Last candy in a trapped Jar

Ever stared at a big jar with a tiny piece of your favorite fruit or pickle or just that last piece of candy trapped in it?

Life is like playing your old playlist from the desktop you left at home years ago. Now, left unused or for parents to skype with you when you are not getting drunk and bored on a table full of lifeless souls and useless chitter chatter, hoping to get laid or just hammered enough to sleep deep. Life, yes, is like that old playlist. Unpredictable. But it is still all that you wanted, once at least in your life. Now, liking Nirvana maybe too 17 for you and finding some old Aishwarya Rai song, blasphemous. It makes you think what were you thinking when you added that to your playlist and probably heard on repeat then. Look around and you may just find a cassette of an Indian pop artist who lasted only as long as his first and only hit in those old boxes.

Such is life! You will question what you did yesterday, crib about today and worry about the tomorrow. At all states, feeling unhappy, feeling lost. Lost in the process of finding ourselves. And there in the background, your life is getting duller by the day and you are getting trapped in the social expectations of this world. Life, my friend, is sitting with a box of strawberries. Some will be sour. And that playlist in the background, surprising. Unpredictable. Yet, familiar.

Today, I have been jobless for three months now. It took one small health condition to reach to a whole new me. Let me put it how K (my childhood best friend and soul mate) put my impulse down for me,

"Have you ever realized how each person is significant  to another's life?"
Such random questions about Life, Human behavior and Happiness had stopped surprising me. Her drug intake had me seeing the brighter side of her. Hence, my response, just an inviting smile.
"Look at your Boss. A typical Indian worker..."
Indian Worker translates to hard working like an ass and bitchy like an asshole. Smart workers in this country are mostly considered lazy and a threat to the immediate bosses.
"...He probably means nothing to anyone. Not life changingly. But to you, he did. And he does not even know about it."
And there, I was learning life's philosophies from a 'hippie'.

No denying my swinging hips like a pendulum - slowly from that typical Indian worker to a Smart worker. Stuck in a rut of over working cause the smartness had been denied over and over again. To cut the long story short. Overworked. Unhappy. Dissatisfied. Falls unwell. Immediate boss crosses his daily insulting measures. Next - Resignation. No. Do not even think of me fighting it back. I do not blame him for my resignation. Its not his fault he could not inspire me (though he did give the resignation a push). Its not his fault I was unhappy. Its not his fault I was caught in that trap of a dull duller life and the social expectations of this world. Its not his fault if I was done with this life. Done with this job. Done with these friends. Done with this city. The new was over. The excitement was no more. And the plate was empty. I needed a refill.

Here I am. Standing in the queue with anticipation. I can see that the table has many and big dishes lined up but I do not know what is in it. Standing in the queue for a while, sometimes I get extremely curious and excited at what it holds. Sometimes I distract myself by assuming what all there is and think of how much of what will I eat. And sometimes I am famished. Irritated and Hungry. And then, there are days when I wonder why did I finish my previous helping so soon. I should have held on for longer. This re filling is a bad decision. But then, the point being, the plate was empty and it needs what it needs.

A month of family vacation. Having your mother, father and the only sibling together with you is not too much to ask when you belong to a happy crazy family which is not dysfunctional. But then, it is, in my case. After more than three years, all of us got together. We probably would not have this year too, if I had not quit my job. I probably would not have met new people and old relatives so closely as I did, if I had not been impulsive. I would have never known how much I need some people and how much some people love me, if I did not pack up my bags and sent the truck home. It was a final goodbye to an 'Independent Lone City Life'.

I have had three months to think it all through. To speak with myself. To know what I really want. And all I want is to know. Know self and the world, more and more. If you have nothing new to offer me, I will move out. And that is what I did one day. Mother called to tell me that my only grandparent had expired. I had not seen her in years. I was not emotionally so close either. But, I sobbed an entire day. I knew now, that space was empty. And my parents were slowly moving in that direction. One day, I will call my children and probably tell them that their grand parents are dead. And that at that moment felt like an unemotional call. I had never lived with my father. Only the initial few years when I was still learning manners and had not learnt how to read a dictionary. The next day, my resignation had reached my office and a call to my father that I was moving in with him.

"I am quitting my job. And leaving this city. I am coming to you.", I said the last line almost like a question. Like I was seeking his permission.
"Is everything alright?"
"Yes. I just wante...."
"When are you beginning your packing?"
I smiled.
"Tomorrow."
"Okay. Keep me in the loop. I Love you."
"I Love you too."

One of the few times when I really meant it. When I wanted to be the first to say it instead of him.

And when I began stuffing boxes. I called K right after just 10% of the packing was done.

