Here I am, in this space where I don’t know what is it to feel anymore, except for a constant ever-existing feeling of a paralyzing fear, which keeps sending shivers down my spine at randomly spaced time intervals. The happenings inside have burned me out that I have become completely insensitive to whatever is happening around me. Nothing moves me and nothing makes me happy. It is like entering a zone of an emotional black hole where the gravity of anxiety and suffering shrinks all the other emotions to a near void. Yet the governing rule of black hole says that no one should know what happens inside black hole. So be it. Though I can’t feign a complete holistic well-being, I choose to pretend I’m almost fine. I put silencers inside my crackling voice box and keep going through the daily chores with as much strength as I can muster.
I look in the mirror sometimes. I wish I could care more about my fading looks, but all I can do is be reminded of my better hair days and shrug off in disappointment, putting a band around my half-tangled shabby locks. I have no inspiration to eat, but I still remember my duty towards my body. So I feed myself and go about my day. At work, the simplest challenges send me off the rails. I get the stuff done and meet people without ever letting my inner emotional spectra sneak out in the open. When I get up in the morning, I dislike getting up from bed and going to work, but being at work somehow helps me to pass a few hours without being out of sorts. My day’s length has in fact contracted from 24 hours to 12, and being at work helps me survive seven of those. The other five hours are passed in doing the essential daily chores, bathing, cooking, doing dishes. Amidst everything, evening coffee is the biggest respite. It helps me in a magical sort of way and gives me energy to get some reading done or watch TV without feeling tormented in my skin for a while.
There was a time I used to get bouts of inspiration and creativity to do some writing. These days, I feel completely unmotivated and blank. I can’t bring myself to feel a thing to write about. I don’t care about any agendas or ideologies. I don’t care about right or wrong, good or bad. Life has become a survival game where nothing except survival matters to me; survival, not for the sake of love of life, but survival as the only choice available. So while I am busy surviving, I have lost all sensitivity and sensibility. I can’t bring myself to write anything worthwhile in this survival mode of mine. So I tenderly tell myself to forget all about kick-starting the much-dreamed-about book and give up that over-ambitious dream of mine.
Seven things to instantly boost your mood, five mantras to find your purpose in life, 10 quotes to read when you need inspiration; all such catchy titles seem to be little more than meaningful. TEDx Talks, positive affirmations, self-help books; all of these things fail to pump the required life force into me. Though it seems ridiculous, a certain crippling force keeps hovering around this perennial anxiety which seems to have deep roots inside my navel.
But I don’t give up. I keep picking myself up each day and spread all pieces of my body and mind on the yoga mat; which though, for only a short duration, makes me feel calm and under control. Yoga poses help me feel integrated with life force as long as I am on the mat. As much as i want to bend my mind along with my body during the practice, I find it much easier to work on my body than on my mind. But yoga also tells me to be patient and let go of the tightness. It tells me to just be, wait in the zone of awareness and let the transformation come in on its own time. Nonetheless, it takes will power to summon myself to the yoga mat and there are days when my will fails me. But the time spent on mat does pull me back. It’s said that yoga should be done with a lot of love, but I haven’t an iota of love left in me. But somewhere, deep down, I still have a spirit which believes in a purposeful life. Right now, I am lost and drowning in a sea of meaninglessness, but yoga is my feeble life jacket keeping me above the surface. I don’t know how long I’m going to be in this space, but yoga is my ray of hope and my companion in this survival journey. Hopefully, one day I will be able to come out of this black hole of dark emotions and revive the lost love. Hopefully that one day will be soon enough.
Author: Megha
Email: [email protected]
Author Bio: She is a girl next door who loves to express herself through the written word.
Link to social media or website: Instagram @megha786rana
