(Home) Alone

What a creature life has made out of me.
Sadness does not destroy me, does not even scare me, because I have survived it time and time again by coming back to a certain place. And it didn't take a lot of effort on my part to reach that place. At least not in sadness.
No, it is joy that terrifies me now. In how much I am mesmerised by it. It is more difficult to find my way back home from there.

Years ago, when I tried making a little nest for myself in sadness, this place came along and gave me a whole mansion in alone.
And I think that's the essential task of a human being... Learning how to complete themselves in themselves. And until life can prove otherwise, I am not privy to believing anything else.

It explains a lot, too. How sometimes even suicides occur, and the unsuspecting significant other is left perplexed in how they never saw it coming from the distance they were at.
Because alone is not measured by distance. It's in the intensity of this being here now, this you experiencing yourself. It can be a beautiful or tragic experience; you get to choose, and also understand that it is an ever-changing one, and it can't be experienced with another.

In the past, I have answered calls without initially wanting to. I have put a smile in my voice while there were tears in my eyes. But here's the important thing: it wasn't a lie. You probably did say something funny. We probably did have an amazing conversation.
But I am only too aware that the line must be cut at the end of the talk. Regardless of the fact that we may talk again, it's the in-between moments where we're most ourselves. Where we get to grow. When we come back to alone.

It is home. You are responsible for it. So do it up. Decorate. Hang beautiful memories everywhere. Put up some curtains so the world doesn't get in. Take care of the foundation. Protect it, fiercely. You will never want to leave it. I don’t.

Like I said. Sadness does not terrify me, because my home has always saved me, sheltered me.
It is the opposite extreme I'm still learning to cope with. How to accept joy. How to leave it as easily as its counterpart.
How to remember again and again that we are put on this vehicle of life all together, with the same destination, but the journey is never the same.
It is experienced individually.

Bold

I was 19 years old when someone asked me how bold I could be.
He himself was old, but not old enough in his mind to understand that bold was a subjective term.
In his vocabulary it meant one thing, and in mine that one thing spelt weak.

I think I am the most fluid person I know—I say that like it’s a terrible trait. I know how to adapt myself to a person’s language, their vocabulary, the meanings they ascribe to words. In the end, I am playing too many parts, and the one I want to play is felt by me alone because it is still wrapped in silence.

The term goes “to come up for air”, but for me it’s always been a plunge within. So I keep coming back to alone. It is a state without language and only meaning—so much burden lifted off already.

There is one common meaning ascribed to boldness though—to expose oneself.
There are many ways to do that: sometimes it is simply in words.
But there is a kind of nakedness I wish I hadn’t seen. It is when bold became a fad rather than a dare to dream—and then make that dream come true.

For me, there is much more boldness in concealing. In waiting.
In saying, I hold this to be of highest value, so I’m not giving it to you.
There are stories so sacred, I will not tell them to you.
I will hold on to these secrets for someone not you.