When In Doubt, I Pause…

It has been raining incessantly today. Rains always make me think. So, today of all days I have been thinking. You know, there are days that you wake up with certain half crafted dreams.

I woke up with a strange aftertaste of emptiness today. This has been happening quite a bit lately. It is the sudden feeling of loss, abandonment, desolation. So I started keeping notes of my thoughts with which I consequently can keep track of my mind. I might sound a bit crazy to you, but trust me I am more than fine. I have everything in order.

Just that, I see flashes sometimes. Flashes of my life flying past me. Flashes of all the people I have loved and who in their own ways have somehow loved me. Perhaps. I can’t be sure. This is the magic of uncertainty that I am talking about. This stage, this juncture that makes you doubt yourself, is where I have lately found myself standing. I am not regressing into an alley of mental stalemate. The fact that I can string coherent texts explains that I have not lost reason. Yet there is a certain level of doubt. More often than not, these days, I have had moments where I have doubted myself.

I doubted myself when he questioned, who was I? I doubted all the years that I had spent being in love with him. I wonder if love has limitations. Or if it comes with an expiration date. When do you stop loving someone? When they abandon you midway or when they question your existence? Whom would you say is a greater evil? Or if evil had a lighter greyish tinge to it. I surely wouldn’t know. I have even doubted it being evil.

I have stood under the splatter of rain on the asphalt and questioned smiling too much. Questioned trusting. When years of blind love stings you with a question of your own existence, you doubt yourself. When the glass cages of your faith open the door wide for speculation, you gamble yourself. Every day when exchanges become a toxic broth of accusations, you mourn yourself. As invigorating as love can often be, it does also drain you of life. When love gnaws you into shards, you doubt, you question, you spiral.

When it burns in the corners of your heart and causes you unutterable pain, would you call that as love? Someone once told me very sagely that, if it doesn’t make you happy and always inflicts suffering, is it worth it? Some of us become accustomed to pain. We make a habit of it until we realize that it is not normal. We realize when someone walks in and tells us that, what we have is broken. We reach a certain stage when doubt starts seeping in and drying the corners of our soul. Where do you go from there?

One of the scariest things one ever has to do is to let go. To regress. To walk back. To let him be. But on some small occasions walking out is also liberating. If you wait around the corner and let yourself be at that moment, a tiny part of you might feel, a tad bit relieved to have let go of the pain. And that is the minuscule part, you need to focus on. One step closer to recovery is being in sync with your hurt.

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So, I pause. I see my life flashing past, and I pause. Heedless to the timetable, I breathe and I pause.

Earlier Published here.

Image Source – Pixabay

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