journal.coffee

I walked around town again today. It makes me glad how the unfinished sidewalk, under construction for the longest time ever looks beautiful now that it’s complete. The city is really coming together if you ask me. Truth be told, now that the dust has settled, so am I.

It’s been a while since I went on one of my regular strolls. I’m not sure if my doing that again has any significance at all, but to me, it is the only thing that matters as December slowly folds into yet another January.

I have little to show for this year, really, besides the fact that I’m still walking. But this was like most years if you ask me. If you asked anyone else, they’d be able to give you a better tally of what I did or did not do this year. I was always my meanest critic.

All that said, I don’t understand where to begin or where to end this little barrage of words. I believe it’s in line with how I walk, I barely know when I begin or when I stop. I couldn’t even tell you where this year began for me and where it ended.

I couldn’t tell you many things if you ran into me on this patio I’m sipping my coffee on and writing these words from. I’m unsure, clueless about who I am or what I do or where I’m going, but I know one thing.

I know while I’m sitting on the exact table, having the same coffee I’ve had all year, I’m happy now. I’ve left much behind, hidden in corners of most months this year. Now, I’m tucking a memory in the bookend of December, hidden amongst some flowers wrapped around a wooden beam. It’s made it easier to walk ahead, all this leaving things behind.

I reckon I had been walking away from myself throughout this year if not all years before this one. Lately, I’ve been walking towards myself. I couldn’t tell you how it feels. I’m only learning to feel happy myself.

You had to be here to see it on my face. I couldn’t tell you how it feels. Only that, it feels like the first day of my life.

You can make of it what you may.

The day inches towards an end. I still have dishes to do. It’s the middle of December. I imagine the water is cold, but for no reason in particular, I decide against wearing gloves as I start doing the dishes. It’s an important task, of course. My insistence on never leaving dishes for the next day still gets the better of me. I start to have another one of those conversations with myself—with you. If I could count the number of times I’ve stood with the ghost of you in my lamplit apartment, bargaining, I’d probably live out my days counting. Truth be told, I haven’t thought of you in ages. If nothing else, I haven’t bargained.

I still talk in metaphors—nothing new—but I often talk about grief without someone realising it at all. I speak about feeling at home in crooked corners of crowded coffee shops. I write about doing the dishes with freezing water running between my fingers. I describe my flaneurism with ardent romanticism when it merely has been a way to wait for you for the longest time. Of course, I am now ready to admit the fact—of how I have left my life on hold for years, holding out a hand to the sordid universe you preached about all the time.

I know I could still talk my life away talking about you. I could write a thousand letters and waste my words, over and over. I could detest you or be angry at fate only to begin scarring the world in my own twisted way. Or I could accept the truth staring at me. The truth is I wasted years loving someone who did not love me back. I spent my days building a future that never came to pass. I built the foundation of a life I’ll never have for no particular fault of my own—barring the fact that I held love for someone who didn’t love me enough or perhaps, at all.

But a human being was no place to hold that grief or any at all.

This one, well, was grief as old as time. Almost everyone carried it, day after day until they forgot it on the seat of a train or someone’s coffee table or in a broken bottle at the local bar. Until then, one could only hope to fall asleep on time. Laughing through the day required a proper amount of rest, naturally.

As for me? Well, I haven’t tossed and turned in bed for months.

If I don’t write a word today, the sky won’t fall. If I don’t string another sentence, the world won’t stop spinning. Like all before me, I have little say in the matter. Of course, you will continue to read regardless of whether I write or not. You may find more words to read—better ones, perhaps. At least, I’d hope for it to be that way for I have little left to say. I never had much to say anyway.

If I don’t stain the page with another blot of illegible ink, nothing would go wrong. In fact, much would go right. It was the curse of a writer to unknowingly change the course of history. A word here, a phrase there, and down went the dominoes. We could never know who we affected, of the damage we did; and yet, we did not concern ourselves with matters of the world.

