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Indigo

The affliction addiction retreats – revenge likely

Long live the bends, benign ends, decadence’s descend

Dearly beloved gathered, gaze in amaze. Craze? Haze? No withered ways?

Stolen, a Nation’s wealth. Saved, an asshole’s health

A noose’s rope, now a line of hope for they who can’t cope

Fuck these abstracts. Affects meaning. Distracts. Subtracts

We’re not alone. I wasn’t. Changing one thing to keep another unchanged

Drawing parallels in a numbers game, spiritualism, religion, altruism

Everyday everythings, someday nothings, unmissed rings – sometimes

History where there is none. Peace without the sun. You had me at Xbox One

That was then. Now in zen. Whatever will – happens. Don’t care when

For a long time I was afraid of it. I confused it with loneliness, something I was also afraid of and somewhat related to the topic. It signified insignificance. That my life wasn’t worth external company, care, etc.

But here I am, 31st December 2020, listening to Neil Young’s ‘Old Man’, having declined multiple invitations to NYE events/occasions, now sitting on my balcony alone and sipping a concoction of beer, arrack and isotonic water, as the sky weeps.

It’s been a fuck all year for the world but I’m sure people had it worse during the World War epochs so I’m not complaining. At least I have most of the things I need to live comfortably. This decade has been a struggle to get it altogether but some perseverance and phenomenal support later, it’s real. Coincidentally, Velvet Revolver’s ‘Fall to Pieces’ just started playing.

Started the day by messing up a therapist appoint I desperately needed to go through but I guess much work, and the tests this year has presented later, I’m able to puff away the disappointment of that way.

I wonder if the events of 2020 have increased our thresholds of what tough luck or calamity or a disappointment are. These are all drunk musings and just as I say that Sinatra’s ‘That’s Life’ plays. Apple Music is on a role this dark evening.

2020 taught me the value of solitude and how people outside us can’t and won’t touch our deeper parts until we’ve sanitised them. Shared trauma and all this is a foolish delusion. We have to be okay with ourselves. Sure, happiness is hard to come by sometimes but doesn’t mean we can’t figure out how to be okay first and go from there.

Loneliness is easier when you have things to do and copious amounts of poison.

It’s easy to succumb to terminal irony and the cynicism that stems from trauma, hardship and all those other earthly unpleasantries, but then, fuck it, start by enduring. Aim for bearable first: my biggest lesson this year.

Here’s to a bearable 2021.

Dread

The day started like any other Sunday. Those small, grey konda kurulas gossiping on the neighbour’s roof, the sun stretching and rising, a slight breeze tickling the mango leaves.

I started with laundry and came on to the balcony for a smoke. I felt happy about the week and some things that seem to be going well during this horrible year. I even felt normal enough to have breakfast. Having an appetite these days symbolises some degree of okay-ness.

But now two hours later it’s bedlam. Like I was standing under a laundry chute and someone’s poured rocks into from 30 storeys above. I hate this dread. It turns my joints into the edges of colliding tectonic plates. There’s an invisible weight on my brain, pushing down.

Dread, the intruder. Leaping over the wall fortified with months of therapy and emotional management techniques. No one to talk to and nowhere to run, one day I’ll just give it a knife and let it add me to its list.

One day. I hope not today.

Dread

The day started like any other Sunday. Those small, grey konda kurulas gossiping on the neighbour’s roof, the sun stretching and rising, a slight breeze tickling the mango leaves.

Dread, the intruder. Leaping over the wall fortified with months of therapy and emotional management techniques. Nowhere to run, one day I’ll just give it a knife and let it add me to its list.

One day. I hope not today.

Update: A cold shower an hour keeps the dread away.

Protected: The Omi Federation of Ceylon

Squatters

We’re heading into a lockdown for the weekend. It starts this midnight and continues till 5.00 am on Monday. That’s what the Government had said but I refuse to take that without a pinch of salt and a shot of Hydroxychloroquine, given what happened the last time we were ordered into the equivalent of house arrest, for me at least.

The city fell weeks ago despite the authorities not acknowledging it and I’ve spent the same amount of time planning for eventualities in terms of supplies, etc. More importantly, I’ve been trying to prepare myself for the immense mental challenge it will be for me, to stay sane without real human contact and all those other endorphin-producing activities we engage in as a part of normal life.

I prayed. I fucking prayed for the second time this year. The first and only other time being for a friend going into a surgery a few months ago.

The only other times I pray are when those dearest to me are flying. Sorry, God. Please send your complaints to wuhan@china.com.

My last post was a result of the apprehension peaking and the one before that was a recollection of the last lockdown experience and what happened during it. So I’ve started to think about the things ahead. The motions, emotions and horrors I’ll be confronted with in the coming days. To make things easier and somewhat amusing I’ve begun imagining them as people – women in complex relationships with my mind.

