Let it go

On By Indu PatikkalIn Random thoughts1 Comment

One of the hardest emotions is to let go. I have written about this in 2016, a year after my mother passed. It has been over 7 years since she passed and with each day the emptiness is more clear, the pain a little less, the longing at a standstill, the despair numb. With everything we let go, we run our hearts through a machine, where it is stretched, folded, squished, broken, put together, sewn, to leave a scar that we carry for the rest of our life. Some threads take longer to fade. In the fear of going through this process, we can try to avoid engaging, and build walls around us, and pretend that they are impenetrable. We protect everything we have within those walls, yet some of those, we have no control over, rather all of them cannot be controlled. So they slip out through the crevices when it is their time to leave.

My father slipped out this year, so gently, with a week’s notice for me to prepare. It was not just my heart, but my body went into shock. I was drained of all emotions for a while. That was when the sewing was going on. There are just so many pieces, that each time the needle goes through a piece, the next piece goes missing. This one is going to take a long time to sew. In 2011 during a mental health coping session, the instructor asked the group to close our eyes and think of a person who radiates positive energy into us. When I closed my eyes, I saw only one face, my father’s. Since then I have held on to him for dear life. 11 years later, he decided to slip away. Losing that one constant in your life leaves you untethered, wandering in the sea, maybe you will sink, maybe you will make it back to the shore. The last moment as I held his hand and he stopped breathing, staring into space, my first words were, he’s gone. I had never seen death so close. My anchor has just sunk. I can relive that moment, if I close my eyes, but going to that dark place is so painful.

Letting go is not always about someone dying. My flesh and blood, left home to start college four states away. The distance between us is unimaginable to me. I was never and will never be irritate prepared enough for this current phase of my life where I get to hold him once in a while. It is painful, the heart is stretched again, and again it does its sewing business. That moment when I left the campus, got into the car, and drive away felt like someone was ripping my heart. It is not that moment that it was grieving, but the rest of the years when that being I’ve raised from a tiny being, who followed me everywhere has started on his own path. That is the moment I was truly glad that I have another child. As I think of the day when the senior sign will go up in my yard and then it will be the day to drop this one as well, my heart says to me, slow down, let me mend.

The most magical organ of our body, I believe, is our heart, which has the ability to mend no matter what. You only need to give it time. It will find the needle, the correct thread, find all the pieces and see them back one by one. Each pain takes time, but it always mends. You just need to trust it to do its work. They say time heals, it is my belief that that time is what the heart needs to mend. To push away the sadness, the despair and renew hope. After it mends you wake up to see how beautiful life is and it’s limitless possibilities. Each time you are broken and put back you are a new person, richer with experience of hurt and pain.

I love this sentence from the book Life of Pi..

“I SUPPOSE IN THE END, THE WHOLE OF LIFE BECOMES AN ACT OF LETTING GO. But what always hurts the most… is not taking a moment to say goodbye. Life of Pi

This could also mean that by the end of life, we have let go of everything, all our materialistic possessions, our ego, our prejudices, and this whole journey of life is a lesson in letting go and mending and becoming a little stronger emotionally, than we were yesterday.

Chimes

On By Indu PatikkalIn Random thoughtsLeave a comment

It was just another day as Neena was at her desk, attending a work meeting. She was listening and mindlessly playing the 2248 game on her phone. She looked out of the window now and then. The white mailbox stood there alone looking at the empty road. A car would pass by once in a while. This was the best work office, by the window, with its wooden blinds rolled up every morning and rolled down at night.

She had missed to look out at the window for a few minutes, when the ring doorbell chimed on her phone. She looked out of the window and there was a white car parked outside her doorway. She opened the ring app and ran downstairs to open the door. As she opened the door, she could hear her heartbeat pounding. There he was, with his handsome smile.

‘Hey.. ‘, he said.

Neena was beaming from ear to ear, she knew she shouldn’t smile and hide her emotions. But she just couldn’t hold back. She had dreamt of this moment for many months now.

‘Can you talk?’

“Yea, come on on”, as he walked in, she closed the door.

🪡 Sew

On By Indu PatikkalIn Random thoughtsLeave a comment

Come heart
Let’s mourn
For him and the one before
And the one before that and the one before
In this long list of losses
Where do we find the light
Heart you lead the way
And I will follow
But wasn’t it you that got me here
And I still want to follow you
Leave now
Let me mourn my losses
Don’t come back
Not for a while
Go away and mend yourself
When you are all sewed up
I’ll be here washing away the tears
Until then let it rain
No rainbows
Darkness
Silence
Solitude.

This moment

On By Indu PatikkalIn depression, learning the hard way, life, life lessons, Random thoughts, realizations1 Comment

“The way to suffer well and be happy is to stay in touch with what is actually going on; in doing so, you will gain liberating insights into the true nature of suffering and of joy.” No Mind No Lotus – Thich Nhat Hanh

I started reading the book No mind No Lotus at the recommendation of a friend. When I ordered the book I did not notice the words in the center of the front cover. When I opened the amazon package I saw it ‘the art of transforming suffering’. Interesting, was my first thought. I started reading the book and am only a few pages into it. This is a book I want to read slowly, savor the lines, because this is what I need to learn, the art of transforming suffering.

In the few pages I have read, I realize the zen Buddhist teacher wants us to realize how important it is to live in the moment. I am anxious to unfurl the rest of his wisdom in the book. A few weeks ago my mind was clouded, I was stressed, I was depressed. If I was reading something, it flew past me. I could not register a single word. There was a dense fog clouding my mind, with zero visibility. My therapist kept reminding me that I have been here before and the fog has cleared before. I did not, rather could not believe a word she said. It felt like forever. I was living with ghosts from the past in my head. I thought I needed a higher dose of my depression meds. The news of my son’s college admission did little to clear the fog. A few hours of happiness and I was back as an ass with the heavy load.