It was a selfish desire—to write—to tell the world we thought a certain way; that it was important enough to be recorded and essential enough to share. It was an exemplary pursuit of being in over your head, believing you had anything worthwhile to add to the deep wisdom of the world you happened to breathe in. The truth, however, was that all words to have ever been written were written already, and all anyone ever had to say for anything remotely important to life had been said countless times over.

To write was then shouting into the void: I have something to say, too. Won’t you listen to me?

Writing reeked of hubris, of thinking you could sway others to the way you saw things, the way you saw the world. It was arrogance. It was a declaration of war against everyone who came before and everyone who came after. It was an echo through time, screaming: I was here.

If I don’t write today, nothing would change. If I never wrote a word again, the world won’t miss it. There were far too many of us. Why, then, am I compelled? I often wonder. Do I have something to say or is it just empty pride, bleeding on the keys of my keyboard?

Ticking and tapping and ticking and tapping and ticking and tapping until the end of my days, repeating the same song over and over and over again: I was here. I was here. I had something to say.

If I don’t write today, would I still be here?

Would anyone believe me?

The other day, I stood waiting for my cab, staring at the countless cars crossing each other at the intersection. The coffee I had a minute or two ago didn’t seem to do much against the chilly winter air. I looked around aimlessly, as one often does when one is waiting. It didn’t matter how long you were waiting for or how long you had to wait—as long as one was amused, one could wait a lifetime.

I noticed my shoes were dusty again. They were always dusty because I walked a lot, of course. Yet, my indifference towards cleaning them on most days could be traced back to an ordinary day in third grade when a teacher berated me for having dirty shoes. She recited the age-old maxim of how we were all judged by our shoes. It was a rote retelling of the exact words everyone before and after her quoted continually.

It didn’t make sense to me because it was a fun day. My shoes were dirty because we had played a lot during the break. Any less, and the shoes would’ve probably been clean enough for her to decide against stopping me and plastering a quote over my conscience.

Later, I insisted I would polish my shoes instead of my mother hitherto doing it for me. I would smear some polish on the shoe, take the brush and polish them until they shone perfectly. Then, I would dampen the shine on them to make them dull. The ritual carried on until I stopped wearing the uniform. My indifference for shoes that didn’t look like they came out of the box continued. Dusty shoes, to me, were a sign of days well-lived.

I continued waiting for the cab. Just then, a man selling balloons walked past me with only one foot in a shoe; the other one was bare. He asked me to buy a balloon from him. I told him I had no use for one and asked him about the shoe. He said he broke it at some point during the day. I asked him if I could help him out; that it was cold. He said he’d rather I bought him a cup of tea instead. I said I’d be happy to, but a cup of tea only kept you warm temporarily.

He smiled and said, “if there is anything I’ve learned today, so does a shoe.”

I think to become a well-adjusted adult, not one who could buy groceries or hold a job, but to contribute to the world in meaningful ways, one had to learn to live in a world they disagreed with, and one that disagreed with them. That was the difficult part. Pretending you were living righteously was the easiest thing in the world.

When you believed the correct way for something to be was so and such, and someone told you they didn’t agree, you had to be okay with it. You had to be okay with the idea of there being no correct answers to the human experience, and if there was such an answer, you had to accept that you—one person alone—couldn’t find it.

Of course, that was easier said than done but you had to develop an ability for it. The ability of not only being able to see the world through the eyes of someone else, of not only being able to walk the streets as they did, but to know that sometimes, you couldn’t see how someone saw it or you couldn’t walk places they’ve dragged themselves out of. To accept that your life is utterly limited and your experience is bound by those limits.

If there was an answer to make a mark on the world, to lend a hand to everyone else, to lead so everyone could take a step together, it was in the acceptance of it all. It was in accepting that when all is said and done, for all your convictions and maxims, for all platitudes you preach, you couldn’t repeat your own life in the exact way it has panned out.

