Friday, July 31, 2009

Meet my friend named Pain

I’m not letting this stupid sprain get the best of me.

It’s the middle of the Friday work day and by this time I am usually secretly rejoicing in my head that the weekend is finally here. But this week has been different. I am not mobile. And every day feels exactly the same.

My foot has swelled up to what I can only describe to be what is the nearest possible version of an elephant’s foot. Add to that, I feel the onset of a cold coming on and I also suspect I am slowly turning into an emotional train wreck. Maybe everything just seems magnified because I can’t walk a few feet without being reminded again and again of my limitations. Maybe it's because I refuse to wear crutches because I'm scared of looking ever-so-muggable in the dark, or maybe it’s because my term at this job is coming to an end and I haven’t really laid out any concrete plans for the future yet. But maybe it’s just because I’m starting to feel lonely again. Oh no, not again. It's all too familiar now... I’m always surrounded by so many people, yet I know they can’t really see me.

I can’t remember feeling this bad since I was last injured. Maybe because drugs have a way of numbing out the pain. But I’m not doing that again. And I want to remember this feeling every time I step on the field to play. It’s the only way I’ll learn.

Part of me is relieved to have an excuse not to train for a while. I need to find other things to define me. I thought I was already happy where I was. But of course, just when I felt settled in, Life pulls the rug from right under me, yet again. I should know better by now.

Part of me feels like hibernating from the world for a bit. But I think no one is going to miss me anyway. So why bother? I can live just like how I’ve always lived and no one would know the difference. Not one bit. So now, all I have is this sprain as a constant reminder that I am alive and have the ability to feel that utter nagging tug of pain each time I take a step.

After this, when all is well and healed, the sad thing is I will have nothing more substantial to whine about. So what happens next? Guess I still have a few more weeks to find out....

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Staying

Yesterday, this 25 year old girl hung herself with a nylon cord in her room. Single, fairly successful and hopelessly in love, her family discovered her body only after a day and a half when the boyfriend dropped by to visit after not hearing from her after an earlier fight. She was a friend of a friend. But her death resonates through the people she knows. It’s always sad when someone’s story comes to an end. I know a lot of people who walk around with constant thoughts of self-destruction and despair, but most of them usually never get around towards doing anything concrete about it. We wallow, but we don’t obsess about Death. Because ultimately, we want to defy it and really just live. So when we find reasons to feel a little bit better, we choose to stay.

I don’t really want to know anymore about what the lover’s quarrel was all about or whether it could’ve been avoided if people around her had taken more notice (why, do suicidal people walk around with a little black thundercloud above their heads?). There’s really no turning back once death has arrived. And the most we can do is to cope and realize that we don’t ever have to feel like we have to end our stay ever-so-abruptly.

There was also this goalkeeper from the varsity team of this big university who had also taken her life a few years back. The news at that time really surprised me because for one, I was a goalkeeper myself and would have thought that playing for a big-time school was like a dream come true, and secondly, because well, isn’t sports supposed to steer you away from things like depression? Apparently not.

This is my very first blog entry about death and I do hope it’s my last. I haven’t wallowed in my usual choice pits of despair in a while and I think I’m starting to get used to always looking at the bright side of things. Spinning them positively. There will always be a choice on how you choose to view things. I can look at these suicides and confirm what a horrible, cruel world we live in or I can tell myself I will try harder to make the world a better place for my family and friends to live in. Because at the end of it all, you can’t really be truly happy if the people around you are suffering, losing hope or sad.

I always get a little bit scared when I have to take a psych evaluation and there’s a box there that you check if you’ve ever contemplated on ending your own life. Of course any idiot who wants to be considered employable knows to never admit any big-ass form of self-doubt like that, but there’s always that part of me that wants to be honest about how I (once) viewed this crazy world. How I used to obsess about wondering if today or tomorrow was going to be my last. It gave me a skewed sense of power to know that I could choose when I could just quit. It was like one big f**k you to those who didn’t care enough to ask why my life just didn’t feel like it was worth continuing. That dark, dark, gloomy place…

But thankfully, the world has been much kinder since then. I’ve started to appreciate the rain as much as the sun and I’m not so bothered by awkward moments anymore. In fact I’ve learned to embrace all of these things as a oddly perfect mix of what life is really all about. I now understand that just like with each new crush can also come a potentially hurtful jerk. That not all the people I meet with choose to stay and be worth keeping anyway. That I will continually make mistakes, forget a lot of things and sometimes write nothing but crap. That my choices will never be perfect (especially in math) and that even in the hardest of days, I endure.

Sometimes barely, but I’m still here.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

And then there was you

Just when I thought life would just keep giving me lemons, I end up one day with an orange in one hand.

I'm not complaining. There are worst things in life. Last week was all about the rain and how I could never get to the office without getting officially drenched. And to save myself the trouble (and expense) of having to buy a new outfit from top to bottom just so I wouldn't look like a refugee, I would always bring extra clothes to work.

I've long given up on the fact that any makeup I put on at home will make it through the roughly hour and quarter hour commute. And since I consider beautification to be a private (and somewhat embarassing) ritual which I rarely even do, I am not inclined to share my technique (or lack thereof) with the other girly-girls in the women's powder room.

My new blue automatic umbrella is my best friend. Without Tilda (yes, she now has a name) I feel less confident, less ready and therefore less powerful. Not that would ever plan to use tilda as a weapon, but just the idea that I can whack some crazy jerk on the street if he ever planned to do something funny gives me strength. But thank god there has been no instances for that (although I suspect it is largely my cluelessness about the real evils in the world that has kept me feeling safe even when I am walking down some dark lonely streets at a weird hour). So there, me and Tilda have become inseparable. She keeps me safe and I, in turn, keep her dry.