Surrender

Something always brings me back to you.
It never takes too long.
No matter what I say or do,
I still feel you here ’till the moment I’m gone.

You hold me without touch.
You keep me without chains.
I never wanted anything so much,
than to drown in your love and not feel your rain.

The past five days have been illuminating; as absences of you always prove to be. It is always a harsh lesson in identity, where strengths I never knew I had are called to the fore, and weaknesses long forgotten, rear their ugly heads.

J put forward an interesting distinction while we were having lunch in the graduate common room the other day, on the very different, almost oppositional effects of distance on a relationship. “Is it a matter of ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ or ‘out of sight, out of mind‘?” she boldly queried.

And I didn’t know quite what to answer.

The answer was plain to me of course. The former, for sure. It’s the only thing that could explain these feelings, this irrationality, this inexplicable attachment.

And then it occurred to me, that I had no idea what his would be.

Old friends come knocking on the door as the evening wanes, and promise to sit with me through the night.

I am still the same girl as I was last year. In spite of status changes and perhaps more outward shows of newfound affection, the insecurities linger, and I am trapped in the wild fears conjured by a restless mind, not quite sure how to picture an accurate reality.

So this is my lesson in surrender, and I will be all the stronger for it.

You loved me ’cause I’m fragile,
when I thought that I was strong.
But you touch me for a little while,
and all my fragile strength is gone.

Set me free, leave me be.
I don’t want to fall another moment into your gravity.
Here I am and I stand so tall, just the way I’m supposed to be.
But you’re on to me and all over me.

Goodbye,

Every time, is a slow and agonizing exercise of having to tear myself away from the things, the places, the memories, the someones, that have been seeded and now implant themselves in my heart – whether by painstaking, back-breaking efforts to sow, nurture and cultivate; Or the ones, like stubborn weeds, that have slyly managed to escape my notice and take root all the same, more resilient than ever.

I can’t say how much I tire of this annual ritual of severing and re-attaching, breaking and mending. Both ways.

It’s really quite brutal.

I wish you knew how incredibly hard it is for me to sit out (again), to miss yet another milestone. Sometimes, timing can be such a bitch. Second time fate seems to have dealt me a cruel hand. Each blow seems to be a confirmation how this just, maybe, is wrong. Just isn’t meant to be.

I also wish you cared that I wanted so much to be there.

I realized that it’s been a while since I’ve travelled alone. For the past 2 years, there was the reassuring familiarity of you – jostling around in the same bumpy taxi ride to the airport or in the seat next to me, donning headphones and eating my share of aluminium-tinted plane food. And again, this dangerous dependence decides to un-cloak itself, revealing the extent of its destructiveness. Whether I leave you at the arrival hall, or at the door to my apartment at 3.30am, the goodbye is still haphazard, still tentative, and still very painful.

And this time, there’s a sense, which has hit me a little all too late as I sit here sleepless on the eve of my flight, a half-empty suitcase sprawled in the middle of my living room, that I bid fare well to an era that will pass and never return.

Quite honestly, that scares the hell out of me.

World Spins Madly On.

Woke up and wished that I was dead
I lay motionless in bed
I thought of you and where you’d gone
and let the world spin madly on

Everything that I said I’d do
Like make the world brand new
And take the time for you
I just got lost and slept right through the dawn
And the world spins madly on

I let the day go by
I always say goodbye
I watch the stars from my window sill
The whole world is moving and I’m standing still

I thought of you and where you’d gone
and let the world spin madly on.

-The Weepies

Sigh.

I miss you. And you’re just here. How am I ever going to survive weeks away from you?

The saddest thing is that you’re probably out, gallivanting somewhere. Plotting your next big social takeover. How to win friends and influence people. Getting that girl you always wanted.

It’s not fair that I’ve been given these feelings.

______________________________

Father,

I feel myself slipping again. Into this shame-blame game. I blame You for seeding these desires in my heart. Why do they take such a specific form? Why does happiness seem to only culminate in that one person? Why does he dictate my everything? I shame myself for not being good enough, for not being beautiful enough. I blame him for not knowing better, for being blinded by superficiality, for not growing up quickly enough to see what is good and right under his nose. I blame them for taking my place, for their selfish and shallow pleasures, for their blatant insensitivity.

And now I have all this time on my hands – Time to bemoan days that have passed, to antagonize the things of the present and to worry incessantly about tomorrow.

