Do You Feel The Same?

The fire in your study burns brighter every time you fix your eyes on it. The flames engulf your senses. They burn you recurrently. Whenever you sit down to write. It’s a living hell. You give up. Leave the papers scattered on the table. You go to sleep, while your wife whispers consoling words to the air. Her words don’t matter. Yours did. But you’re left with nothing. And then you wake up with a hole in your heart. Not even remembering what you ate last night. And try to live. Go on about the day. But the hollowness lingers on your fingertips and in your smile. It never fills. You try to jot down your recollections. But you can’t catch them. They are far gone. You sleep another day. Wake up again. The cycle continues. It never breaks.

Day and night. You are looking for something that will take away the pain. Something that will return what you’ve lost. Some kind of Pixie dust that will magically return your words. Or the glowing sundrop flower from your child’s favourite animation. The song from the movie. That darn song. You always have to sing it along with your little girl.

Flower gleam and glow,

Let your power shine,

Make the clock reverse,

Bring back what once was mine..

The lyrics shatter you each time. You are looking for something. Anything that will end the after-effects of the trauma. You lost your house. You saw it burning. The fire crept around each wall one by one like a snake. It swallowed every last item. Your wife lost all her kitchen supplies. Of course it devastated her. But you got her new ones. Exactly the same. Your girl has forgotten about her favourite doll.

But unparalleled was your loss. It was irreplaceable, priceless. You lost your greatest work. The novel that you gave 3 years to. It was your child. The ideas, you turned them into words. You knitted them like your granny used to knit your sweaters. Pouring in all the love and life long emotions. It was all gone. Along with all the prospects of creating it again. You built another home for your family. But you could not escape the one you made for yourself in your book.

The night falls again, and you feel restless. It’s always the night. You roam around aimlessly. Searching for it in places you know you’ll never find. Half a year, the pain doesn’t end.  You’ve made it so far. Yet, you’re waiting. Waiting for a miracle. Waiting for god to be merciful. But you never show mercy to yourself.

Time passes. It passes so fast that it blows away the thickness of your hair. Leaves them grey. Your little girl listens to pop now. Your wife says you are the best husband. You sit in the same study where you’ve written numerous record-breaking books throughout these years. The fire still burns. All these years and you still couldn’t learn the art of firefighting. It ignites you like it used to. But this time you don’t abandon your papers. You don’t go back to sleep. Instead you write.

You write about how sometimes the cavity in your chest never fills. Sometimes the miracle doesn’t happen. The perfect moment never comes. The situations and conditions never change. No matter how much you try. No matter how much you discourse about fate and free-will. You have to stay in the same circle. Oftentimes you’ve to stay in it forever. This is the hard truth. This is the ultimate truth of life. You don’t find fulfillment because you keep on searching for things to replace your loss. You try to find new and better things to fill the void. You will never find anything that will take away the hollowness.

But you know what? You can learn to be okay with it. This is the key. You stop looking for the perfect mixture that fills the pit on the road. You build another one around it and keep walking. Yes, the new road comes with a new destination. A new journey. No matter how much you lament over the loss of the previous road. You can do nothing but accept it. The sooner you come in terms with your circumstance, the better. You can never separate distress from joy or loss from the gain. It will always trail along. It will follow you. It will always be the fourth person on the table. You cannot get rid of it. Rather you can embrace it. You can allow it to stay. The things that you run away from. Tend to run after you the most. So, you don’t run away. Some days, you sit with it in silence and acknowledge it.

Oh, and it will come to you on your deathbed. Never expect it to be any kinder. It will be there by your side. But the deathbed turns people into wise men. Only then you will realize that it never was yours. It was given to you until it was time to pass it on to someone else. So you do what nature tells you to. You pass on your loss to someone else. In some other medium, some other states. And well, they have to be okay with it too.