Irrational Irony, Inexplicable Indifference & Inevitable Idiosyncrasy : Ingredients of Life

You’re in a crowd, but you’re alone. You explain, but that just makes things harder to understand than they initially were. You speak, but you can’t be heard, or you’re not listened to. When you’re silent, everyone hears. When you’re down, no one wants to help you up, but when you’re up, everyone wants to drag you down. They tell you to hold on when you’re trying to let go. They tell you to let go when you’re trying to hold on. You’re dying while you’re living, and living while you’re dying.

Life is pervaded by the essence of irrational irony.

You talk to a person present in the flesh and you’re ignored. You talk to your “wall” on a social media platform and people who aren’t well-enough acquainted with you connect the dots of your untold emotions. You are forced to wear a smile that conceals the scars lest someone should see them and question your sanity or gloat over your probable insanity. You are forced to line your eyes with kohl to camouflage the deed all the midnight tears have done, because people seem to notice, but won’t seem to understand. You love someone, but your love to them is no more than the earth they trample underfoot.

Life is garnished with the oil of inexplicable indifference.

You are told by people that you will be understood, but ultimately, you end up being either not understood or misunderstood. You are told to stay put by someone who persistently tries to push you off balance when you’re like a feather amidst an air current. You choose your path and traverse it only to realize you’ve been treading the wrong way all this while. You gain something only to realize it won’t last forever, but you lose something and realize that it will be lost forever, like a drop in a boundless ocean.

Life is sprinkled with a dash of inevitable idiosyncrasy.

But life has to go on through it all, doesn’t it? And it does…

You know you’re not losing life’s battle, you’re just fighting your way up from the bottom.

Life is crowned with the indomitable spirit that surmounts the issues so insurmountable.

As Abandoned as You Can Be

“Hey, I have big news for you!” I say.

Everyone listens.

“Hey, there’s a party in my house this weekend.”

Everyone comes.

“Hey, I have a boyfriend.”

Everyone wants the details.

“I feel so lonely. I need someone.”

No one cares.

What bestial reality!

It must baffle you when you try to make sense of indifference these days. But it’s just natural for people to not want to partake in your sorrow. It’s like giving them a choice between maple syrup and pulverized bitter squash.

Jettisoned as you may be, know that people don’t leave you to show you that you’re weaker without them, but to show you that you’re stronger on your own. Everyone says that his life is packed to the brim with his own sorrows that he hasn’t any room for that of another, but it’s mind-boggling as to how the same hearts that appear to be filled to the brim with sentiments of melancholy are avid partakers in activities and talks of pleasure.

Everyone wants to be with you when your happiness is at its pinnacle but no one really accompanies you down to the vale when you’re overwhelmed with sadness.

But don’t worry, because those who taste pleasure too often will wind up miserable just like those who drink too much of maple syrup might be on the waiting list of Mr. Diabetes. Those who know sorrow will just come closer to what they are and will eventually learn to discover the real meaning of life- not in the form of vague delectation- but in its every sense. Bitter squash might cause a tongue to recoil and a face to squirm, but it doesn’t kill. It just makes you healthier and stronger.

Remedies for Healing a Hurt Heart

There is that one feeling that cuts deeper than a razor-sharp scalpel- hurt. Hurt is a consequence of love- love that you gave but never received in the way you hoped to. There are ways of coping with the pain inflicted by love. These are my self-discovered therapeutic remedies to refrain from imploding or exploding, or in extreme cases, both…

• Let your mouth speak for your heart

If talking to someone aids you to express your love, it will also serve you well to express your hurt. No matter how deranged this may sound, talking to yourself or an inanimate object is also remedial. But if you’re bent on speaking to a mortal in the flesh, select that person with as much care and caution you would reinforce while selecting your wedding gown. Never seek sympathy, rather, seek counsel, warmth and understanding.

• Let your eyes water and be your own comforter

Crying is a means of purging oneself of the debris of accumulated hurt. Doing it in solitude is most preferential to me because when I’m hurt, I feel like I am my own comforter and that my own heart understands the reason behind my tears better than anyone else would. Somewhere I read that “clouds burst when they can’t withhold their contents any longer, and so it is with us.”

• Allow time to be your doctor

Just like a physical wound requires time and treatment to heal, so does an emotional one. Never pick at a scar that has closed after much ado. But remember that time doesn’t relieve you of the weight you are bearing. It just accustoms you to carrying it.

• Learn to accept

Once Doctor Time has accomplished his job, you will be in the phase of accepting your altered state of emotional affairs. Never expect to be skyrocketed to Planet Euphoria in no time. Recovering from the sting of heartbreak is equable with recovering from a malady. Remember that your heart might still be fragile and vulnerable, so do not dive headfirst (or heart-first without using your head) into the pool of pleasure because you aren’t going to know whether it will suck you in and spit you out in a mortifying condition or cause you to hit the solid bottom. Accept what has been and hope in what is yet to be.

• Move ahead and move on

Never let the past remind you that you were weak and broken. Rather, let it be a reminder that you fought that interior battle and have emerged triumphantly. The past is irreversible and unchangeable, so leave it be. Let the past follow you, but let the present live in you as you live in it, and let the future lead you. Move ahead and move on. Hurt can last only as long as you allow it to.

