What use is it to close my fists if everything that I hold is water anyway?
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In all the answers that I have ever received there runs a
common thread- an element of knowing everything and nothing at the same time.
When you’re creating an anecdote in your mind, you often try to make it as
discreet yet clear as possible, like a mouse that can parole through the entire
house, eat its appetite’s worth, and scramble off, still having left enough for
about everybody else. So when I am spoken to in metaphors, I assume they are
written for me- yes- the half-faded and misspelled words on the back of the aforementioned
pickup truck were put there for me 14 years and 57 days ago- so that one day,
while being fashionably late for a dinner with my best friend, I can look at
them and find the answers that I was looking for. It is a delusional belief, but it is a belief
that keeps me alive, knowing that every single day there is a factory of
forces laying down the answers to all my questions for me- in places that I am
only half sure to end up in but certain to notice them in. And that was the
first lesson of adolescence- for a whacked-out child such as me.
When I was 14, I convinced myself that I will die within the
next 365 days, not because I wanted to, but because I must. Obsessive-compulsive
disorder? Anxiety? Microdosing on plastic? I do not care to know. What is important is
that this belief was so solidified in my mind that I would spend every waking
moment of my life thereon in panic. I couldn’t have ever put it into words,
then, or now. But to me it was real, and every second of my life was a ticking
time bomb that I had set off for myself.
“I'm pretty intuitive” and “this is my gut speaking”, I cry
to my mother-“this is your stupidity speaking" -she laughs back. I was
dumbfounded when she laughed at it, but 5 years down the line, I do not blame
her. How absurd must it have been! That night I fell asleep after the usual
rumination-panic cycle, to the circling thoughts of what I’d make of the self-proclaimed
“last year of my life." In my sleep, the biologically scheduled film rolled,
and I dreamt of a man and a staircase with a white hairy dog on it, the wall
had pictures- about 8 of them, and I could only see up to the neck of the man
with the white hairy dog. He approached me and showed me polaroids of my life- from
the years I haven’t lived to see yet and weirdly believed I never will. He
struggled to annunciate his words. He slurs and tells me, “this is you at 25, still believe you are going to die?” I wake up with the hot June air hitting my
face; I look at the ceiling, and with a smile, brace myself to live till at least
25. That night I slept.
I have thought about that period with much curiosity since,
and ever so often imagine the relief of turning 15 after that fear had embodied me-
just to watch it die. That paved my way for another lesson- we will often find
the answers exactly where the questions came from.
So when you love, you are ridden with the risk of losing it,
and if that wasn’t bad enough- the risk of losing yourself. But how do you confront
the endless pondering of the whys and ifs of it all? You assume that it will be
enough when it is said to you in words or in writing, but it isn’t. And yet
again, you find yourself riddled with endless questions of what is enough and
how much can you change about the complex wiring of your mind- the same mind that
controls you enough to convince you that you must wither and then brings you
back to life, unprovoked, on its own- to undo these thoughts. They run like a program of prerogatives,
and no words can stop the next set of commands from running.
These questions come in waves and spare you very little time
to actually experience any of it- and you run yet another risk- of being too
much, which runs another risk- of being underfed. It is one command after the
other- one answer opens up hundreds of newer questions that cannot be asked nor
answered, and the program never ends until the engineer burns out.
So, when these questions seem to have no end, I counter them
with a bigger question- perhaps the most existential of them all-
What use is it to close my fists if everything that I hold
is water anyway?
And for my third, and last lesson of adolescence, I watch this question become the ultimate answer to every single one that I have ever asked.
Picture credits- Pinterest
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reading this reminded me so much of myself and how i used to write. the second half of this feels personal, maybe i just cant accept the transience of things. i'll use your question (or answer) to affirm myself, lets see how that goes. good post.
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