Random thoughts....

The past few days have been stranger than usual. I have been teetering at the edge of loss, exhaustion and hopelessness but something has carried me through it all - a little bruised and wounded but still together. 

My days have been filled with random thoughts - mostly while walking or running - trying to get some air in and some anxiety out. 

I walk by the park and see a tiny two year old walking on the park's fence while clutching onto her dad. It reminds me of learning to ride a bike. Of constantly looking back to check if someone was behind me or not. To make sure that someone stayed with me even as I tried to break free - to speed away. With that tingling sense of panic, excitement and the fear of not making it. And yet, before panic grips me as the shadow behind me recedes into the distance - I feel the wind in my hair and I know I am on my way. I have fallen soon after, lost control, and gotten bruised, just when I thought I had found my wings. But for those few moments, I knew I had made it. I had done it once and I could do it again. And again. 

I was a bird ready to fly away from my nest, eager to fly, but I was still missing the nest. I still looked for that shadow. For that someone to be there, no matter what. To just be there and be mine. 

I walk by the rolling hills of the lush-green golf course on my way to the beach. With slippers on my feet and earphones in my ear, I walk. Uncaring and unsure. I see the luxurious green carpet of the golf course, dotted with specks of white spheres. My eyes try and find a pattern to make sense of it. But, there is no pattern - nothing to explain it all. Nothing but randomness. The white specks were the balls at the end of their journey. A journey directed by the sun and the wind, by the power of the stroke, by the strength and choice of the clubs, by the roll of the land, and by a whole lot else. There was no simple way to predict or to explain the chain of events that brought them there. They were at the end of journeys that were almost entirely beyond their control. I just had to walk on. 

I normally walk into an empty room with quiet solitude but walk into a crowd feeling lonely. But today was different. I was happy even on the streets because I acknowledged the crowd of strangers and realized that I owe nothing to them. Not the politeness of a smile or the courtesy of a pleasantry or the pleasure of a conversation. I was alone in a crowd of strangers and for once it was liberating to know that I did not care for them and that my existence did not matter to them. That at some level, I could be just who I am - unaffected by who I should be - because none of them were of any consequence to me, and neither I to them. To know that one's actions and decisions cannot break someone's heart or spirit and cannot hurt someone who is loved is liberating. It is liberating to know how little one means to some people because then there is no responsibility to be shouldered. There are no problems to be solved, no sentences to be structured and no decisions to be made. It is just you in a sea of loneliness. On some days, it is liberating to be surrounded by a sea of strangers.