It was in the humility to accept all you had was instinct and all you had was an inkling, and somewhere between those two was your truth. Your truth was that you didn’t know anything at all. You never did.

Perhaps, it was a global crisis. Perhaps, it was the age. Maybe, it was both or maybe, it was how things had always been. I reckon that was it. Things had always been that way. The more I talked to those around me, the more I started finding stories that ended with a sigh, as they looked at whatever drink was in their hands and uttered a phrase odd understanding. “It is what it is,” they’d tell me.

⁣⁣Their biggest dreams—of extravagant careers, of ballad-worthy love stories, of grandiose adventure—left their eyes as they’d continue staring at nothing momentarily. Then, they’d look up and smile, their eyes weary and tired. I’d return the smile, of course. An inexplicable clarity was in the air all around me.⁣ All of us knew what was happening to all of us at all times. It was an acceptance that wasn’t forced but felt reluctant, still.⁣

Perhaps, this was how it happened. Perhaps, this is how the unfazed adults present throughout history were made. Not by spontaneous heartbreak but through a sort of continual failure, a continual mismatch between how they imagined life to be and how it turned out. Life was but a slow burn. But there was hope somewhere in the air, too. Behind those smiles and those words of walking away from battles we were too tired to fight, each of us found an ounce of happiness in one way or the other. At least, we were learning.⁣⁣

It makes me wonder if this was the secret to happiness all along—the acceptance. Yet, unless you dreamt and unless you failed, you couldn’t know what the others meant. You could recite a rote maxim, a platitude, but it would all be absolute bullshit. You’d know it in your heart, too, of course. It wasn’t in accomplishing dreams that we found happiness; it was in the failures; it was in making do without.

⁣⁣Happiness was what came after the reluctant acceptance. I wonder if it was when we said to ourselves, “it’s not at all how I had imagined, but perhaps, this is not so bad after all; it is what it is.”

⁣⁣Maybe, it was in that precise moment that one was happy. Maybe, one had to reach it of their own accord.⁣ Perhaps, a generation reached it together, roughly speaking.

Maybe, we had.

I believe everyone has a war within themselves. It’s what we live for; it’s what we die for. I don’t know where it comes from or why we fight it or if someone manages to win it. I see it everywhere. Show me how someone does all they do, and I’ll tell you what they’re fighting for within themselves.

For a long time, I’ve thought my war to be one for balance, but I’m learning now, I have always had balance. It’s been a war for reason. For as long as I can remember, I’ve scoured for a reason to be alive, to have a justification for everything. My war has been for the why. It’s the only question I have ever asked: why?

Sometimes, however, the answer to winning a war isn’t fighting through it all; it’s in finding another way; it’s in avoiding fighting altogether. So, now, I don’t want to know why it is that I am here. That’s the answer. I couldn’t care less if it is for myself, or those around me, or for some purpose I haven’t yet discovered.

I’ve always romanticised everything to make it seem larger. However, things just are, and no word or metaphor can make them any more or any less. If anything, we only made desperate attempts to capture this thing we called life, and fail miserably while we’re at it.

The bottom line of it all is, I’m alive. I want to like being here. I don’t need a reason to do so anymore. I want to like the days regardless of whether they’re good or bad. I want to appreciate the life I live, with all its mundane trivialities.

Perhaps, nothing will change on the surface. I’ll be the same person I always have been. I’ll have the same days. I’ll help the same way. I’ll do the same things. But, I’ll not be at war with myself at all times. I’ll not be asking: why?

I wish I could tell you how liberating it feels.

I wonder if you find yourself laughing through the day only to end up in the dim glow of your bedroom lamp, standing lifelessly, consumed by a thought too many as a morbid song plays in the background, too.

I wonder if you tell everyone you’re fixing your life as if there ever was a thing like a broken life in the first place, as if there has to be a proper way for life to be, and that if there was, you knew what it looked like enough to claim you’re hard at work to hammer it into form when all you know is how to barely brave twenty-four hours without losing yourself to the voices in your head, sometimes.