I pray that you will help me use the days wisely, productively. May I learn to feed my soul with the richness of a Word that is alive and relevant to my current day, fill my mind with the knowledge of Your, our world. May I yearn to keep You close to my heart, every second, every minute of my every day. May I preserve my hope in a better day, a brighter future be grounded firmly in You as my solid Rock, my strong Fortress. May I guard fiercely my faith in a God that will provide, that will see me through the long and narrow path. 

I may not always make the right decisions. More often than not, I succumb to the wilful desires of my flesh, fall prey to the tantalizing potential of momentary gratification. Just like how I have broken my fast, time and time again for the sake of convenience, yielding to the hunger of my cravings, bowing to the pressures of the people who sit with me at the dinner table, or to he, who has the uncanny power of pushing me beyond the boundaries of anything I’ve known till now. 

But Lord, have mercy. Be patient with me. For I am, and hopefully will always remain a work in progress, yet to be finished.

You are breaking me.

I can’t even be left alone by myself for a moment.

Lull

Of late,
I’ve been feeling like I’m standing at the edge of a precipice. And the wind is rushing past, whistling past my ears, and I’m trying to resist the temptation of submitting to its whim. If I just let go, if I could just relax this tension in my muscles for just a second… lean back, and drop into the free fall.

To what am I holding onto so tightly?

I’ve always been one to anticipate, the twitchy squirrel that wrinkles its whiskers as it frantically stores up its security in nuts. The winter ahead, is definitely going to be a harsh one. This year, is going to be over by tomorrow… and I have no idea what tomorrow is going to look like.

Why, all this hesitation?

Perhaps it’s all this talk about investments and employment, property and migration… plans for a vague, almost mystical projection in time we call a future. Maybe it’s the next 2 months of blank calendar that’s begging to be filled with activity and people and work and engagements.

But for now, I’m hitting a lull.

That pocket of time when suddenly, all the bustle of activity stops, and I’m left alone with myself and the sound of my own thoughts. And truth be told, they seem so foreign and painful, that it scares the living daylights out of me.

I’m starting to feel the words escape me as I try to capture the essence of what I’m feeling in this very moment. But they fail and they disappoint, they aren’t enough… they are never enough. And so I find myself returning to rawness and blatant truth of the simplest kind. No frills, no poetry, no poignancy. Just as it is -

I wish you would let me love you. Freely, unabashedly, whenever I felt like it. Actually, I think I might go so far as to say that I want so badly for you to love me as much as I think I love you.

It’s been hard looking in the mirror and liking what I see. It seems to just have been one flaw flaring in the trail of another. And I haven’t been able to look someone squarely in the eye, or stand tall while I’m walking down the street. Because – what is there, really, to be proud of?

There are moments, such as now, when I think that if I stop trying altogether, I’ll lose everything that I ever had. And then, I wonder if I have the strength to carry on this tug-of-war, this masquerade, for a day longer.

The last thing that crosses my mind, every night before I close my eyes, is a stark loneliness. It becomes clear to me what is missing. I’ve been ashamed to say it. It just sounds so elementary and weak and … silly. But without, the reality rings true. This place will never be; I will never be. I need someone that I can plan my life with, so that I know, that I won’t grow old alone. I need someone to travel the world with, to share experiences and create memories. I desperately need to know that there is someone who will love me enough to want to wake up to me every morning.

Everyone is a hypocrite. People refuse with politeness and shy away with faux modesty and let their pride or obstinacy rationalize against the things that they really want. But it never goes away does it? Not for real, anyway. Not until there’s another prize to be won or a greener pasture to flock to. In the end, it is every man for himself. The quest for happiness is a solitary one.

It feels wrong to resent you. But there’s a sickness that twists inside of me when I think about how he looks at you. It just reminds me of how far away from perfect I am.

I’m not doing this again. A part of me wants to return to the person that I was. She didn’t care. She was strong. Nothing, no one was close enough to crawl under her skin. But now, look at me, look at us, everything has changed, but some thing has remained.

It’s always been me against the world.

One of Those Days

Sometimes, the pain gets so inexplicable that the tears don’t make anymore sense. It’s become chronic. The littlest thing can set you flying off the handle. Today it was the late finish, and the congested tram. I felt this surmounting annoyance at all the blank faces, the vacant stares, the mechanical man-and-briefcase that ascended up the stairs. All these people and their empty lives, scurrying like rats in a race.

You mean, that’s it?

