Pretty Little Death

Tag: love

  • The beginning of the end

    The end doesn’t always come as a full stop. Especially in the beginning, it comes as specks of realisation.

    Those specks hurt progressively.

    Letting go of old and long-term habits are incredibly hard. It is harder when it involves a loved one or someone you have grown to treat as family.

    Who do you first interact with when you wake up, who do you have dinners with or watch TV with, who do you share a house with, who do you watch movies with, or have long (not-so-pleasant) conversations with ever so often?

    On the surface, these are all just habits. But they have a way of sneaking into the deepest parts of your mind and staying anchored there.

    In the beginning, the end seems like a whisper. It seems like it is at a distance away.

    Going through the daily motions of life hoping for the end to come more quickly will make it seem slow and impossible.

    But when the end is near, things change dramatically and it becomes heart wrenching.

    It will no longer feel like a fantasy or idea you used to toy with. The concreteness of it will feel heavy and painful.

    How do you step out of something you used to be in for so many years? No situation is a hundred percent bad. There have been good moments.

    How do you divorce your soul from a life you have built over time and convinced yourself to call home?

    And if that involves someone else, how can you break someone else’s heart to mend your own? Would that be selfish?

    Are you leaving them in a better state, or can you look the other way, take no responsibility that isn’t yours and leave it to fate?

    As you can see, I have too many questions… while the answers seem to elude me.

    As the famous saying goes: “Upadhi dukkhassa mūlan’ti” — attachment is the root of suffering.

  • Bird poop

    Years ago, an old flame and I decided to take a walk.

    I was a willing party, but he reluctantly came along just because I’d asked.

    It was truly adorable how he at first seemed really grumpy and lightened up as we progressed in our approximately 2km walk.

    He was chatty and smiling most of the journey. Then suddenly, a bird cast its creamy blessing on his shoulder. 

    I was partly terrified that he would be angry and that would ruin his mood.

    At the same time, I found the fact that a bird chose to accurately aim its excretion at him hilarious.

    Despite my strongest effort not to laugh, I ended up vibrating violently. Upon seeing that, he burst into his usual thunderous laughter.

    He appeared genuinely amused (and disgusted… but mostly amused).

    For that, I felt grateful.

  • Blur blur black sheep

    The past few weeks have gone by in a blur. I’ve had one too many tasks to complete and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t even a little bit overwhelmed.

    Being extremely busy is something I’ve gotten used to because I started working full-time in my late teens.

    What I find difficult to handle, though, is the challenge of achieving an equilibrium among my unpredictable personal life, intensive career and life goals (broadly).

    Right now, my personal life feels like the outer edge of a raging whirlpool.

    It has dragged me into several unique and tricky challenges which I find terrifyingly tough to overcome (mainly because I’m new to it).

    Sidebar and ending this post on this note: How is it August already?!

  • Hold on/me

    For the past three weeks, words have failed me.

    So I did what every Tamil eventually does when language falls short. I turned to Sangam poetry.

    Perhaps this can say what I have been trying to.

    Translation and my thoughts are at the end.

    குறுந்தொகை 40

    யாயும் ஞாயும் யாராகியரோ?

    எந்தையும் நுந்தையும் எம்முறைக் கேளிர்?

    யானும் நீயும் எவ்வழி அறிதும்?

    செம்புலப் பெயல் நீர் போல
    அன்புடை நெஞ்சம் தாம் கலந்தனவே.

    Translation:

    What are you and I to each other?

    What relation is my mother to yours, and your mother to mine?

    How did you and I ever come to know one another?

    Like rainwater falling upon red earth, our loving hearts have mingled and become one.

    My thoughts

    There is a reason this poem still finds people after all these years. It understands something I have never quite found the words for.

    Sometimes, people just happen to us.

    They are not ours. They do not come from where we come from.

    There is no reason for them to matter as much as they do. And yet, they do.

    Two people, born into different families, living entirely separate lives, somehow meet and feel as though they have known each other for much longer than a lifetime permits.

    “Like rain on red earth.”

    I think about that line often.
    Because once the rain falls, can you really ask the earth to give it back?

    Maybe that is why some people never quite leave us. Not because we are unwilling to move on, but because somewhere along the way, they became a part of us and we, a part of them.

    Kurunthogai 40 isn’t trying to explain love.

    It is simply acknowledging that some things were always going to happen.

    And perhaps that is the saddest thing of all. That some people are written into our lives in ink, even if they were never meant to stay.

  • Protected: Imagine hurting someone with nowhere to go

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  • Inconsistency

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but the lack of consistency in almost anything annoys many of us.

    When you order soup at a restaurant and if that soup has an annoyingly inconsistent texture, it almost immediately spoils the experience of dining.

    You put on some makeup and when that powder you have on becomes inconsistent and patchy, it ruins your mood to leave home.

    These are all inanimate things that we purchase or own, and still somewhat have control over and every right to feel some way about.

    But what happens when it comes to the people in our lives? Should we reject inconsistency as immediately? Or do we then have to force ourselves to understand and accept that we humans cannot stay the same way all day every day?