It baffles me, the audacity with which you claim you’d like to be more, to do more, as if your smiling at a stranger isn’t enough hope in the world, as if your rushing to see a friend isn’t important enough for it to count for something, as if you stringing words out of thin air did not add anything to this otherwise bleak world.

I wonder if you think of these things too as you ask yourself how it is that you can suddenly fall from a peak of ecstatic emotion into this abyss of nothingness. I wonder if you blame yourself for not being happy enough, as if the nothingness stops calling when you’re laughing, as if it has ever stopped calling, as if this is the first time you’re fighting it all.

I wonder if you lose yourself, like I do sometimes. I wonder what you do to get out of it. Do you like walking? Perhaps, you do. I wonder if like me, you walk on the road to nowhere in particular, too. I’ve been treading the road ever since I was a little boy. Frankly, I won’t mind some company. I wonder if we’ll ever run into each other.

It baffles me we haven’t yet.

In the culmination of it all, of years of holding on, of years of anguish, of years of trying, I learned my problem wasn’t that I couldn’t choose. It was that I didn’t want to choose. I wanted all of myself, in all ways, at all times.

It was as if I lived two, three different lives. As if I was changing my entire self repeatedly within a span of twenty-four hours, with each side trying to say, “this is the true me”, just as the other took hold and denied me the opportunity to be at peace, at ease. Perhaps, that is why I was so perpetually exhausted.

I wanted to spend all my days doing nothing but writing and living the slowest imaginable life, but I also craved a sort of tangible contribution to the world around me because I understood it. I understood the great human collaboration. I was also privy to artistic solitude.

I wanted to love someone with all my heart and also, love no one else but myself. I wanted everyone to be with me, and I wanted all of them to leave me alone.

On the outside, my indecisiveness was shrouded by a surety that paralleled none other, my conflicts were portrayed as unmatched clarity, and the schism within me slowly became an epitome of balance. On the inside, I was falling apart as all sides of me grew in different directions with unimaginable pace.

Slowly, however, the limits of it all were making themselves all the more visible. This conflict wasn’t one of whim or fantasy either. I continually acted upon all sides. As everyone I met kept telling me I was doing something right, for anyone could find camaraderie with some side of me, I kept asking myself: who am I?

And in the culmination of all things, after everything had fallen apart, I learned, I was all sides of me, equally. Perhaps, it was a unique edge. Maybe, it would be why I’d lose myself eventually.

The bottom line was, I didn’t want to choose anymore. I wasn’t even inclined on trying. I was going for everything and everyone I could possibly be, or nothing at all.

Have you ever wandered onto a familiar street without intending to go there at all? Have you ever tasted a meal, the first bite of which took you on a trip through the summer days of your childhood? I reckon that is how I felt today.

It was as if I was going back into an old friend’s home; one I hadn’t visited for a while. Nothing spectacular happened; nothing particular happened either. You see, I was walking down the same streets I always walk down today and suddenly, I felt this odd knowing.

I felt as if I had been wearing someone else’s clothes up until now, and it was only at that moment that I got to wear my own. Perhaps, that’s how it feels when one suddenly comes back into their stride. I wonder if you know what I mean. I wonder if you’ve ever been lost inside of yourself, if life has ever made you hide from yourself.

I can put all the metaphors on it but it wasn’t as if lightning hit me; clearly, it wasn’t a shock. It wasn’t a realisation and no large epiphany appeared. It was as if I had tucked myself into a warm blanket after a long day and a cold shower.

I felt a comfort I had long since forgotten, like a weight lifting off of myself, like holding coffee with both hands after getting drenched in the rain, like finding shelter in the starkest of storms, like a ship at sea stumbling upon a lighthouse, like a musician finally finding their tune, like the fog finally lifting after days of blindness.