Anxiety

I’ve known her the longest. She’s been with me for nearly 20 years. We’re like one of those couples who have been together so long that we’re starting to look like each other. She has a key to the house and waltzes in whenever she pleases, rolling around in my bed, walking in while I have a shower, wearing my clothes, commanding me to either go silent or raise my voice.

Her favourite topic is: Trust. Her favourite questions are: “Was that about you?” and “Will anyone care?”

Anxiety is light on her feet and unpredictable. She creeps up on me and wraps her arms around my shoulder, whispering uncertainties and feeling the chips with her fingers, brushing her face against mine, telling me to open the door for her friend – our friend.

Depression

Always dressed in black and suggestive, with an affinity for nostalgia and our past, I’ve known her since my father passed away 15 years ago. She drains the energy and hope out of the room, daring me to take a drink she slipped a roofy into. She has dreamy eyes and husky voice which on nights she’s most present, suggests I give up on this lousy existence.

Depression loves to reminisce about everything from traumatic incidents with people in the past to even something as little as how we had to when we were young, warm water with our mouths in the nights to take a wash and not wake up with a cold the next morning.

On her worst nights, our worst nights, she waits for the inebriation to set in and gets on her knees, with her hands on my thighs, telling me her ideas on how she and I can run away together to a place where I won’t feel this heavy, feel the inadequacy, remember the regrets, feel the disappointment of waking up. Depression revels in telling me stories about our past but is terrible at keeping me awake long enough to follow her advise. I hope she never does. Not because I disagree with her, but because I have promises to keep and duties to perform for loved ones.

Melancholy

I don’t hate her nor do I love her. She loves sitting next to me from time to time, encouraging me to dive deeper into the things I’m already thinking about. Sometimes, she sits clutching my hands and other times, resting her head on my shoulder. Melancholy’s touch has a peculiar way of making me feel like I’m different, special because I can sense and feel the world’s pain.

She embraces me and argues that I need to learn to just have her on my mind; in my life; because as a hyper-empath, I’d rather be in the company of her sophistication and reminders than the other two. I agree with her most times and unlike the others, I hope she never leaves, because not being able to feel and think like I do would make me ordinary.

Of course I’ve only started thinking of all this in this manner recently. Not because I think it’s interesting, but because I’m trying to fight the dread and thoughts that the loneliness of the lockdown will bring should it go beyond Monday.

My mind has more squatters but these three linger and intrude the most. I hope they don’t visit this time around. As much.

I hope they’ll be lenient. I really hope those with similar mental issues can get through it and that those who can in terms of rations, etc., will help those who can’t.

Leaving

It will start with a series of letters. The shorter ones first for those who matter and have mattered and who deserve a personal note. Of course, colleagues will fall into that category. Perhaps a single one for all. The professionals who tried to treat it will get one too. It won’t be their fault. Some things just can’t be fixed. The family will be next. As the longest connections they deserve individual ones but it depends on available emotional bandwidth when the plane does decide to taxi.

Then come the most important notes. For the loved ones. I don’t know if everyone will understand, but if anyone will it’s them. Witnesses to the dread. Those who attempted to make all this bearable. One letter will be the longest. It’ll have passwords and bank accounts and instructions on accessing leave behinds.

The last would be an overall one. A final narration of why.

The pandemic saved my life

More precisely, the resulting lockdown and how it changed my perspective.

I’m trying to recall what got me here 11 years ago; the things that motivated me to create this space on the internet for the things that oozed from my mind.

I remember there was no nervousness about what I wrote. The anxiety was more tied to how it would be received. How people would react or if they would at all. I wasn’t cautious with words because it was a time when I felt positive about existence – a mix of youth, naivety, reckless abandon and a sense that doing and saying more meant being more.

I was wrong.

Being more isn’t just about action. It’s about making progressively better choices. Since I started this blog, many things – good and bad – have come to pass. Some out of my control, many from my own mistakes.

I found myself at age 29, a depressed, debt-ridden alcoholic in denial about the bad choices I had made and all the things I hadn’t achieved with my life. I had convinced myself that I never wanted a normal life and this was the result.

In fact, not wanting an ordinary life is okay – we can all dream, loathe, etc., but I had turned myself into a pendulum, swinging between good days and bad days. I was too comfortable with a destructive cycle because I didn’t want to confront how much I hated my life or how lonely I was (am), and how I had stopped growing or moving forward.

And then some people in Wuhan, China, were diagnosed with a virus that quickly spread to become a global pandemic and a few weeks into the lockdown I’m sitting on the floor of my balcony at 2 am with a knife resting on my forearm, thinking where’d the hope go.

That last part is bullshit. There is no profound thought at that point. It’s just the crushing weight of dread and despair mixed with a deep foreboding and flashes of how people who care will react to the news. It’s a lonely place but one that ice cold water running over your head and face, can rescue you from.

