Sunday, November 9, 2008

"The kingdom of heaven (and hell, i presume) is within you.."

This isn't a religious post. I personally don't believe much in religion, mainly because i find it slightly silly standing in front of a photograph / statue / engraving / book and praying for a miracle. Which doesn't mean i don't depend on miracles. Every day i get through without coming under a bus, or falling seriously ill, or getting fired - i consider that day miraculous. So yes, my life's blessed.

But coming back to the subject of my post: I just saw "Stigmata" for the 79th time. I usually watch the film to stare at Gabriel Byrne's good looking face as he plays the unbeddable priest conflicted about his faith. But this time, this line - "The kingdom of heaven is within you, and all around you..." - jumped out at me. It got me thinking about heaven, and then of hell. And then i read this:

Fathers and teacher
I ponder, "What is hell?"
I maintain it is
The suffering of being
Unable to love...
- Dostoevsky

Usually my blog is about carnality, some romance, but usually it's about when a boy met a girl, and me hoping for a romantic comedy ending instead of the usual alternative cinema "wha?" impasse and end credits. This time, however, I'm here to talk about my personal piece of hell i can't seem to put down.

Lately, i find myself unable to love. This phase began at the beginning of last month. I discovered that a supposedly benign growth in my friend's body was malignant and spreading. She had to lose her ability to bear children to save her own life. I know the choice seems like a no-brainer, but a week before the operation, she'd told me that she really hoped she wouldn't lose her ovaries. As she lay recovering under sedatives, all i wondered was what would happen to me if she died.

Then the terrorists picked that week to attack Bombay, a city I adore. Then my favorite 'father-figure' Uncle was diagnosed with a growth in his throat. And then my Boss at my event-management gig was a total prick to me. And my friend's father died after a year of suffering. Suddenly my job of planning events that would sell more FMCG products didn't seem like so meaningful after all. And i've been doing this for a year and a half now - longer than most of my long-term relationships. All of these things together have just somehow cauterised my sensory nerves, to the extent that i feel nothing really.. except maybe fatigue.

So i took a step back and took a long hard look at my life. I'm going to be 31. I'm sleeping with a 25 year old sweet boy with whom no matter how naked i get, i'm not ever intimate with. At the start of it all, he seemed to be the answer to my prayers - no strings attached fun times. But now, while the going is still good, it's.... pointless.

Everything seems just a little bit more pointless everyday. And somewhere in the middle of all this, i've misplaced my fearlessness. Every little thing strikes fear in my life - what will i do if my friend dies? Or my mom? If i die, will anyone notice me missing? Will i ever love again, like i used to? Like i used to have the energy to? Will i write that damn book or will i be the 'so much potential but all wasted' person one never hears about? I'm scared i shall never be able to love anything so deeply again that i will want to fight for it. And because of that, i shall waste away, slowly, minimally, every day, like a bit of dust blowing off the sand dunes of a desert, until there will be nothing there... and no one to even remember that it wasn't always this way.

I'm also scared that i don't know how to change this.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why are you unable to love?

I doubt if scarcity of men is one of the reasons, as from your blog you seem to be surrounded by men of all different kinds.

And...not that this will comfort you, but if you do die, something tells me there will be plenty of people who will miss you.

A-girl

Seeking Happiness said...

I can totally understand your pain.

Searcher said...

Thank you Seeking Happiness.

A-Girl: This time, i think the line "It's not you (them), it's me" would be true.

Thanks for writing in.

Anonymous said...

I think I understand where you live. You're right, in that, life is indeed too terribly short!

I hope that one day you will ask yourself "What do I really want?" And if you're one of the lucky ones to figure that part out, I hope that you will resolve to take the precious time that remains to make something beautiful out of it.

Like A-girl, I too believe that you when you are gone, you will be dearly missed!

Anonymous said...

your fear of "not able to love" is actually "not wanting to love', it takes efforts to love... i am sure you know that (as it seems you had truely loved) and also now you DONT want to put in the efforts but still want the bonding. You are taking the easy way out... blaming lack of love on lack of feeling when it actually is lack of 'WANT'... somthing like , not getting up your ass to change the TV channel when the battery of your remote goes dead, even tho there is crap spewing out of the tv screen.. stop whining and get off your ass...

Do one thing... go to the plant nusery and pick up 3 flowering plants.. and nurse them.. tend to them.. watch them grow.. and when the plant flower for the second time you will find love.

Seeking Happiness said...

Yes it's strange what life does to you. I can identify so much with what you feel. I had never even imagined when I was young, that this is the kind of person I would become. Though I feel my life as an expatriate in a foreign land has dons this to me. But reading your blog I feel that you go through the same stuff even in your country surrounded by your own people. I find that sadly strange. I thought my life would be more fulfilling, or at least more "normal" if I had stayed back in India.

Searcher said...

Ofcourse knowing what you want is the giant step to getting it. No big surprise. Now i just want to figure out how to know what i want. Maybe then i'll get my mojo back.

PS: I own a few plants already. None of them flowering. What a deeply disturbing message from the Universe.

Anonymous said...

Hey....is this you?? :)

Searcher said...

Hey A Girl, no that's not me though i do know her :)

Anonymous said...

Ok, many similarities but I like yours better. Hers is a bit teenagerish and too verbose. And like she writes 50 blogs everyday which each have 30 comments each! How can one get such fan following....i guess most of her fans are teens. Anyway- one question I always have for bloggers like you is this - even though you guys are "anonymous"..it still would not take a sherlock holmes to find out who is under the pseudonym. So when you write explicit details of sex for example (like she has one entire post on her personal experience with the blow-job)....don't you guys ever cringe thinking, what if your parents are reading it? :-0

Anonymous said...

you know what you want - "Love" - it is the package you are trying to define and not able to do so: the who, how , why, how long, etc.. that you are trying to quantify. the moment you try to do that you are defining (read confining) the entire relation to certain parameters... and when your partner starts acting beyond the defined parameters that when trouble brews.... !!! so dont.. !!

love is just like religion... you just BELIVE in God... the more you question the faith and try to question it.. the more you loose the faith and the halo fades ;)

Searcher said...

Who-Me: As i already said, I'm not much of a follower of religion. But you're right in the 'defining = confining' philosophy. It isn't love i want (i already have so much of it, it always fills me with gratitude) so much as the desire and perhaps the forgotten ability to again give my love to someone.

A-Girl: I can't speak for a fellow-blogger, but nothing in my blog is something i'd be ashamed of if anyone i know, including my parents, read it. The reason i keep it anonymous (and the names of people i write about fictitious) is that if anyone i know does read it, they react to what is being written about instead of diluting the subject in their 'understanding' of the people involved.

Thank you both for writing in.