    Where do we draw the line with acceptance, before we decide that we are being taken for a ride?

    It’s never easy.

    While inconsistency from a human feels sickening, confusing and irritating, we can neither immediately reject the person nor tolerate it for longer than it should be tolerated.

    The consistency for this situation: sticky

  • Shut it.

    How do you tell someone to stop yelling at you? Do you yell back or do you go silent… do you simply walk away or do you throw water from your mug on their face?

    There’s no right answer, and it really depends on who’s yelling and who’s on the receiving end of that verbal noise pollution.

    It also depends on the situation’s potential to turn more violent.

    It’s never fair, especially to anyone who’s neurodivergent, to be on the receiving end of that yelling.

    Picture all that over-stimulation while being non-verbal… how unfair is it to be left defenseless, with a head full of thoughts, a heart full of pain and confusion?

    Whatever the disagreement, there are so many other ways to sort things out.

    Humans who are not speech-impaired and/or non-verbal can always talk things out.

    How lucky one must be to never battle being non-verbal and have every ability required to simply shout their point at someone else?

    Well, to such people, I’ll say one thing.

    Why should anyone be subjected to your abuse and have to turn into another version of a yelling you just to stop your negativity?

    Shut it.

  • Shadow work is the sh!t

    Gotta low-key show the flaming drinks I had recently

    No, I’m not about to talk about making big bucks in the shadow economy.

    Recently, through being by myself more often, I had some time to think.

    From those thoughts appeared a realisation that I had some serious inner flaws that required rectification.

    It was shocking because I’d never before thought of those traits as flaws — or red flags.

    That realisation led me down the path of shadow work, which essentially refers to the act of self-reflecting and exploring parts of the self that one often denies, hides or avoids.

    Many why’s and what-should-I-do’s later, I decided to change a few key aspects of my life that were feeding some of my serious flaws.

    ♡

    For example, I tend be clingy around those I love. (But! That’s just a surface-level observation.)

    As I dug deeper into this, it became more apparent to me that I had a fear of being abandoned.

    This might have come from the experience of being ditched for someone more exciting in most of my romantic relationships.

    But looking deeper than that, I learnt that my fear of abandonment must have come from being emotionally isolated and mentally abandoned by my parents when I was a child, and never being allowed to feel like I was good enough or deserving of kindness and love.

    So, in addition to being clingy, I’d also become a people-pleaser. (I consciously have been trying to curb my enthusiasm for people-pleasing.)

    But, going back to the topic of my clingy-ness… while “doing my shadow-work”, it was evident that I’d been inconveniencing some of my loved ones by being exceptionally clingy.

    I finally understood how accommodating they had to be by often catering to my emotional needs, by being present and by walking me through the many doubts I’ve had about my relationships with them.

    Shadow work isn’t a one-off process.

    It’s going to take me time to realise why I react and think in the ways that I do. It’ll also take time for me to condition myself to hold back at where I should and let go at where’s good.

    I’ll keep at it until then.

    If you haven’t taken the time to do some shadow work, you should. Totally worth it!

  • Whine and Cheese

    Oh, save your sorry sob story for the sober soul because sinners will sin anyway and the drunkards know better than to cry over the intentionally fallen.

    I’ll tell you a secret: The happiest thing in this world is the Siamese twin of the saddest.

    For example, you adore your loved ones and are happiest around them. Then, one day, they die… and where does that leave you? Drowning in a sea of grief you can never truly completely overcome.

    When I was a child, my parents didn’t let me be happy.

    I was constantly reminded that happiness is fleeting, as much as sorrow is. Some of my close friends have heard me say this too many times.

    My folks forced me to find contentment, confidence and company in ambition instead.

    That obviously didn’t work because, like most adolescent girls, I too did the total opposite of what my parents said. It was mostly because it seemed like my own parents did not want me to be happy.

    But recently, I’ve been recalling what they said and reflecting on it.

    I think they’re right. I shall find contentment, confidence and company in ambition. We’ll see how that goes.

  • Drainage Beauty / Beauty Drainage?

    From ten years ago.

    Captured this low-res image with an entry-level phone back in 2016, after I drunkenly fell next to an open trench drain and dropped my spectacles into it.

    I’m extremely shortsighted and had to use my phone camera, with the zoom and flash turned on to battle both myopia and the darkness of the night, to look for my glasses.

    That method somehow worked. I found my specs and, next to them, stood this beauty.

    (Sidebar: I was surely not sober because sober me would have left my specs there and flagged a cab home. I always have a collection of 20 or more pairs of specs. Besides, the drain was definitely filthy and filled with the possibility of having a brief and unpleasant meeting with rowdy rats and lurking lizards.)

    After seeing the plant in the drain from my phone screen, I asked aloud in my drunken stupor: “How can someone as beautiful as you be here, my love?”

    I remember this moment vividly because I snapped a photo, obviously… but I also remember this encounter because I felt upset, thinking about how the plant growing in the drain was very much like myself.

    Ten years on, I am no longer on the ground next to the drain.

    I Am The Plant.

    In the drain. Haha.