It is difficult to explain depression, it is not like fracturing a toe that one can see in an x-ray. It is not possible to see the moment, let alone live it. It is like a web of your past, your anxiousness of the future, woven so intricately, that you cannot seem to find the edge. The more you try to get out, the more you are entangled. With a bone fracture, you can get a cast to set it right. With depression, you can get meds, but you alone have to make small changes, take baby steps to come out of it. My baby step as pointed out by my therapist was to make a list of the things clogging my mind. Separate them out as those that I can control and those I cannot. It is an extremely simple thing to do, but put the serenity prayer into action.

Coming out of trauma is not a small ordeal. It takes time, you need to give yourself time. The longer you have been in trauma, the longer the road to rediscovering yourself. It takes effort, sometimes it feels like every ounce of you is at work. It is hard, extremely hard at times, but that small voice inside you somewhere, the superpower hidden beneath the layers, kicks your gut, pushing you, every moment, every day. There are different categorizations of people, but emotionally there are only two. The ones who have been abused and the ones who have not. It is that simple. The world shapes up based on this.

People who have not been abused have a strong sense of self. They know what they want, they know how they will react in a certain situation. Their highs and lows are closer to the normal. They don’t get too excited or too sad instantly because their center of emotional gravity is deep rooted.

The abused are the utterly confused strata of society. They have absolutely no fucking clue, of self worth. You cannot blame them, because their reality has been so masterly altered by the abusers that it’s all a haze. Their level of expectation of happiness is so low that anything small makes them euphoric. If they are lucky they go through years of therapy to find some normalcy. But do they ever become whole again? I wonder.. one’s life is so caught up in looking for red flags that they forget to experience the happiness laid right in front of their eyes. It’s always a question, “Can I trust this?”. It’s atrocious how our souls are battered, by another mere mortal. How someone could think that we are a toy to be pulled and pushed and reshaped the way they choose.

It is very difficult for a person who has not experienced abuse to understand. There is so much to unlearn and rediscover, not something that’s out there in the world, but yourself. A whole lifetime wasted on this unlearning and being able to trust again. I wonder how many years of therapy it will take to be whole again.

I write so much about trauma and abuse and healing and depression, I wonder if people who are reading this are bored. But then I feel the awareness is not there, and it is very sad. In this age and time where information is at our fingertips (overused phrase, I know), millions of people who don’t have the avenue to get out abusive relationships and get access to a good therapist who will help them move forward. Through therapy I have relived the suffering to be able to heal from it. At the other end of this reliving is joy, a release of the pain, my version of it, a person listening to it who has my emotional wellbeing in front and center.

If you are thinking, she is so broken, yes I am. And this is unashamedly, me. Healing is more difficult than the suffering. You are a constant work in progress to calm the waters, settle the waves down to reach that state of serenity where water is one with nature. People will come and throw a stone, because they don’t like anything still. There will be ripples, which will disrupt the stillness, but healing is knowing that the ripples will eventually die and the water will be still again. The stone deep inside cannot be moved, it will lie there and in the end we gather many stones, moving from stillness to ripples and back to stillness again..

🌈

On By Indu PatikkalIn Random thoughtsLeave a comment 
it appeared as a vision
faint at first
when I blinked
there it was
bright and resplendent
it was soft
it was beautiful
I should have known
when the moisture settles
when the sun sets
it would disappear
leaving me in the dark
my eyes are numb
my mind is blank
i run the machines
because they should
but my dear one,
something died
deep inside..

Running

On By Indu PatikkalIn Random thoughtsLeave a comment

No, not the conventional marathon running. I’ve done a few conventional 5Ks but I’ve been on a marathon run from my feelings. The most recent one that started on Sep 3rd. When they took my father away, it felt like they were taking something from my house, not my father. And since that day I’ve been running, running away from the fact that he’s gone. My head knows it, my body feels it, but I refuse to accept it, so I keep running.

To get away from strong emotions, people take a vacation or a getaway, but then what’s the point. They come back to the same physical space, that is waiting to remind them, “see what you ran from, it’s all here”. When people leave, it’s not the physical space they occupied, but the way they made you feel. The subtle gestures, the smiles of understanding, the feeling of the arm around your shoulder. Yea at this point I’m not talking about my father.

Yes I did see the rainbow, but don’t rainbows last only as long as there is moisture in the air and the sun is out. When the moisture settles down, and the sun sets, the rainbow disappears.

When I went to watch a movie last week, I saw this woman on a wheelchair, the innumerable wrinkles on her arms tell stories of years lived. It was an effort, I could easily see, for her to lift her hand and hand me the ticket. Her hand and her mind were not processing at the same speed they once did. I was patient, I wanted her to feel accomplished. She wasn’t running, I guess. She was there in that moment handing out tickets, telling me which hall my movie was playing. Witnessing these things makes me feel, what is it that I am sad about?

Today as I sit at the stadium waiting for my son’s band to perform, I see another lady, panting as she climbs each step to find a seat. Another set of wrinkles speaking a thousand stories. Yet she is here, making that effort for her grandchild, to cheer him or her or them on. What have I got to complain? The sun will rise again tomorrow. The moon is right in front of me shining and mocking at me. It will be a new day, there will be smiles again. There is no need to run from anything. The world is exactly as it was supposed to be and I am here, just where I am supposed to me, cheering my baby on.. like I am supposed to do..