"Why are you crying?"
"I can't do this alone. I need you."
"I'll come and see you in a bit."

Well, she was too stoned to come over and help but she spoke to me. She heard me. She made dinner for me. And she told me I was a fool to just leave because she would miss me and I was doing one of the best things by taking this decision. And here again, I was learning life as we shared that spliff.

People will walk in and walk out of your life. You will love, you will fail, you will get caught in the rut of ruts. You will also feel miserable. Dead. Exhausted. Angry. Uninspired. Excited like a child and too experienced for your age. In this process, what mistake we make is giving verbs and adjectives to our life's circumstances. That is another rut. The rut of labeling every phase. And slotting each day in a phase or 'one of those days'. I made that mistake. And what wonders it did to me. Living alone. Hating some of my friends. Definitely getting asocial, mostly. Just plain, unhappy. I was lost in the process of finding myself.

Impulse and Life's situations and your conversations with self will sometimes take you where you thought, t'was now impossible to go. After having dried up my tears on lonesome nights, large whiskey helping after work and love lorn heartaches, I have nothing, I regret. I have come to terms with what I called my 'Yesterday', no matter how it was. I know my yesterday will be a part of present and future. I have come to terms with that too. To believe that quitting your job, moving out of the country and letting go of old people and emotions is fancy. Well, it isn't. If you are open minded, it is a beautiful process, otherwise far more frustrating and difficult than what your yesterday was.

There are days when CT will cross my mind but he would not make me pull my bed sheets out of exasperation. There are days when I miss coming home from work and having the liberty to fix my perfect scotch with cigarettes while I read online but the tea made at home is just as perfect. There are days when I will miss my friend and seeing them for a cup of coffee even when we are just silent but I find blessing in knowing some will be there for me just like this when ever I need them or not. There are days when I worry what it will be like living with your father whom you have seen the longest for 30 days in a year but then, I think to myself what is the ambition of knowing the world and its people, if I can never know my own people. People, whose habits I have naturally adapted without even knowing that they had it. Genes! There are days when I know life will not be mad, it may not be so much of a struggle, it will not be lonely. It will be stable. It will be new. I'll miss my friends. I have given up my peace spots and comfort zones to only explore new ones. I have only replaced friends with family, like I did the vice versa of, some years ago. I have only moved on in life. Emotionally and Mentally. The rest, is yet to come.

For those, who suggested I needed to change my city and pack myself off and away from all that made me miserable. I knew that would not help then. I knew that was not going to solve it from me. Escape was never my way, still isn't. Explore! I now walk out, proud, confident and excited like a child. I know not what holds for me. I know not if I will find my favorite flower. I know not if I leave that jar with my favorite fruit or pickle or that last piece of candy trapped in it, will I find it again BUT I know there will be another jar of new fruits, pickles and candies. Who knows, I may like it more.

Who knows? Lets go explore! Not lost in the process of finding self. But find more in the process of finding. Wander! For all those who wander, are not lost, my friend. Love, Learn, Wander, Live!

Love 'n' Peace.

Hugs.
Kisses.

LSL

Emotions are a Man Made thing.

Exhausted. Physically too. Can not. Do not want to write. Been avoiding for months. Still want to. But something tells me if its not now, it will have to be a Doctor.

I came out of the theater, whimpering, like a cat. Skyfall had nothing to do with it. But the world was crumbling inside my head. I longed for peaceful moments but that night I dreaded it. It was not going to be easy spending the next one week alone in a house in silence. Especially calculating his arrival and knowing of hers.

CT was going to come to town again. And his new love and BG's old was already in town - R.

Funny, this world is. Before I knew BG, he fought, thew tantrums and insisted I was R, the love that broke his heart and he was never the same again. She was married and she played along with him during her trying times. Sought comfort in him. Got him addicted to her and then left him. BG, heartbroken. Waited to give up his world for her. To go to any lengths. That's what you do when you are in love, right? But she vanished and came back only to call him a good friend she would seldom meet over drinks.

Apparently, I had known R all along through her blog. And so, we met. We took instant liking to each other.

By now, BG was a happily married man. He had accepted her wandering and his heartbreak. Sometimes, you can still see it in his eyes when he speaks of her. There is some amount of anger, some sadness, a spoon of disappointment and a jar full of shattered dreams.

R and I grew fond of each other. Bonded over other common online friends, cigarettes, alcohol, books and writing.  She called me a kid. She treated me like one. Something told me, her encouragement towards my work was more out of what she had left behind unfinished. Like aspirational parents, who want their unfinished dreams fulfilled by their children. She was also moody. At the drop of a hat, she would snap and judge people. Disliked most. Made the effort of liking very few. Almost like she did not care. Almost like she genuinely did not have an opinion about these people. Almost like she had a vengeance against this world and to survive she would pretend to like a few. The vengeance was strong. You could feel it even in her silence.

