Sometimes you are so lonely in life that even tears refuse to come out for the fear that there is nobody to wipe them. Such loneliness pricks your heart with agonizing pain. Crestfallenness, dejection and a numbing emptiness surround you in a dungeon, out of which you unsuccessfully clamber to come out. All of us have such days which make us question our very existence. You wonder if anybody really gives a damn about you and your feelings. You work to fit in all your mortal roles as well as possible, trying to please everybody and not to displease anybody. But at the end of the day, you find your whole being writhing in misery because the ones who really matter to you don’t seem to care less. Such moments push you to an abyss so low and frightful that you now sob like a child who has lost his parents somewhere and doesn’t know what else to do.
I shall safely assume that most of us experience these emotions at some point and it needs a huge vent to come to terms with it. When you begin to doubt the validity of your own acts, you have considerably lost your confidence and questioning your purpose in others’ lives implies your utter anxiety and desperation. The worst is when you smilingly live through the day while your heart and mind ache and grope in some remote darkness and the other doesn’t see it or chooses to ignore. Relationships aren’t easy was told to you but it could be so challenging was unexpected. In my sheer frustration, I ask the Lord, why did you make us so terribly different especially men and women that we comprehend and interpret every damn thing in a different colour.
What I write here is not a complaint or a tirade; it is probably just a vent, a catharsis. An attempt to make our emotions more relatable with each other’s because it helps. It helps to make place for clearer thoughts and take comfort in empathy. We are greatly blessed in a whole lot of ways and yet sadness trickles in, in some small ways. But these small things are very significant in our life which when go wrong create a sort of void vacuum. The first way forward for any human interface is communication, but when the conversations become perfunctory and caring becomes a formality, hollowness comes crawling into your soul. However, before this emptiness engulfs you irreparably it is time to reverse the situation.
In time, you realize that unhappiness is very exhausting and eventually you are so drained of it that you want to throw that drab lifelessness away. But since you realize that nobody is aware of your need for a new garb of joy, you turn very wise. . You stop depending on others for it. I read a very prudent statement by Javed Akhtar that unless two people are individually happy they cannot have a happy marriage in particular (or any other relationship in general). And honestly, I have concluded on one principle in life that though I may laugh and feel happy because of others, I will not give them the power to make me sad. I may miss a mark or two in living upto someone’s standards or expectations, but that doesn’t necessarily make me bad or incompetent. Self loathing doesn’t improve things, it only worsens.
We are essentially alone in this world but it is boring and hence we look for company. Once we are accustomed to a particular company, the idea of being alone is terrifying. And this fear or insecurity makes us vulnerable. I don’t know if this vulnerability is helpful or otherwise because in one way it sustains the relationship for longer, gives it more time and opportunity to renew and replenish. Personal happiness is individual responsibility and once accomplished undoubtedly gives you that extra energy to transform the cringing loneliness into compassionate company. Because the bottom line is that it does feel really really good to know that you are cared for.