And then it occurred to me, that perhaps it wasn’t them, it was the surmounting irritation at my own lack thereof. For a moment, I observed myself in the trappings of the games I’ve created for myself; finding myself standing on a rusty rung of that old ladder of hierarchy I used to call upon so often.

And then… the final straw – an empty cupboard.

Lately, I feel like I want to be consumed by my work, to live and breathe my psychology, to find a semblance of life through filling up my diary with engagements and commitments. Maybe then, would fulfillment come. Maybe then, I could proudly declare that I finally ‘got a life’.

But at the end of a day such as this, the next step just doesn’t seem worth taking. To what, to where, to which end?

Sigh.

I wish I could turn despair into prayer. I wish my words could usher in hope and spark inspiration in the stead of dread and death. I wish I could churn strength from my trials and tribulations.

Oh God, I am weary.
My legs feel like lead, and my body is bolted to the ground.
Would you come, like the wind beneath my wings,
to lighten my load and alleviate my burden?
Today, I have no will, no strength, no might,
But to simply stop, and stare -
Waiting on you.

Delirium

The worst thing that could happen to you when you’re sick, is to be alone – with paranoia perching on your bedpost and delirious dreams for company. And as I lay there, rolling in the thick of fever-sweat, I felt myself let go of the fight for a moment, and allowed myself to slip into that very dark place.

There is seriously nothing more miserable.

If anything this weekend has taught me – is that I need to learn how to be alone.

The Big Cry

I am Yours, You are mine,
I refuse to be denied.
All of You is my heart’s cry,
I refuse to be denied.

Father, father, father.

What is this emptiness? What is this loneliness? Why does it rack my insides with such profound pain? Take it away, please. Rid me of my erratic emotions, cleanse me of the plaguing insecurities, peel me of my flesh. It hurts to be living in this skin. It is hateful. I long desperately to be soaked in the Spirit, to claim the things that you have promised, to walk in line with the purposes that I was destined for, to suspend in the present. And yet,

I feel forsaken.

I cannot feel you, or maybe I have forgotten how. In truth, I wonder whether there was a time I ever did, or if it was just a sensory illusion that my body conjured up in the heat of the moment. I doubt your reality in my life, for if you truly knew the desires of my heart, why are they denied to me? I wish it was easy to ‘seek ye first your kingdom’ and have all these things added unto me, and yet am racked with guilt, that it shouldn’t be the means, with a selfish end in mind.

Even then, I find myself still calling out Your name, without truly knowing you. I find myself on a platform, singing words that resound of Your glory, without really experiencing the tangibility of it in my life. I find myself at the head of a discussion, bearing testimony to Your works in my life, without conviction and clarity. I find myself reading a verse, in a proclamation-sound of authority and all-knowingness, ignorant of its context or relevance.

Though I’m weak, though I’m dry,
I refuse to be denied.
All my life, a sacrifice,
I refuse to be denied.

Still, naively, I hope that is enough. Maybe, it counts for something. Maybe, at least, a fraction of that time is spent in genuine earnestness and in cultivation of true intentions.

But I was told that You aren’t a God that bargains. They say that You love me despite my flaws, in the face of my iniquities. They are many. They say You are a God of second chances, the father that embraces the prodigal son.

How could you though?

I wouldn’t love me. I wouldn’t give me a second chance, knowing that I’d trample all over it once my moment of repentance fizzled out, like a flash in the pan.

But because of who You are, in this moment of minute, acute anguish, in my suffering… I close my eyes and surrender. I reach out blindly for the frame of a hand to hold onto, to cling for dear life.

Still my heart,
Never let me go.
Cast not your sight from me.

I’m coming after you.

Everything Changes

I dry my hair and stare deep into the eyes of the person in the mirror. Sometimes I think that if my gaze bores hard enough, if I let myself drown in the liquid chocolate-brown, if I centre myself in the core of that mysterious black hole, swelling and subsiding as it enlarges and dilates … I might break through the separation between the ‘me’ and the ‘I’, see something of the girl inside.

Maybe, finally, recognize her.

Every night is an exercise of resolve, it is a preparation, a psyching-up, a pep talk. And the mantra I chant is the same:

You can do so much better. You can live without him. Brace yourself for what, who, is to come. You will not be fazed by her. You have to start looking out for yourself.

I’m afraid of getting used to this – because when the day, the days have run to its end, I know, I know I shall sorely miss them.

From here on now, nothing will ever be the same again.