R left her humble small unknown town in the name of love for a big big city life. She had been to two different cities for education and work before. But she was still that small town girl. She, still is.

I have no idea what had happened but once in her drunken state she told me, 'I packed all my bags and left in the name of love to that big city and ended up being heartbroken. I could have come back. Instead, I embraced the city. Fell in love with it." Subtext:  I immersed myself in its ugliness and its noise. I let all that take over the heart ache and piled it with ambition and hard work. She used her anger and aggressiveness in her work and became the successful workaholic woman cliche.

No, she is not single, so to say. She met another man after her heartbreak. Almost a decade older. Nothing in common. And not in love too. He was a mere distraction and an escape from the screams inside her head. Or so she thought.

Her quest to find that lost love. To find her happy smiling content self continues. Many men walk past her way. She smiles, invites and traps them in her darkness and her mystery. Mesmerized, these men follow the path she carves for them. Like characters of a book, she is writing. Sometimes, I think she is so aware of it that she intentionally uses it in her favor. Not exactly to let out her heart ache but then its easier to carve a story around characters you have seen and met.

Look deep in her eyes and they look helpless. Like prisoned by the anger of her heart. Innocent. Helpless. Sad. They look like the kind of eyes that still cry on her soft expensive pillows. The wine stains on the bed sheet speak of the life she had not imagined. She could not handle. And in this quest, she met the ever charming and intelligent CT. CT, who has been mentioned rather fondly in the past few posts.

For a long time, I was confused. The thought disturbed me that CT and R could be having a 'thing'. Ct is a lot younger and she, married. This restlessness was shared with BG, who after hearing everything, asked just one thing, "Is he a Charmer?"
"Very. I fell for it." And that I'd like to believe is a huge thin for I hate to trust men and most definitely recognize their tricks. Here, for once, I failed. And miserably so.
"Well, if he is a great charmer then only a woman more charming than him could charm him."

Reality Bites. I found my answer despite BG taking advantage of his friendship with R and actually confirming it. She confirmed the positive.

R has all of a sudden stopped talking to me. CT, I do not want to talk to. I have lost all respect for the man which makes me angrier. Angrier to the extent that I find myself killing CT and R in my dreams. Not once, but repeatedly so. I cry in anger to sleep wanting to finish it all and move on like I never knew them. Like I was unintentionally unlearning things about K, my best friend.

K, her brother and I, now live together. A dream we saw as little girls is now a nightmare. That is another story. Another miserable one, which shall be talked of in the next post.

CT is in town right now. I do not want to meet him. I do not want to hear that voice. I am sure R knows about us which explains her sudden disliking for me. That explains why CT would not talk. Would not meet for it would piss R off. She controls him. And some amount of it, he needs, being aware of his philandering nature.

Six months back I gave CT and my common friend a gift I customized and got made for CT. All I wanted was the friend to give the gift to him on this trip on his. Only and only because I want that burden off my head. Also maybe, deep down in my hearts, I wish he would realize how thoughtful that gift is and appreciate his loss. Or just know how much I thought of him and what I must be going through right now.

I smirk as the next thought hits my head - "I want him to feel all the pain I suffered because of him." And if not him, who knows I may want to start throwing this pain, this anger back at the world. Just like R does. I dread that future.

I want to hang onto my hopes. I want to believe in my happy carefree self again. I am happy not having or discovering a dark side. I have no intentions of finding myself waking to a wet pillow and no pants because a lazy douchebag thinks I am his phone sex partner. Every night after a few too many drinks and spliffs that seem never ending, I do not want to find myself looking for temporary comfort. Failing at my innumerable attempts at forgetting this pain. Forgetting CT. Forgetting my love for him, in the arms of another man. I do not want to lock my room and scribble my feelings on the wall, somewhere feeling I may need serious help. I do not want any help. I do not want to admit my addiction. I just want to get over it. CT has become that drug I am addicted to and knowing I can not have it makes me whimper, makes me angry, makes me want to kill people, makes me want this world to end, makes me sure I want to lie alone naked in a house with no human contact for days, months, maybe years. What's the funniest? I do not even want him. He is an asshole I will never have any respect for. He has only gotten me addicted to him like probably R has him addicted to her. One oh her many men.

I finally have lost my faith in love. I have lost my strength to hold onto any hopes. Lets get real. This world was never made for emotions. We were sent here as animals. Like K said to me once, "You can never love. You are such an animal. You just fuck." Ladies and Gentlemen, that's my best friend for over a decade telling me that with absolute seriousness. I let it pass but that I will hold against her. She had no right to say something like that to me when she is not even interested or has a clue what I feel for CT and what I am going through. This is the 'best friend' of my life, I live with.

