Good Enough.

"What will my ex think of me when he hangs out with me in years to come? What would anyone I've ever dated think of me when they hang out with me in years to come. God yes! I made the right choice in ditching her weird sorry ass? She's just as weird as I remembered... Why the hell was I attracted to her in the first place??? What did I see in her back then? God I really was young and stupid." Missy bawled. 

"...Dude..." I faltered. I had no idea what to say. 

Mademoiselle raised an eyebrow and stared while Missy sulked quietly on her chair. 

We all say in complete silence as we pondered her question, punctuated by the occasional miserable sniffle from Missy's direction. 

"That's intense..." I started. 

Mademoiselle interrupted, "Waaay too much self pity. Those guys are assholes. Really. What the hell was so good about them anyway?" 

Missy just shrugged. There's nothing "so" good about anyone really. We're all just meh... To a certain extent, and awesome to a certain extent. Whatever we are. However "good" we are, we are in the eyes of those who have loved us or who love us. 

There was no answer to that question. 

I understood Missy's confidence or lack of it thereof. I understood her insecurities and her pain. Her worry that no one could ever love her for her. Probably many have in their lives had the occasion to feel that way. The world is harsh in its judgement of us and whether we are good enough. And more often than not, we come up short somehow, somewhere. We're never really good enough. 

But that is the human condition isn't it. That's the world in which we live in. Nobody is ever really good enough at everything. Intimate knowledge of someone will reveal that we all fall short somewhere. And as is the human condition, our flaws are our perfection (as stolen from practically every robot developing its own intelligence movie). 

It is easy for me to preach such; it is easy for anyone to preach such. The truth can be hard hitting but it'll never hit when it needs to hit sometimes. Sometimes it takes its time. The world can cause a soul so much pain. Inflict the worst insults to its dignity and corrupt the purest essence of its optimism. 

It is easy for anyone to feel and truly believe they're not good enough, they're not something enough because it is true! We're all just not good enough. But we make do with what we have. And this goes for everyone. It is the great equalizer. Only for whoever it is who do care about us, truly, we are good enough. 

Giving Up.

There comes a time in life when you decide you must give up on your dreams. Whatever they may be. Either it is by choice that we decide to no longer labour on for it, or by a slow dissipation of desire and a slow creeping in of the acceptance that we've given up where one day you realize you don't hold much hope for it anymore. Maybe it's through displacement of finding another dream that you want now instead of the other. Whatever ways it may take, sometime in one's life, one just comes to feel or realize that it just isn't going to happen. 

So am I in such a place. It doesn't make a lot of sense in my case and somehow at the same time it does. I was struck today by a feeling and a realization that it just isn't going to happen and it's time I stop hoping and looking for it. It is hopeless. And pointless. And it is time to stop. 

Do You Believe in Fate?

If you believe in fate then you must believe that there is something in store for you. A place where everything you do, no matter what it is, will lead you there in the end. A destiny that is meant for you and you alone. And it doesn't matter how many detours you make on the way, missed stops and mistakes, the road will lead you patiently and assuredly there. 

I am inclined to believe that for some strange reason, law school in the UK is mine. Over the years I have had people tell me not to do law, to do law. I myself have eliminated it as a possibility many times over; as a child, as a college student. Even on the road there doing A Level Law I abandoned it yet again and favoured media and mass communication in Australia instead. 

But that didn't last long and before too much time, I found myself yet again heading in that direction I have many a time turned from. It was not for lack of trying that I didn't manage to completely eliminate law as an option. Maybe I was just meant to be here now. 

Learn to be Lonely.

Could it be that some people fit in nowhere in this world? What are they to do then? Go about life in this perpetual loneliness knowing that nowhere in this big wide world is there a place for them to truly belong? 

Connectivity.

There's something about smart phones. Especially the very current ones. With their do-all capabilities, there is very little we will not turn to it for. But having recently acquired one myself, I find myself  growing uncomfortably attached to it. And I asked myself why. Why the reluctance to put it down? Just 30 seconds ago when I decided to pick it up again and write this instead. It felt like I was severing a connection to the outside world, to people when I put it down. That's why. 

But there's no connection to be had there. Not really. A connection to our social media and our phone screens isn't a real connection. We have built for ourselves a society which is afraid of being disconnected from other people while being at the same time so hopelessly disconnected. For there is no connection to be had there. 

The impersonality of the liking and the writing and the commenting and the checking and the status updating. We drive ourselves into believing we are connected when we are really not. Because none of the above, save in exceptional circumstances help us build a proper bond with each other. Fondness does not develop. Because we are so impersonal, even when we are being personal. 

Writing.

