(A Memoir)
For Schatz,
Since the year began, I have been waking up thinking about what I should not be thinking. My thoughts were already contaminated, and each time I looked in the mirror, the reflection seemed less like me and more like someone else. The image depicted in a dress would lose its distinctness to a certain darkness that had arguably blended from the outside and within, making me move further from the structure of my own self. And as I closed my eyes and opened them again to get a different view of it, I had come to fail terribly at recognizing the person staring back at me. Then I would wonder: Is it okay to feel vulnerable? Is it really selfish to want to be loved back? To curl into someone’s body and hold them so close, so tight, you feel like you’re never going to let go. To want nothing but to be touched gently, mind, body, and soul. Is it really okay? I ask this, racking my brain to ad infinitum.
Furthermore, since the year began, I have time and again found myself crying so much. My whole face would go numb. I would cry and cry and it was only my heart that held the reasons why. Right now, I think about those tears as though they were filling up some void, but the void was forever flowing like a river, coming down like a fall, passing and passing to reach a point where nothing seemed to make sense anymore. So that all I was ever left to do, was to wipe my tears, because, just like every beginning with a finality, the crashing waves retreat too from the shore in due season.
And man, I have never craved your presence as much as I have in the last few months. I have uttered your name in this darkness, wanting to talk to you about it. About the emotional strain that has been my job. About how this same workplace succeeded in stifling my brilliance. I have wanted to tell you that the place has had me inherit all the abominable feelings one might think of. So that for the longest time I had been left battling all the moods of unworthiness, thinking of myself as a failure and a fake, affirming how I have never merited the spaces I am in. Even my self-esteem was trampled upon, to the extent where the very first interviews I had after quitting would often have me on edge, making me envision all the ways I was incapacitated and just never enough.
Schatz, it was during these times that I so much longed to be engulfed in your warmth. I wished so much to drink from the well of your words, not because my situation was dissimilar from the ones that had assailed me before. Not that you had not prepared me for what to expect in the corporate world. Not that you had not always paved the way for me in all my stalemates. Not that you had not sown a myriad of actions into my psyche in case I found myself in such darkness, but all these were just but a reason of wanting more reassurance. And as it is, I longed to hear, “I got you; we got this; you are mine, and we have to do this life together. In the event you want to vent, just come on here.” I longed for this kind of affirmation through these words, which my ears yearned for—not for anything really, but for the music it brought to my soul. For the hue of the gentleness it penetrated my heart with—a reminder that I am and will never be alone fighting this void of the unknown.
Nonetheless, when I think about it now, I imagine this is the slice of softness that would have otherwise liberated me from all the worry. It was this desire to slide between your arms. To put my head on your chest and have your entire hands wrap me up in an embrace that would swallow this whole small drowning of me. A desire to see myself through your eyes. A desire to know that my anguish was not as great as I had imagined. It was this desire to be aware, if it is, that it is as large as it is. And if so, to come undone because, up until now, you are the only person with whom I can lay the nakedness of my entire soul and nobody else. Because, like rays of magic, you have always touched my spirit. You have always held on to the infancy of my emotions and cultivated a place in your heart just for me. A place where I could always spill the truth about all my darkness without fear of shame, guilt, or consequences. A place where, despite the sulliness of my darkness, I would still get to experience myself embraced with dignity and honour as my crown.
However, since the year began, I failed to hear from you. I have been calling and texting you in vain. My chest would often crumple each time I woke up to unread texts. Then I would think I had remained the same and you had changed. Then I would ask myself if that time has finally caught up with us, where you’ve finally outgrown my wings and mine, yours? So that my anxiety would tip in and I would be forced to teach my heart to sit still. To listen to it, but it would always whisper that you, Schatz, were not in anyway doing well. Despite this, I still came to encounter contradictions in my mind, all in the sense that the more I sought for you, the more I would begin to feel how much I had never belonged. That maybe all this time I have been living in denial; maybe I have always been fooling myself. Maybe I have come to not see the difference anymore. Maybe all along I had been hopelessly striving to hold on to you when you had already made up your mind to not really be within my reach.
