[Prose]: New wrinkles

'I find sadness beautiful. I cannot tolerate people who are artificially too energetic.' I took a long look at his face, I might have attached too much meaning to his face. I might have attributed a deep instinct of human understanding in him, but they all disappeared. Any respect I had, was gone when I realized this man only saw skin deep. His comment was of someone with a sheltered life. Of someone completely unaware of what facing adversity meant. Don't get me wrong, everyone has a different scale of adversity, but some make you hardcore and some crack you right to the core. Through all of these, there is only one true outcome, the outcome of survival and living.

When adversity in different forms hits you, you are definitely unprepared. If something similar happens the second time, its not an adversity anymore, you are mildly aware of the motions and you know the process. Worse yet, you are familiar with the pain and the fatigue associated with the events. Life for a while becomes a collection blur of motions triggered just by the surroundings and the mind just wanders away tucking into safety of sleep, if one is lucky or worse yet a detachment from all reality. Going to bed and not falling asleep become a part of your life, because there is no use, you wake up again and again to the same nightmare. Slowly a lot decays, a lot of hard determination gets eroded, there are many stains on the pillow of muffled cries. It somehow stops mattering what is on the plate, and sometimes nothing really gets to mouth. This is when you have a luxury in adversity to switch off. You become much like a zombie, walking around without a thought, forgetting the purpose of the walk itself, wandering into unknown alleys. Becoming afraid of your own thought is much too common, because there is more doom heading your way, and you know it.

In another adversity, you cannot afford to switch off and walk around like zombie. You are not allowed to rest. You have to be in the moment, because something clings on you to suck the life force out of you. You are firefighting, in the most inefficient way. The fire is only mildly reducing, but you are dying due to sheer stress. Mind cannot think of emotions, you become hard, you become steel and in sometime you collapse. You collapse to a level you cannot get up anymore. In your mind are the images of the burning moment and the sense of urgency has not left your bones. You try hard to get back on your feet, but you collapse again and again. Fatigue of the situation has taken over your body, and the mind goes next. All the bottled up emotions come flooding in, they have metamorphosed into something malevolent now. Unable to recognize your own feelings you are shocked, you find yourself transformed into something bitter and hard and unfeeling. More than unfeeling, it is the inability to express the feelings, and your feelings seem to have been taken over by some force and twisted.

Either ways, at the end, you are not yourself. As much as you want to be, you cannot be. You miss the familiar smile that used to crinkle your face and reach your eyes. You miss the rare tears, that are not hot with anger.  You miss feeling like a normal person who never knew adversity. You miss dreams that don not wake you up with a cold sweat. You miss being normal. In many failed attempts to get back to being normal, you fake laugh, hide your sadness, or let yourself be sympathized and wallow in sympathy. You are frustrated, angry, agitated and just not yourself anymore. People judge you, but rarely see the effort in keeping appearances. Fake laugh, fake attitude and all even you know is fake. This is not the time to be judged, but sadly you are doing more judging than all the world combined. But slowly the acceptance comes.

One day you wake up and the memories of the young you are just memories like of the childhood. On that day, you look at the mirror and find a new person standing. You recognize her as who your thought was the perfect woman, a calmness in her face, tired eyes but with understanding in them, a few more lines here and there. Yes, she does look weak and tired. You understand the cause of it better than anyone else, you were there as she struggled. Something else also has woken up in her that had gone to sleep for a while, her will to live. Surviving is not enough, if you can't really even live. This person in the mirror understands that better than anyone else.

Of course you don not know the answers to the really hard one word questions. You also realize that you never needed to. The priorities just flip here and there, all the dreams you chased, some seem pointless and some seem alright, but one new dream stands apart. This one is a dream you never had before, and you understand fully why you need it to come true. This is the one true dream, the dream to love yourself.  Not in the wild ways that are exciting and adventurous, but love yourself to bring peace and energy back into those eyes. You accept yourself and the decisions you made. Somehow for once you are more understanding of yourself. In a really long while, maybe never before, you are able to be by yourself. The silence outside for once does not bother you anymore, the screaming thoughts have turned to a hum and they do not alarm or scare you anymore. You for the first time listen to yourself, and make a genuine effort to understand this transformation in you. One perhaps calls it solitude, but being alone cannot perturb your feelings anymore. You rather start to enjoy your private soundless conversations, and sometimes you cannot contain that smile anymore. An unfamiliar peace falls upon, and a new vigor awakes. Its not the flashing burning vigor of the past, where you burnt yourself to show your potential. This is new, like a guiding candle that lets you take a steady path, even when the road is not seen enough.

This new person is still you, just a little wiser, just a little calmer, but definitely much stronger and someone you will surely can rely on. Yes, there are flaws, there are many cracks in the mantle, some wounds run deep and are still sore. But, this person is on the way to being better than what you ever were, with love and care and nurture, this is the woman you transform into. Perhaps the adversity was needed to awaken her into existence. Only time will tell, but do not judge her spirit by the new wrinkles on her forehead, she runs deeper than what you see.