Today, for the first time in what has only felt like an incalculable amount of time, I felt like myself again. Nothing changed, of course. Nothing ever does. Yet, I believe, it’s all for the better. I reckon I’d been lost for far too long.

I wonder if you know what I’m talking about. But then, I believe it’s all for the best if you’ve never been lost at all. It gets terribly lonely when one does. To others, you’re right there.

Yet, you continue to ask: but where am I?

You told me you’ll come back, eventually. You said the waters will get calmer and we’ll sail through. I loved you. I’ll wait, I said. While you were gone, I spent time walking around, tracing the streets meticulously, like you used to trace the lines on my hand.

Eventually, I got tired of walking by myself. I started building a home in your memory. It was all over the place, at first, but it took shape slowly, quite like how I fell for you. I knew you’ll always have a place to yourself in my heart.

I spent afternoons lazing around in the hall of our flaws and all our mistakes. In winters, the warmth of the memory of holding you was enough, really. I could last a thousand winters remembering the smile on your face. It was the warmest thing I knew. Perhaps, that is why I went out of my way to make sure I saw as much of it as possible. I loved you more for myself than you.

Maybe, that was the start of where we went wrong. Or maybe, we were never right at all. I never thought of it that way until, like all good things that overstay their welcome, the house got old. The years took their toll but the house stood, albeit the plaster on the walls started to crack; the paint, once bright and beautiful was now dull and melancholic.I lived in a nightmare of my own making, clinging to days I could barely remember myself, but I was living, and that was enough.

Then, one day, you showed up at my door. Everything lit up, as it should have. The house became how it used to be. I made you coffee and we sat, talking. We talked about how life had fared, about everything.

Finally, I asked if you remembered the promise. You said it had been a passing thought at best. I smiled and said I understood.

When you left, the illusion broke. The floorboards creaked until they gave in. The walls fell on each other. The house collapsed. It took its time, but the memory died too.

I took my time, but I left, eventually. Now, I live in a place of my own. The light is astonishing, really. The other day, I passed the ruins of all I ever felt for you. I stopped for a bit, staring. A boy walked around, too. He asked me, “do you know who lives there?”

“A ghost,” I said.

When I was much younger than I currently am, I’d often find adults wasting time while saying goodbye. I’d see them dawdling. I found people getting off the couch only to stop near the door yet again. It didn’t make sense to me, of course. I thought they didn’t understand what goodbye meant.

I know now that when I’m in the car with a friend, I wish for some light traffic, only so we get more time to talk. When I run into someone I haven’t seen in a long time, I often ask them if they have time for coffee. I’ll often wish for it to keep raining if I’m stuck waiting with someone.

I’m the last to hang up because I want to hear someone’s voice for the last time, again and again. It’s as if one has to steal time with someone because life allows for so little of it. When we’re done for the evening, I often ask friends if they’d like to spend some time or watch a movie at mine as we order takeout.

When someone tells me they have to leave, I sigh. It happens all on its own. I have said enough goodbyes; often, I’ve said them more than once to the same people. I know now why the adults would not let the others leave.

Life tends to starve you of the presence of those you love or want. The voices you hear every day can turn into voices you hear in a month or sometimes, years. We were all starved for the presence of everyone we had ever loved.

Between all the busyness, the chores, the visits to the bank, the grocery shopping, the work day; between all those mundane and banal activities of life, you sometimes get to steal a moment with someone; an unwritten, unplanned moment.

I’ve learned amidst this thing we called life, all we ever want is to steal a little bit of time. So, I often ask people if they’d like to walk or take the longer route or if they can still talk for some time.

I know now why the adults took their time saying goodbye. I know now why they sighed and hugged, or used more words than necessary. I’ve learned the only way to let someone go was slowly, gently, and with a smile on your face.

The only way to say tell someone goodbye was to wait, to linger, and to ask them: will I see you again? I hope I do. I love you.