I feel like I am carrying a mountain on my shoulders. I am tired. A mountain of mummy’s health; one of the things she says when she is sick. Many times she asks me to die. A mountain of lost relationships, that I was counting on; another mountain of empathy so I don’t hate them. “How could you?” I want to let myself say. A mountain of realizations. Maybe I project my fantasies onto people and set myself up for failure. One of carrying on in the physical world: exercise, eat, read, work; of meeting people, being there for some. The biggest one of self-care, no binging, no locking yourself up; asking for help when I am crumbling, meeting someone when I need a hug, or letting people know I am suffering. I am so tired I tell them, tell me it’ll pass. I am trying to manufacture hope artificially. It is a task with no ROI. Of it, I am really tired. Of finding no one to hug without questing my strength. Of work not stopping when my brain does. Of bills not stopping either. Of the dread of an upcoming birthday. Of maybe I am ‘over-reacting’.
I feel like I am stuck in the climax scene of an intense Marathi tv show, forever. My heart feels like my hand if it stayed in the water for 2 hours too long, skin shriveled, can be cut with a cloth. Like they say “when you are a hammer, everything is a nail”, when I am unwell, anything is a trigger: loud noise, a parking ticket, someone waiting, a missed call, a door banged.
In this hyper-sensitivity sometimes, happiness comes. Hyper too, like a wave. We go to eat ice cream over a long drive and find a new flavor. Muskmelon. When in the middle of a Friday, I watch Naseeruddin Shah recite Faiz’s poems. The time I put babyR to sleep. Are all waves.
I feel like in this life of too many triggers, we take whatever excuse there is to celebrate. I am tired of that too.