On Melancholy Hill

“Sometimes I get fragments. Like… trees. Sunlight. A kiss.”

 

In a previous conversation with a friend where we were discussing the ill-effects of the rainy season, she mentioned why she has a love-hate relation with the rain. She said it makes her moody, lazy, but most of all, horny. Jesus Christ, if that ain’t the truth.

 

So when I got home early this evening with the weather nothing short of perfect, I began to wonder what I could be doing that would make me happy. I turned to browse Netflix and Hotstar to look for something to watch. No luck. And then I realised why I was being morose for no reason – I was lonely.

 

In the past few months I’ve gone from feeling terrible to feeling alright to feeling like my world was crashing in on itself with me having nothing to hold on to. While I immensely enjoy work, I forgot that it is important to have fun too. And not just the one you could buy. But the one you feel doing the things that you love. The things that make you feel whole. Work pays the debts and the bills and I think I got blindsided by that for a bit – trying to pay back my debts. Holy shit am I a moron of the highest order.

 

Last year, I went through a little bit of heartbreak season. And like a turd that refuses to flush, I went straight back to dating, thinking it will save me from feeling horrible. It did, for a while. Until everything fell apart. Again. 

 

So this time, I decided to learn from my stupidity and lay back for a bit. Until I can pick the bits and pieces and feel whole again. And enjoy the scenery. And meet new friends and bond with the old ones. And go back to my one true eternal love – storytelling. And man have I got a story for you.

 

September 19 began like any ordinary day. But it ended with me struggling to fall asleep. I kept going back to a certain road, walking beside a certain boy while the full moon filled the background. I remember telling him how I had never felt better in my life than I did at the moment. I was doing great at work, I was opening up from being a secluded asshole to trying to connect with more people. And somehow, he made everything better.

 

In the next few months, I got to know him better. I got to know myself better with him. We had a few trips up and down the happiness lane until I realised that something was amiss. There was no lack of chemistry. No gaps in communication. Just a classic case of bad timing. 

 

I don’t know if this is a cliché, but has this ever happened to you? You wanted something so earnestly but you know it was never gonna happen so you just let it sit at the back of your mind; and just when you thought that maybe life has grand-er plans for you, it just falls in to your lap? But it so happens that you have a shit-ton of other things in your lap, and there’s no place for this new thing – and you have no idea what to do. You don’t know where to put it or how to take care of it… until it just goes away.

 

I read somewhere a piece of words strung together by a high-marijuana fueled dude I once knew. He wrote, “somedays, reality is stranger than my dreams”. He later told me that it was the first thought that had popped into his head when I agreed to date him. He thought he was that terrible [until he got a load of me and ran in the other direction]

 

Some boyfriends are like fruits. Even when you’re through with them, they stay in your system. They affect you in ways a fruit affects your immunity or your skin texture. Or in some cases, like a case of food poisoning. A certain someone has remained in my being, although faintly, in the form of square brackets. Thank you for adding flair to my personality, Mr Bananas.

 

“Your life gets small. A little smaller every day. You don't even notice the box that you're in... until someone comes along and lets you out.”

 

I don’t know how to quite put this, so I’ll borrow the words of the aforementioned marijuana-fueled dude. I went through an experience that made me realise that some days, reality feels like an LSD-trance-induced dream, stranger than fiction. Sometimes the experiences you almost said no to, open you up like no other. And they make you think. About everything.

 

I think about that night a lot. I think about this one person in particular. I may have ruined things with him though. But even in the most mundane of things, his name keeps popping into my head – probably because his name is ubiquitous as hell. I don’t know. 

 

There are things and people in life that you can’t go back to, or can’t start things afresh with. Sometimes it’s the timing, sometimes its everything else. And trust me, this isn’t the first time I’ve snorted this crap sundae. 

 

And yet, even in the faintest of feelings, I reminisce only the good parts. A drive along the Riverfront. A warm touch. A carpool karaoke. A kiss.

 

And I feel alive.