Restless

and i'm restless again. restless for life, a kind of life at the rawest edge- raw, unpolished, sharp, scraping though the skin and cutting through the bone, a life of extreme that's almost on the verge of insanity... i keep saying to myself "all I need is some sense of normality..." and yet i keep throwing myself from one extreme to another, as if walking through some kind of mine field, constantly testing the limits of my reach, the limits of my freedom and my own sanity...

Spective

I used to wonder whether it was really possible to remain mentally and emotionally unaffected by certain experiences and whether it was this immunity that determined a certain level of maturity. I used to wonder whether this level of maturity was determined by the ability of putting certain experiences behind and moving on without looking back, without the feeling of remorse and regret. I used to wonder whether this is what made one jaded, and whether there was a limit to how jaded one could get.

Now I wonder whether there really is a point in trying to seek answers to questions that are better left unanswered. Makes you look like a fool when you ask anyway. So you let go- a simple act –once the hardest thing to do-almost effortless now…
Releasing the static cling from everything that once you held on to for mental and emotional support, using it as appendages to needs that didn’t need to exist anyway.

Acceptance is the key. It brings relief, Opens new perspectives.
Nothing more enlightening. And liberating.

I seem to have finally learned to reconcile the past with the present. I am finally able to look at my younger self with kinder, more loving and forgiving eyes. I have learned to put both the experiences and memories behind me and move on.

I have finally learned to stand on my own feet without the support of a concept or an idea, or any emotional stamina. And by doing so, I really have overcome my biggest fear of all-the fear of living.

Nine months

I remember waking up one Sunday morning in our white apartment, looking at the spotless walls and sun pouring into the room, getting up and wondering around the quiet and empty rooms with a growing feeling of discomfort. I remember looking at the clutter of familiar objects and feeling displaced, uprooted, out of place. Looking at myself from aside, in this spotless apartment in this perfect vision of happiness and domestic bliss and suddenly becoming afraid of how easily I was getting used to this life of comfort and how slowly and gradually I was getting sucked into it….

I had everything to be happy.
The scariest part was that I was happy in this bliss and I could see myself living an entire life like this, in this cloudless and comfortable existence which didn’t even take much effort to create and maintain. I remember the feeling of discomfort growing into panic and then restlessness with the thought that despite its promise of comfort and happiness this was not what I wanted, and that I did not belong to this life just like this life did not belong to me and to continue living it would be the greatest betrayal I could ever commit towards myself.

And now...
Sitting in a crowded bus, moving slowly on a desolate road, in the silence of hills and nothing but miles and miles of snow, thinking about that other life that seemed so remote and almost not real.

Almost nine months…
I could have had a child in this time.
I could have stayed in this almost perfect life that had everything that one might need. Including happiness.

Instead I shunned it away, rejecting it as something unwanted and almost unpleasant, and choose to return to a place that I once ran away from, to this godforsaken land of destitute that once held me captive and landlocked in the chain of mountains that once I wished to escape….

To go against all senses of rationality, to interrupt an entire life and leave it in shambles and disarray, and come here, of all the places in the world, at the brink of a nervous and physical breakdown and somehow, magically manage to stay alive and in one piece, and instead of breaking down, finding a different kind of happiness, the happiness of self-discovery and self-fulfillment…

[I laugh at myself, this whole story sounding so banal, no matter how drastically I changed it almost overnight, and how crazy were the events that followed afterwards… A textbook version, or rather, almost fiction, as if I was following a pattern, the steps already trodden by so many feet. The Fear of Flying. Children of Violence. The Hours…. And so many more similar untold stories….A woman at the brink of self-liberation…. Words like self-realization and self-discovery sounding almost like clinical terms.]

And yet...perhaps this was not the only thing to do. Perhaps this was not the smartest choice to make. And what I did or discovered was nothing new, nothing that was not known before. And yet this was my choice. A free choice, and not one offered to me among some other options. I made it, aware of the consequences. I made it, even though I myself was afraid. And by doing so, I overcame my biggest fear of all-the fear of living.

And as it turns out, I was not running away from, but running towards to. And perhaps what I needed was to return to the roots of my origin, and by merely coming here to claim my freedom back I found a home that I had been denying to myself for as long as I can remember, a home that will stay with me no matter where I go.