An absence...

My days are now enveloped in a sense of absence. A sense of lack. A void shaped like another person. Someone I haven't known for a long time. But that lack is glaring, it is ever-present. Its shocking to me how easily we get used to the good things in life. Even when we know that it is not going to last and it is not forever.

And even as I spend my days trying to fill this void with life, I see M. 

M, you lost a leg. A leg that was wholly, completely yours. Not for a brief while, but for the forever that you have known. And you lost it. In one day.  In a few hours in fact (because I saw you running that day). I can't even imagine losing my leg after spending my day running - life does have a sense of irony... 

I think of you and that over-whelming sense of absence that you might feel and tears find their way into my dry eyes. I am sure it is unimaginably hard when the ground beneath your feet shifts like this. When you are not able to do things like standing up on your own that you have done from the very first year of your life. I am sure it is devastating to look at the prosthetic and to imagine the real thing. You may even have phantom pains in the limb that is no longer there. Making its presence felt, signaling its ache and throb - like a clarion call from the dead. I am sure life as it was is no longer the same. 

And I know,  If I were you, I would have spent many a days, packing and unpacking that one word - why. 

Not that answers are ever easy but this one is always especially difficult. 

Why do bad things happen to good people? 

Why does randomness seem to be so totally random? 

(And I know that question doesn't even make sense in a rational world but I can't not ask... after all, when I see good people being thrashed about, I have to ask. I have to try and make sense of it.)

And yet, despite all this and more, you walk into the gym, M, smiling as ever. You are back to your life,  business as usual or at least so you seem to say.  In a few months. 

I don't know you so well. Maybe we spoke a couple of times in more than a year. But I hope you know, that I admire what you have done.  I admire the fortitude, the resilience, the spirit and the courage with which you have overcome that void and have marched on. 

I find it hard to put the pieces of my life together even on a good day. I can barely imagine doing that when some pieces are missing. And you have done that. Just that. So beautifully and bravely at that. 

And when I think of the void that is left in your life and how you have filled it, I see hope for my  foolish self. So, thank you for being there. 

I am terribly sorry that you had to go through this.  

I am sure many will tell you that this will make you a better person and it will all work out in the end. It probably did make you a better person and it probably will work out in the end. But even if it doesn't, M, I hope you know that you gave courage to someone. 

Someone who is not easily inspired, who is not easily awed...  

And now I shall get back to the arduous task of filling that void around me. 

Some monsters are never really dead...

Some monsters are never really dead.
You think you've slain them, buried them, burnt them and walked away - whole and alive... but, no, my dear, no.
They continue to lurk in the deep recesses of your mind, as a memory that you can vaguely recall. They seem to have multiple hidden lives, protected from our watchful eyes in horcruxes that are stowed away.
Their subliminal presence casts a faint shadow every now and then one learns to ignore it.
But then there are times, when a tiny comment, a jibe or a passing witticism by someone will unleash those monsters. The horcruxes will begin to burn, itch and glow even as you do your damnedest best to ignore their very existence.
They will rise up from the dead and you will have to deal with them again - and yet again.

I have had my share of monsters. I have run away from them, ignored them, battled them and finally slain them - or so I thought.
They were hidden for a long time, but even the most innocent of comments can serve as powerful spells as they revive the slain monsters.
I can sense their presence as they raise their head now. I can hear the jibes, the sneers, the tug on my confidence...
I can feel the angst of my 'plain', teenage self, who wanted nothing but to wake up as a different person. I thought I had slain this monster.
What happened here?

But this time, things are also a little different... This is a familiar enemy and I have seen the other side. I know how the battle plays out and I know I can survive this too. And so, I am not yet broken and buried. Instead, I retreat and find myself a foothold. I strategize and I plan. I know where I stumble and I am going to make sure I don't.
The monsters shall rise but I shall slay them again... and again and again. Because that is all you can do. Find the monsters that scream defeat, hatred and insult; and slay them, ruthlessly and relentlessly.

Life in metaphors...

I began as they said. I wet the paper and gently dabbed paint at one corner. It spreads quickly.
I apply another dab of paint and wait.
First it was blue, then green. Then yellow and red.
The water trapped in the paper is blurring the boundaries. Somehow, nothing is clear and distinct.

The colors are spreading. Things are moving out of my control as the colors diffuse, spread, mix and leave trails behind. I sat there watching.
Waiting.

A small panic rising in my heart. Will this be ok? Should I wipe it off? Should I dry it? Should I dab a  little more? Or maybe a little less? What should I do?

But, I hold on tight. I sit on my hands (literally) to stop myself from doing something. The effort to not do anything is enormous. The urge is over-whelming.
It is completely unnerving to sit but I have to wait. I have to see how this plays out.

And so I do.

I let the colors follow their course. I let the water dry at its own pace. I wait for the water-soaked, mellowed, cold-pressed paper to return to its dry, rigid self.
And it does in a few minutes. Some really long minutes but minutes nonetheless.

I now see that my panic was unjustified. Because the colors had only merged and melded seamlessly into this beautiful, complete whole that I couldn't have painted on my own. The incline of the surface, the water, the colors, the air, the humidity and my brush strokes - they had all come together to give rise to something unexpectedly beautiful and complete.

A few months ago, I would have panicked, interfered and stopped the colors from mixing on their own. I would have taken charge and dabbed, dried, erased, outlined. I would have done things to get the image I wanted without letting it emerge.

I would have drawn lines to trap the objects, the people and the world into my tiny-little outlines. They would have fit into those boxes and they would have stayed like that - fixed, unmoving and sharp. Surreal to the point of being fake.

But today, the image emerged on its own, unaffected by my outlines, boxes or preconceived notions. Freely the shapes blended and rose as the colors danced with each other (and also fought sometimes). The image was filled with soft, blurry lines that invited my eyes to linger. To imagine.

It was filled with possibilities - and new possibilities arose as I saw again. Shapes shifted, lines blurred, objects emerged and appeared. It was dynamically fixed.

My former sharply defined world seemed like a distant past. This new blurry world was my present reality. It was real, surreal and ethereal - all at the same time.
I, a person of action, who could not be a passive spectator, learned a lesson today about passivity. I saw my life and myself a little clearer in those blurry lines and fuzzy shapes.

This is a lesson I need to remember.
I need to learn to BE. To be a little passive when situations demand so with the hope and the faith that the consequences will not necessarily be bad.
Complete control is not always the solution we seek. Sometimes, one has to wait for order to emerge from the chaos.

I always knew that art mimicked life but today, for me, art carried a valuable life-lesson too.
The lesson to just BE. To learn to wait for things to emerge before pounding them into existence.