I've always said that life brings us to unexpected places. In fact years ago I came up with the theory that I would not have expected to be where I would be in 2 years time. And life has not since then fail to surprise me. The decisions we tend to make change as we grow and that tends to lead us to places where we would never have expected to be now. But where once I was a writer, I still am now. I've always been a writer. Even though in recent years I have stopped, shunned it somewhat because writing incurs thought, encourages it and I in turn have shunned thought and introspection from my life as it brought too much pain. The greatest beauty comes from pain and sorrow. The greatest art is delved from the wells of sorrow and pain deep inside us. It is the product of emotions felt so deep within the core that it etches itself into the psyche and becomes a reality in need of expression in the artistic form.

From pain comes the greatest poetry,
From sorrow the greatest beauty.
For happiness is too careless to keep records of its histories. It is relished and then fades away into the morning sun while sorrow is etched into the walls of stone; a standing testament of when a man has stopped and stood still, apart from the  endless flow of time if only for a moment to record his deepest thoughts and desires.

For we are as a race capable of great pourings of despair. Why do people take their own lives? Is it because the world is too harsh to live with? Or is it because they themselves are too harsh to live with?

I feared the implications of my writing. Feared to delve too deep into the wells of my soul for I would find (I believed) no good things there. It became to me a symbol of difficult times. A time of turmoil and uncertainty and I had not the energy any more to look into them. I wanted to be done with the endless times of being lost in my own thought, of dwelling within my own fantasies and shunning to an extent the world outside. And so in time, the words stopped flowing and the stream of soliloquy dried up.

But I have been and I suspect always will be a writer. We cannot deny our true natures as much as we can deny the coming of the night and the day. And though I have stemmed the flow of these morbid impulses  that bring about the best of my work, there is no denying I still retain the capacity for them. I have just refused to acknowledge them. The truly happy have no need to seek sanctuary of any kind and I wanted to be among them. Or I tried very hard to be. And writing; acknowledging those pesky thoughts and encouraging the circular nature of my introspection did not provide me with any reasonable basis to do so. It was a sad man's job. Perhaps it still is.

Though in recent years I have stopped, I have ceased to pen down very many things and poetry is but a distant activity of the past, but perhaps my soul remains one with the inclination to write.

Seeking the Balance.

It is funny how the chronicles of our gatherings and our meetings start in languid silence. We walk in, we sit down and we contemplate each other. It is a love hate relationship between us, a necessary love hate relationship such as the one between life and death itself. Hopelessly entwined, one giving meaning to the other, one existing solely because of the other. As love and hate and as life and death. We are as siblings. All of us needing each other to survive, needing each other for balance and to make sense. We all have our roles to play. 

"We need to regain our dynamics," I rubbed my forehead tiredly. "It wasn't the best system, but it worked." 

Mademoiselle sat casually, legs crossed and sharp heels glinting in the light. The slick cut of her coat and her clothes, polished, elegant, tailored, asserting. Self-assured and arrogant. But somehow after all the ordeals of the past year, a comforting presence. A reminder of a better, stabler age. No one would've guessed or even thought, that Mademoiselle with her cold, calculating, mercenary presence, could ever be a source of comfort, softness and warmth. Or some semblance of it. 

She need not say anything and she knew it. But when she did, when she deigned to grace us with her words, they seemed to drip as honey from her lips. Warm and buttery in relishing the fact that she had her presence again. She was never meant to diminish for long and to ignore Mademoiselle completely is a folly one would make. 

Missy leaned back on her chair, her soft, unassuming attire unthreatening, gentle, unostentatious. She looked tired and drawn, her limbs hanging lazily by her sides as she stretched out on the armchair. 

Slowly, bit by bit, we need to find our balance again. I was at a lost for what to say. We all knew what needed to be said, what would be said and there was no need for me to actually say it. Neither was I inclined to actually say it. 

I sat back as well, feeling the familiar soft cotton of my plain top, the reaffirming texture of my old jeans and my satchel bag by my side. We had long been bereft of each others' company. And meeting each other like this again, there was an awkwardness that lingered in the placid air. An awkwardness mixed in with a scent of guilt and spice but at the same time a comfort in it finally happening like pieces falling back into place and a sense of embracing belonging that lingers in the air as in finally meeting family again. 

"We're nowhere near it. But at least we're here now." 

Maybe we are all due a change. God knows this world moves with change. It is an ever constant dynamic of shifts and eddies that swirls in and around itself, weaving its threads into the fabric of all existence, giving it life. But where does that change lead us? Does it lead us to bigger and better places? Or darker, smaller spaces within the confines of our own minds and imaginings. 

Now Mademoiselle was never known for outward displays of affections or anything for that matter. But she knows what needs to be done, just as her tendencies may be unwise at times or a lot of times, she does step up when she needs to. When she does something, it means something. We are all unwise. It is the human condition. And she reached our her hand, first to Missy, then to me. And we linked hands, in a circle. For the first time ever, a physical manifestation of our interactions with each other, initiated by Mademoiselle herself. 

This world moves by change. And maybe we too are due a change. We may not be able to or even want to replicate what once was but we can together, create a semblance of something that works again, with the dynamics of this time that we are in, a stability that suits the present we are in. Maybe we are all due a change. But wherever and however we decide to move forward, we move forward together.