Despite reading all of this, if you still expect me to move on with my life and hope and expect how unexpectedly things will change for me one fine day. I am sorry. I have not just given up. I have lost a game with no second chances. Lost my belief in my strongest value of 'Loving without expectations'. BECAUSE FUCKERS! PEOPLE EXPECT! AND THAT IS WHY WHEN YOU LOVE THEM YOU FUCKING RECOGNIZE THEIR EXPECTATIONS AND GO OUT OF YOUR FUCKING WAY TO DO THINGS FOR THEM! I, have done, if not everything, yet I can proudly say, I have. I have fucking followed my heart (who was that fucktard who told me that?) and taken my risks time and again. I did today too in the middle of this post. I said I do not want to meet CT but I asked him to see me and he said he had plans. I knew it would turn this way. But I did. I took my chances. I have just been taking chances time and again, time and again, time and fucking again. But like they say right, somethings never change. My failures have not. My disappointments increase in a multitude, though. Every friend I ever banked on. Every tiny little thing makes me realize how most of my friends are not interested in my life. In what I may have to say. In what I may feel. They are there because I am there for them. Or maybe because I never told them about anything that ever mattered. I just don't. I just can not talk as much as I may want to. I can not think of a single person I can just hold, bury my face under their arm and cry till I sleep off in their lap and wake up to them smiling and making me feel like it is all fucking right. If I did not tell anymore because I wanted to make them feel like its no big deal then it really isn't. I want that person to smile and tell me it was all just a terrible terrible nightmare and its a bright new day. Its all the same as I left it more than a year back. Its all OKAY, in the real sense of it. I just want that smile to wrap me and make me believe all that I have unlearned. Make me that happy innocent smiling child again. Remove the chirpy mask and still find the awesome me that is confident, smart and happy. Just so fucking happy, I used to be that it confused people. Now, it doesn't matter to them. Such is world. Such is Life.

I have no idea what am I going to make of myself. But something extreme awaits this time.

Love 'n' Peace.

Hugs.
Kisses.
LSL

Gifted

"Can you all please shut up?", she screamed.
But we continued laughing.
In the midst of hysterical laughter on a lazy afternoon, another one interrupted.
"Don't you guys get it? She is with SH right now in the other room."
Apparently she was the only one who heard the entire screaming and understood what the screaming was for.
And the ignorant added, "So, what if she is with him in the other room?"
"His mother expired."
"Oh! I did not know that."
The funny one found this amusing,"Its okay man. If she is consoling him in the other room what has that got to do with what is happening in this room? And why are you guys reacting like this?"
"Because my parents are dead and I DO tend to get hyper on such things."

The room was filled with silence. The gloominess from the next room had travelled to this one.

An hour later, I see my mother's missed call.
"Listen! I have to choose 'Savings Bank' at the ATM na? And then?"
Despite having told her a billion times and she herself having it done some three-four times, her doubts surrounding technology will never die.
"Yes mom. And then your PIN and then the amount. Okay?"
"Okay. I am going to the ATM, if I have any problem out there. I will call you."
"Yes mom."
"And oh, please! Tomorrow is Solar Eclipse. Be careful. Do not touch any metals. Do not eat between 11:30 am till 3:30 pm. You can have fruits but no cooked food. Also do not eat...."
I was just too happy hearing her and feeling good about having a mother who maybe physically away, still is extremely concerned about even the smallest of things, to know what she continued warning for the next five minutes. Of course the smile on my face was also because of the funny situation where I am teaching her simple technology and she is talking me into myths.

Whenever I sit down to thank God. I have always and will continue to thank him the most for the people in my life. My parents, my friends, G and the people I am surrounded with for several reasons. But today was only more special. I feared losing them. My mom always told me to think of 'Death' everyday because according to her it makes the biggest loss a human being can face, just easier. Since then, I have tried facing and accepting death everyday. But I can not accept the hollowness that will come after that. I depend on her for so much more than emotional and worldly needs.

The relationship between a child and a parent is truly God's greatest gift. He may never ever never ever never ever make any child let go off the most beautiful thing that He himself ever created.

I have hardly stayed with my father all through my life and I always complained to God about it but it is only today that I can not stop thanking Him for he has at least given me a father who cares and is always there for me. He, who can show his love, even if it means virtually.

I am gifted. Gifted with the best gift, Mom and Papa. Today, I thank God for my biggest gift, strength, something that really is 'FOREVER N EVER N EVER'.

Who says Love dies?

Love 'n' Peace.

Hugs.
Kisses.