Not to say that things miraculously got better in the aftermath and I disappeared to a mountain-top monastery to free my Chi, but cut out from my normal routine of visiting the pub to forget about it; imprisoned at home with no alcohol to wash away the soot as usual, I was able to think of it with more clarity.

This is why I’m grateful to the pandemic’s lockdown.

It took away the escape routes, the shortcuts, the distractions. It gave me time and space to reflect on what my life meant. It left me with my senses and forced me to become more familiar with myself and grow to be more aware of the different ingredients of my existence.

It led me to the realisation that I’ll never know self-love but that it’s no excuse to add to any present and future suffering or regrets of the people I love and who might love me back. I reached 30 mainly through the efforts of one person and some of the efforts of others.

Can’t change for yourself? Change for someone else. Grow for whatever reason forces you to not stagnate.

I’ve spent many hours typing this post. There was a time when I would rather lose a finger than cut off any words I had typed, but over the course of this day, dozens of paragraphs have been added and deleted to get here, and that’s where all of it connects, my life and writing.

I have learned over time that editing is just as important as writing. It’s how you enrich a sentence and preserve its soul.

The pandemic’s lockdown saved my life because it helped me understand that the more I am willing and prepared to edit the different parts of my life, the better it is for those who are part of the story and those who read it.

A note on mental health

It’s okay to talk about it and seek help if you or someone you know is experiencing any mental health issues. You can seek assistance by calling the following:

Crisis Support Service: 1333

Sumithrayo: 0112 696 666

Shanthi Maargam: 0717 369 898

National Mental Healthline: 1926

STOCHASTICITY

I vaguely recall the time I created this blog. I remember the excitement of thinking of a name and then a URL, and what I would put in the ‘About Me’ section. It had to represent me and what I stood for. I knew what I wanted to talk about and the kind of validation I was expecting. Even the kind of hate I might receive.

I was reading for a degree in IT at the time and was earning off freelance SEO writing, and I had just joined a youth activist group. So many things I wanted to say and so many things I wanted to fight for.

The Lasantha David who created this in 2009, would totally have backed Hillary and supported Antifa. He would have rushed to defend the notion that all humans are created equal.

Next month will be eight years since this collection of coding, a near quark in the vastness of the internet, came in existence. Siri just calculated it’s close to 2,900 days.

Funny how much can change in that time. I was once a passionate left-leaning socialist. Now I find myself tethered to the centre. Though not as radically as I thought, but who knows what the next 2,900 days will change.

I used to drink white rum when I started this and I hated beer. However, in the last two years, I’ve consumed a few lifetimes worth of beer and arrack. My father died an alcoholic. I never understood it then, but recovering from the same vice now, I get addiction’s pull away from affliction.

Maybe, that’s why I’ve comeback to this blog and for some reason, I’m even writing on it. I returned to see what it was like. A time when I didn’t drink or smoke as much. When higher ideals mattered more than ground realities.

But reading through it all again. I’m glad that bastard didn’t make it. Having crashed into everything in sight and crawled through the days under the influence of alcohol and the terror of depression, it all makes sense now.

Some things in this life are stochastic. And the coincidence of some occurrences are too suspicious to chalk up to chance. There might be something else out that, but there’s too much that needs doing in this world right now to take our eyes off the ground.

At the end of it all, I’ve realised I start a lot of my last paragraphs with ‘In all’. Actually what I’ve realised is that though we’re not all created equal, we can all strive to create a equal playing field for the next to come. Of course, that thought has obviously emerged because I just watched season 2 of The Man in the High Castle and giggled at the Nazi approach to perfecting humanity.

I suppose this is the part where I must say something pseudo-insightful or profound for people to ponder. But of course, I who reads this shit anymore. I chuckle every time a marketer in Sri Lanka says ‘bloggers’.

I will says that at the end of many Halmilla bottles at a very specific table at Mintage, surrounded by some very special humans, I’ve found that life isn’t about pursuing happiness. That’s just a bi-product. It’s about pursuing freedom. Gaining and accumulating the things and means to allow one to be free to do and enjoy the things they want. Buying a car or feeding all the neighbourhood strays everyday. The possibilities there are endless.

Pursue freedom. Drink in moderation. And I’m out. Out of things to say really. This has been a good escape. And, Oh God, the amount of spam comments this blog has received. Back to not caring about this little page and figuring out how to create equal opportunities for everyone etc etc etc.

Pompeii

Don Henley once said “Sometimes you get the best light from a burning bridge”

And I wish bridges never burned and instead remained, open to visitors, edifices to a place where there was a different peace

No railings slithering across for safety, just the moss in bloom, wreaths, reminders of an unfortunate inevitable doom

And in the distant dubious dark dance spangles, close enough to see, too far to know, tempting a trek towards to trudge

Dawn? Hayleys? Vesuvius?

Or just a stranger looking for their place to cross

Or just running from their own burning bridge(s)