And as it would turn out, I started to grow dreary because this trying was hurting more than not trying. Amusingly, amidst it all, I never got tired of reaching out. Perhaps, it just stands to reason out that this heart never gives up on who it beats for. So that on the day I bumped into your sister, my soul behoved me to ask about you. She said you were fine, but still, my heart knew no peace. This heart would still grieve. I was just never satisfied, perhaps because I often imagine I am the only person who knows all the cracks, the dents, the patched areas, and the cries of your heart—a different dimension hidden from everyone else.
But be all that as it may, I continued to wallow in my darkness, living in my head and only listening to its thought processes. On some days, I’d pull my hair, thinking that the universe was against me and nothing was seemingly working for me. Other days, I would languish in sorrow, thinking how everyone, including you, was staying clear of me. And oh, how foolish to think that my situation was ever going to be filled with someone else. Filled with love, affection, and safety. Oh, how foolish I cursed, but in the later days, darkness failed to last long. A week prior to your birthday, knowing that I was in this alone as a first-person singular, I had to stare right into the eyes of the person staring back, and I told her to trust me. I told her to hold on tight to the fearless person she’s morphing into, and in the inner recesses of my heart, I knew that you were proud of me.
However, when I saw you for the first time since the year began, the truth is, I got terrified. I was terrified that our eyes would meet and, for a second, the world would stop. The bustling city around us will go mute. The cafe machines will pause, and the universe will wait for our next move. So I look at you, which is different from what it means to see you. Then I go ahead to talk to you, as I have always done, with my head on your chest. You ask about the job, and I say it’s good. You ask about my job hunting, and I tell you I am pushing on. Then you ask me to tell you about my supervisor. I hesitate too much, then I say that I hate her, repeating these words three times in a row. You seem a little disturbed about what will become of my recommendation, but I tell you it’s well because, despite the place being toxic, I carried out all my tasks with grace, a stellar performance that had my mental health going down the drain.
Hence, I think about hate. Did I really say that? I express this not outwardly to you but on my insides. I think it is a strong word, and perhaps I did not even intend to use it; perhaps there is just no word to quite cover what my feelings were, but this much truth I have come to be taught by my darkness is that it is okay to be disliked. It is okay to be interpreted as bad by someone else because there is no point at which you will be able to convince another to embrace a certain image of yourself. No, none of us has that power to control another’s perception of us, and it is through this limitation that we must learn that whatever opinions others have towards us have ideally nothing to do with the crux of what constitutes our being. Everyone gets to see things through the lens of their own level of consciousness, beyond which there are no absolute shades. In fact, it is even more okay to not actually define the emotions one has towards the other; one may as well let them roam freely, unnamable, having them loom large, despite.
But even so, I promise you, my pain was not this poetic. It was days without sleep and pretending I was stable enough to continue, except that this moment between us could not be punctured—the giggles, the chuckles, the holding hands, my shyness, and the freedom around you were all things divine. Just that as we parted, I caught a glimpse through your eyes and immediately my heart sank. I did not tell you about it there and then only until later. And when I texted, you affirmed my suppositions, and my heart shattered a new because somehow I imagined your eyes were a depiction of why I would always reach you in vain. Your eyes somewhat victimized you by portraying your own woes, which was a caricature of some vulnerability that prevented you from leaning in on me. And while you may not have defined it for me, this is how it has always been: for some, when packed with a series of misfortunes, they easily let somebody in to sit with them, while the others isolate themselves to become their own islands.
Thus, I put you in the latter group and when you tell me that you will be on leave come the month of May, my heart slightly finds peace, with my mind on the other hand, having resolved to let you exist in your own dimension, miles away, where you get to do your thing and I do mine. But I’m not really here, so maybe I’m there. Can you feel my presence? Or have you shut the door? Oh, let me be a part of what’s not anymore. I could retrace my steps, if that’s what you want. So I shut my eyes. I don’t want to see this period without you. Lifting my lids, it all comes back to me in pieces and bits— the fatigue in your eyes. Oh, tell me, where do I return to? What do I call my home in the meantime? Or does it reside where the walls have crashed and nothing feels real, like artificial skin? Maybe you will tell me. But this much, I know, may the month of May bring back what is mine; may it melt away all the swollen presences of emptiness. May everything unfold for you and me both as it’s meant to.
Yours,
Me.
Next week post will be fiction. To read previous blog story click the link below 👇🏿
The deep end of the pool
Memoir of Me 
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