Ending the Beggining

Diversity; a thing I admire. A quality I cherish.

I see around me; a chubby woman, weighed down by a load of bulging shopping bags, is standing at the bus stop, probably thinking about her drunken husband who would yell at her as soon as she reached home. An attractive brunette in her late teens, gossiping on her cell, about which celebrity had a nervous breakdown, or whether J Lo was planning on another marriage or if River Island was closing down because of the sudden decline in sales. A twenty-something boy walking alongside the pavement, planning out his budget for the up-and-coming month.

I pitied all those people; pitied them for being so typically common. People live long lives, go to their jobs punctually, some perform them in a highly impressive way and get an increment from their bosses as a token of appreciation, whilst others do badly and are fired. They console themselves by a night out at the nearest bar, getting stoned and later waking up to a hangover.  They smile and greet their neighbours pleasantly, even though they know that inwards they hate each other. They keep on watering the pots of chrysanthemums placed on the window sill, even though they are well aware that they are going to wilt one day anyway. They keep on standing at the same bus stops, travelling on the same buses, thinking about the same conflicts, dreaming about the same triumph and success. They get married, watch the same old programs, eat the same food everyday, raise their rebellious kids, get old, and one day, they eventually die.

Just like that.

After a handful of funerals and the same litany of clichéd consolations, no one remembers that they ever existed. Their subsistence holds no importance whatsoever.

For them, that’s life.

For me, that’s even worse than death.

What’s the use of a life if you aren’t able to taste the first drops of rain n your tongue? What’s the use of life if you don’t accept the fear of death as an advice to live every moment to the fullest? What’s the use of a life when you are afraid of rebellion, when you do not defy the norms of the society, when you fail to be different?

I wanted to be different, to be diverse. I wanted to be able to stand out in a crowd.

Such was the need to gain diversity that I ended p destroying myself altogether.

When I got bullied at school, I go home like a sissy, reveal my scars to my mom and cry about it. That’s what everybody did; I had to do something different. So I hurt myself. The blemishes on my left arm are totemic of the times when I mutilated my body; burnt it with cigarette butts, scratched it with a razor. The blood would ooze out of my skin, falling silently to the floor, and I would be filled with a sense of relief.

Revenge was over. God made this happen to me and I had evened score. 

When I was upset over a particular incident, I never shred my feelings with anyone, not even my closest friends. I kept it inside me; suppressed and caged. I was bottled up; the emotions were striving to get out, but I managed to keep them inside, even though it choked me.

I was punishing my soul, psychologically abusing myself for the most trivial of things.

I never cried. Tears were a sign of weakness. People cried to get rid of the problems troubling them, but I couldn’t do that, I if did, I would be like every other mortal in the universe, going through life blindly.

But if you don’t let a single tear, a carrier of pain, leak out of your eyes; if you keep every ounce of pain inside you body, in a drawer lying on the border of sanity and madness, then things always end up in the same way.

A nervous breakdown.

A path leading to insanity.

And then once again, I became the same as everyone else; living in a world created myself, a world not understood by anyone, not even by me.

Sometimes, I experienced a sense of wholesome rapture flow through my body.

It was a bizarre feeling. An indescribable thrill.

I felt suspended in the moment; suspended in the magnificence of it. But that was soon over, and once again a sense of ennui and sickness overtook me.

But that happens to everyone, I had to stand out. I had to end the moment myself because I didn’t deserve to be happy. I was a sinner and sins are always forgotten, never forgiven.

I didn’t feel complete; something was missing as usual.

I couldn’t go on anymore. People said that life was a blessing bestowed upon mankind by God. But what if that blessing turned into a curse, somehow, somewhere? What if every minute, you felt as if a thousand knives are stabbing your body? What if you are psychologically so confused and messed up that even logic makes no sense? What if you are drained of searching so long for something beyond? What if the reason you lived, the thing you searched for, the enlightenment you sought, suddenly becomes one great lie? What if you don’t want to row anymore in the stormy sea, where the gigantic waves make your tiny boat topple over?

If I wanted to be different, if I didn’t want to go on, maybe everyone had to make their peace with that.

They had to understand.
God will have to understand.