A Drop of Strength in an Ocean of Weakness

I left myself wide open again and now I’m in a million pieces, but does that make a difference? After all, I wasn’t even whole to start with. Sometimes I feel I keep my heart in all the wrong places.

I spill all my contents to people and finally I’m left empty. I then run back to them to have them fill me again. I am then filled, but only with hurt the weight of lead.

In the face of all these emotional calamities, I have indeed lamented, cried and complained, but I have also learned that love and strength are tested and refined in situations as these.

I could never boast of strength if I hadn’t any weaknesses to overcome and I could not fortify my love had I not met with insult and coldness from the people that I held dear.

It does take something to bare your heart and mind to someone, but I did that anyway. Sometimes I was consoled, sometimes I returned more out of shape than I was to begin with.

Those moments I might have cursed, but to be honest, I was blessed with them, for in my weaknesses, I discovered my strengths, so I wouldn’t trade those happenings for anything under the sun. All those moments brought me closer to myself and to the people I cherish.

It’s like being the sole survivor of a tempest- battered and shattered, but still a survivor with a story worth telling.

If I didn’t know I was weak, I could never have known I was strong.

So, to everyone who has ever broken me, thank you. You taught me to repair myself and to give my love and my feelings a voice. So, feel satisfied for every stone you’ve hurled at me. Not one went in vain.

Wearing Your Heart on Your Sleeve

We are prickly about disclosing to people how many years we have been living and breathing for, how much dough is doubled and stashed up in our wallets every month and what number the weighing scale shows us, but, are things like these really significant when there are issues about us out in the open that were better repressed within us?

Take for instance your fears and inhibitions, the reticent desires of your heart, the humiliation you were subject to and much more.

When someone asks you what’s on your mind, answer him with much caution- the way you would had he asked you how much is in your purse. No, I’m not suggesting giving him the cold-shoulder. I’m just recommending that you weigh on the scale of discernment what you tell him, how you tell him and how much.

Our complexities are not taken very kindly in this eon where understanding is as rare as freshwater and genuine care is scarcer than water in a desert. When our weak points are known and made manifest, then comes the opportune moment for the carnivore of exploitation to lunge for its unsuspecting prey that is not rendered dead, but is rather gravely injured at heart.

The problem is that in our moments of crisis, we are willing to pour out our hearts and minds to anyone who has ears to listen, regardless of whether their concern is genuine or as fake as artificial flowers. It’s something like waking up with a hangover after being punch-drunk and regretting in leisure everything said and done and being tremulous over the repercussions.

Hereinafter, be wary of wearing your heart on your sleeve. Guard your inmost thoughts like diamonds in the safe of your head and ensure that there’s only limited access. The door of one’s mind and heart are sometimes better kept shut than open.

From Myself To Myself

Dear Me,

There are different types of people and there are different roles they have in your life and different reasons as to why they do what they do and why they affect you the way they do. Some are meant to hurt, others are meant to heal. Some are meant to break, others are meant to repair. Some are meant to stay, others are meant to leave. The list of possible scenarios goes on and on.

But out of the myriad people in the world, there are only a few you get to know, and fewer still whom you learn to trust, but what if that person’s relationship with you soon dissolves into nothing? What happened to all the secrets shared, all the time spent, all the hurt repaired and all the scars bandaged and the wounds healed? It’s just pulverizing to think that you gave that person such an important place in your life and in the chamber of your heart for them to decide to leave all of a sudden.

You know that both of you went wrong somewhere, somehow, but ironically, you just shoulder the whole blame while the other goes scot free, laden with no worry about what she left broken.

Reopening a scar is tormenting because it takes you back to why it was there to begin with, and to think it has yet another new beginning? Wow.

When someone you love hurts you so deeply, it’s like walking around with a knife plunged deep and lodged in your core. You’re bleeding, you’re hurting, you’re dying- but just not dead enough to give in or give up.

Conforming yourself to the bitter cup of reality is demanding. It’s agonizing to come to terms with the probable verity that you never meant as much to her as she did to you. Maybe you just weren’t important enough for her to care anymore.

To love someone and know that you will never be loved back the same way is one of the most crushing feelings and to know that your love meant little or nothing is hurtful beyond words. Your love was stigmatizing to her, it was a blemish in her perfect life, a constant factor or degradation, irritation and aggravation.

If only you could have done something differently, or not at all, would that have saved you the hurt of betrayal, rejection and isolation? Or was it better that it came painfully but sooner?

The truth always hurts because it contradicts everything you made it out to be. You mapped out a whole loving fantasy just to have it erased in the blink of an eye. The sting of knowing that you’ve been replaced is more incurable than terminal cancer.

It was just a competition for attention and flattery which fools played and fools won, but you weren’t a fool, so you didn’t know how to play the game. Fools don’t have any rules- they just play by fair means or foul. The latter is predominant.

But today will fly by on the wings of an eagle as will all the hurt it flung you. Tomorrow’s waiting.

With love,

Yourself