s how it really is in our minds, isn’t it? A bunch of jumbled thoughts that you make sense of enough to communicate to the rest of the world.
However, as you read it, you will see that I don’t make a lot of sense towards the end of it. But I guess that is an accurate representation of how I was feeling then — I couldn’t understand what was happening within me enough to really know how to put thoughts to paper. I was lost and my mind was wasting away.
And that is why I wanted to publish it as is to highlight the difference in the clarity of thoughts today as compared to when I had first written it.
Come, my sweet, I thought you understood
Come crawl into bed with me
Cuddle me and hold me
Let me devour you because
Who else would?
Legs made useless because of layers of venom
An atrophied mind
Fingertips rendered numb
It’s been a while now since you’ve been gone
You walk, you talk, you listen
You think and think and think
You run from me, but I am faster than you
You wage a war to get rid of me
But my sweet, you know I am a part of you.
I do not know the way to find you again,
nor do I know how to even begin trying.
Your absence is like the burning warmth of my bed
I fight it, I run from it,
I do everything in my power to get rid of it.
You leave our little cocoon.
You hurt me with your words, your thoughts, your actions,
But I will always stand by you because
Who else would?
I try to move towards you but I am blind
I shout for you but no one answers back
How could I have lost you?
I guide you through the wilderness of your thoughts
We fight many battles together
We say it doesn’t matter that we have lost them all
We have to fight if I need to survive because
Who else would?
The emptiness of reality starts to seep into my head
The storm that was brewing is gone now
I see a light all around me
Is it the light of happiness or of everything burning around me?
I will survive this
You will help me because
Who else would?
As I write this continuing dialogue between us,
I am not completely oblivious that I do not know whom I am writing this to.
Is it a dialogue between us,
or of me shouting into the void and hoping for an answer back?
You shout, you yell, you scream,
You want to know what I am doing here
But my sweet, don’t you see that I am just a reflection of you?
Looking at the mirror across from me
What I wish to articulate here,
right now, is that I am lost.
I do not know where the starting point is. I would not even be able to tell you whether I have found that starting point; if I have, I see no indication of it. The reality that I have proactively created for myself has led me to a point of limbo; the likes of which I have not experienced in a long time. This limbo of my own creation continues to limit me in trying to find my way back. The problem does not lie with the emptiness of reality itself, but of how this emptiness was created. I can look back at indicators that would help me overcome this stalemate, but I do not know how I could have done it any differently.
What causes my confusion, even more, is to find that paradoxical balance between being retrospective, as a means to find a way to move forward.
The words I have used previously always makes it seem like I had found you at one point in my past, but is it really fruitful to work my way backwards? What is also more important to consider is whether if I had indeed found you in the past, and how could I have allowed myself to lose you.
The ambiguity that is drenched between these lines does not completely help me in finding answers, but only leads to more questions which are left unanswered. To assume that I am searching for these answers would not sufficiently encapsulate the current state of confusion.
The answers which I arrogantly assume to have within the confines of my own consciousness are subject to where I got them from. They are, in fact, not my answers but someone else’s answers to their realities. Living under the pretence of another person’s reality presupposes that this life, this reality, this limbo, this emptiness, this stalemate is not my own, and is therefore not in my control. Taking back autonomy of my creation seems like an arduous task; one which I do not know how to do. This also leads me to believe that I do not hold any responsibility for the consequences of my actions.
But is this not a lifestyle I am subscribing to when I consciously make the decision to live a life designed by another person’s answers to their reality?