Risk and applause

 March 3, 2021

 

Today I found a quote by Mary Karr, while looking for something to help me get unstuck about writing. It said, “You owe all the truth you can wheedle out of yourself." Advise for when one sits down to write and fear stops one from reaching the darkest places.

And I realised, yes, it does not serve me to write the way I have been writing this blog. This saying a little about my despair but saying much more about the happier things. This blog is just about being, being me in whatever rawness I am. The risk then is to write close, to cut into the bone. 

…Like saying that though lightness wafts through my moments increasingly, most of them are spent in dark heavy energies, even today …Or saying that dark energies predominate with a rare sprinkling of lightness, and not too much has changed since the months I first wrote of feeling depressed.

To definitely not stay safe.

But it is scary. Scary to admit these things to myself. Scary that someone might read it and either judge me as broody, further think that I like wallowing in these depths, and that I could easily get out of them if I chose to, but I don’t. Tell me that to my face or worse yet think it and let it affect the way they interact with me. Or, on the other hand be all concerned and whisper down the phone line, ‘Are you suicidal.’ Hoping that I say no. What if I said yes? Could the person actually then sustain a connection with me?

 

No, I am not suicidal. But I am exhausted by the heaviness. The not being able to find that which might make it light. Exhausted by the effort of turning to the things that used to bring joy and not finding it there anymore. Not being able to find the new things that are joyous. Sometimes circling and circling, wondering how to find those moments where the body is not leaden, and the mind not congested, inflamed, raw…

 

Most times what others think about me, or what I say about what I feel, doesn’t matter. But in vulnerable times external criticism, verbalized or not, takes on an entirely more dangerous edge. It cuts and cuts and I bleed, even when I toss my head and say, ‘Who cares.’

 

I started out writing a post about how the two pieces of sharing from my friend in my previous post – the naming of things I orbit around and the compartmentalising – have been helpful. But then I realized that while yes, they have been useful at times, many times they’ve just been meaningless.

 

What I desperately need is to find escape velocity in at least one, but really at least two, of those seemingly eternal orbits. What I also need is for the tide to turn and the hate that the Hindutva blokes spread to be not accepted as ok by most of the people of India even if it is not directed against them, especially if it is not directed against them; for people to stop denying the insensitivity and the incompetence of the ruling government instead of staying silent about fuel prices, misogyny, communal messaging etc. etc.; for people to call out the excesses of the Delhi Police, the UP Police, the other enforcements agencies, for the intemperate use of power, particularly sedition, to instill fear in critics of the government; for people to say no to donating to the Ram Temple when there are citizens going hungry, and hospitals needing to built, and schools started for the poorest. 

 

I need these more than I need to turn the news off for a day or two because I am sick of it, because it is too much, or there is something new and vile every day — and  of course because I can, as what ‘they’ do affects my mind and emotions but does not affect my life and livelihood. 

 

I also read something else today, a Buddhist concept, that encouraged me to applaud the small things. The getting out of bed despite the heaviness, the getting into the bus and smiling at the driver who has been driving all day, the listening with empathy to someone else’s issues even though they are yelling at me because they are so frustrated, for waking up and teaching that class when my muscles ache and I’ve had barely two hours of sleep, for making that five minute, or more, phone call to someone who has been waiting for it even though I want to curl into a ball and hibernate. 

 

I applaud myself today. Even though I snapped at the spouse and didn’t get the work done that I had wanted, and a part of me feels like I don’t deserve it. I applaud myself.

 

And so should you. I mean applaud yourself.