15th August 2013
9:00 am
I am not much of a sleeper though I perennially lie about that. I keep telling people I love to sleep and that I love to laze in bed. And yes, I do spend a lot of time in my bed - in the mornings that is. And that's because - very often - I don't want to face the day that lies at my door. :) Four and thirty years haven't as yet taught me anything about armouring myself and going forth to battle the rays of the Sun, the drip of the rain, and the scenes they bring along. I try to not be nervous about it all. I pretend to look calm, and I pull my pace down to an amble. But deep down, or somewhere around my rib cage and waist, I feel this mass of anxiety always putting me on alert. It's a rather icy alert you know. A cold wave sweeps through me as I walk out to meet the day or the evening or the night. I don't shudder but I don't sweat either. I just know it's meant to be cold and so, I have to keep my guard on.
There are days though I let go of that guard - he needs a holiday too. Those are the days I have a bounce accompany my footsteps. I feel taller, the lane seems to have walked straight out of Downton Abbey, and every colour I spot seems a shade more intense than I knew it to be. And the minutes that follow me are brilliant enough to buoy my spirits up.
But that whole feeling - that whole phase of exuberance - lasts but for a while. All it takes is for me to be rather surprised I don't have an ice cube of anxiety troubling my right side, and right enough, there it turns up as if my being surprised was as good as its summons! Thereafter, I find myself in familiar territory and it's quite a palpitation to endure.
Perhaps that's how life is supposed to be - for me. I know it's never the same for us all. If that were to be the case, I will not have been writing this for you will have known it all by the time I had finished it with this sentence. But no, it isn't so.
Life shuffles cards and distributes them ever so randomly. That done, it leaves you all alone to bother about the fate your cards thrust on you. So, perhaps, a bouquet of sorrows may have come your way. Or a lover may have cheated on you the way you conspired with him/her and cheated on your boyfriend/girlfriend. Your mother-in-law may be the object of your hate for a week. Or the husband may be breaking your soul into a thousand shards - each full of a sense of failure - simply because he sits in the hall and refuses to acknowledge you, your hair, or even the fact that you tolerate his nonsense twice over every day. Or you may be the husband who married a woman and has to live with her annoying family as well!
They're never simple - these bothers. If you hold them up in front of a mirror, you'll see your ache all right. But what you may not notice is the speck of a reason why that ache got the better of your happiness in the first place. It's but natural to overlook the reason: the bother leaves hardly any space for reason to be attended to...
So, well, I think I'll have to make peace with the fact that bothers are here to stay. I'll have to let them occupy a room and leave them alone.
For as long as I know where they are, I'll spend time with them for, say, an hour or three and not let them run amok all throughout my day!
9:00 am
I am not much of a sleeper though I perennially lie about that. I keep telling people I love to sleep and that I love to laze in bed. And yes, I do spend a lot of time in my bed - in the mornings that is. And that's because - very often - I don't want to face the day that lies at my door. :) Four and thirty years haven't as yet taught me anything about armouring myself and going forth to battle the rays of the Sun, the drip of the rain, and the scenes they bring along. I try to not be nervous about it all. I pretend to look calm, and I pull my pace down to an amble. But deep down, or somewhere around my rib cage and waist, I feel this mass of anxiety always putting me on alert. It's a rather icy alert you know. A cold wave sweeps through me as I walk out to meet the day or the evening or the night. I don't shudder but I don't sweat either. I just know it's meant to be cold and so, I have to keep my guard on.
There are days though I let go of that guard - he needs a holiday too. Those are the days I have a bounce accompany my footsteps. I feel taller, the lane seems to have walked straight out of Downton Abbey, and every colour I spot seems a shade more intense than I knew it to be. And the minutes that follow me are brilliant enough to buoy my spirits up. But that whole feeling - that whole phase of exuberance - lasts but for a while. All it takes is for me to be rather surprised I don't have an ice cube of anxiety troubling my right side, and right enough, there it turns up as if my being surprised was as good as its summons! Thereafter, I find myself in familiar territory and it's quite a palpitation to endure.
Perhaps that's how life is supposed to be - for me. I know it's never the same for us all. If that were to be the case, I will not have been writing this for you will have known it all by the time I had finished it with this sentence. But no, it isn't so.
Life shuffles cards and distributes them ever so randomly. That done, it leaves you all alone to bother about the fate your cards thrust on you. So, perhaps, a bouquet of sorrows may have come your way. Or a lover may have cheated on you the way you conspired with him/her and cheated on your boyfriend/girlfriend. Your mother-in-law may be the object of your hate for a week. Or the husband may be breaking your soul into a thousand shards - each full of a sense of failure - simply because he sits in the hall and refuses to acknowledge you, your hair, or even the fact that you tolerate his nonsense twice over every day. Or you may be the husband who married a woman and has to live with her annoying family as well!
They're never simple - these bothers. If you hold them up in front of a mirror, you'll see your ache all right. But what you may not notice is the speck of a reason why that ache got the better of your happiness in the first place. It's but natural to overlook the reason: the bother leaves hardly any space for reason to be attended to...
So, well, I think I'll have to make peace with the fact that bothers are here to stay. I'll have to let them occupy a room and leave them alone.
For as long as I know where they are, I'll spend time with them for, say, an hour or three and not let them run amok all throughout my day!
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