Hiraeth
Let me tell you about being lonely.
Humans are a social species. We rely on connections to survive. Even the most basic social interactions keep us alive. Statistics prove the subjective feeling of loneliness can increase the likelihood of premature death by 26 percent. If it sounds like I'm quoting from a school textbook in America.....I am. Too bad nobody bothered to read it. And let me tell you there are all kinds of ways to feel lonely.
I'm not talking about the garden variety, lonely in a crowded place. That's everyone, every day. And it's not that "when will I find love" kind of lonely. Or that "the popular kids are mean to me" kind of lonely. The popular kids are always mean. That's how they get popular. I know. Ironic. Old news. And I was feeling the same and when you're that kind of lonely, you reach for anything. No matter how silly it may seem. We all need it. Human contact and communications. I wonder if you felt what it's like to be lonely. Like I do every day. Maybe that kind when you think nobody truly sees you. Some girls know all the lyrics to each other's songs. They find harmonies in their laughter. Their linked elbows echo in tune. What if I can't hum on key? What if my melodies are the ones nobody hears?
Sometimes loneliness creeps me out. Sometimes loneliness just makes me feel unwanted. Loneliness is a noun given by us when we feel darkness crawling into our inner when we feel helpless when we beg for a little bit of communication but don't find it when we look at our surroundings easily moving on, and when we feel jealous why can't we when we look at the wall for hours thinking if someone would come to warm this coldness inside me. Loneliness is like longing for something or someone. It could be parents, friends, or life partners. Loneliness is when our self-consciousness comes before anything and we stop talking to anyone but eventually start craving more of people's efforts. Loneliness comes after our ego flutters its wings. Loneliness is no disease, it's no symptoms of depression, it's sometimes like a different story our mind creates, but it's not fake. Loneliness is shaking, shaking, shaking until we find our hands rubbing ourselves to calm down. When we find no one to pat our shivering fingers, when there is no one to wipe our tears but ourselves. Loneliness is the attitude to not ask, not go for the opportunity.
People call it self-love, handling ourselves. But it's not true, it's not called self-love, it's called being a rebel to our helplessness. We love ourselves not by the singular us. We love ourselves when we can smile through people's conversation, people's effort, people's care. Otherwise, the creator would have created a single us, not in a family or amidst a bunch of people.
We love ourselves when we love someone, care for someone, put effort into something, or try to fix a bond.
Is it that simple? No.
Loneliness kills our instincts that people would talk to us, it kills our hope, and it kills our wishes at one point. It spreads claws inside to make our brains acknowledge the fact that we didn't make it, we can't anymore, we are a failure, we are a loser. And our minds work according to it. Loneliness sometimes spreads strings of sadness and want. We don't want to communicate. But loneliness doesn't win against itself. By losing connections, we slowly stop hoping. When hope is nowhere found then the soul tarnishes.
Loneliness kills the willingness to eat, sleep, smile, play, etc
it's also the kind of loneliness when you find the wrong people on the way while walking through the path...it's like the kind of loneliness where you find someone with a little gentleness towards you...you start to overshare and gradually the person starts to think you are invading their privacy a lot and they start to think you as a responsibility, not a friend...they start to behave as if they have to come and text you so that you don't feel bad, it's like responsibility and when you realize that...you are back to square one with no one by your side. Something like that happened to me too.
I could feel myself vanishing into thin air amidst a lot of people. I was drowning in the deep sea but people weren't extending their hands to catch me. I was slowly turning invisible to them, to my loved ones. I was slowly getting out of the concrete jungle. it was surely a good thing but when I felt myself gradually getting sucked away, I felt I left my heart there. Now I have only the beating organ and the slight buzzing which increases whenever I see the sun-eyed boy. A boy who was living outside the concrete jungle, but was alive.
What if people's loneliness is longing for warmth amidst this concrete jungle, what if it is tiredness, what if it is failure, what if it is craving for communication, what if it is getting surrounded by the darkness of his thoughts, what if the thoughts are spreading their claws and getting increased by the second making them hard to open up to someone. What if it is the after-effect of loneliness? What if it is the end of their hopes? What if they want to die like me?
What if they feel empty inside, what if they want to enter someone else's body because it doesn't feel like their own body, what if distress is spreading inside every pore, bursting and letting them grieve more? What if their memories are all haunting them because in the future those same memories aren't there, those memories didn't get repeated? What if they look at the wall and think why life is this null and void, why they aren't getting any purpose? What if tears automatically fall making them remember all the bad scenarios of their life? What if they can't let go of their past?
Maybe it's suffocation in their own house, maybe it's their routine life and they are exhausted now to handle every single person but never themselves. Maybe they can't take a break from life because people are expecting, maybe they are tired of fulfilling expectations. Maybe their loneliness is very different from mine and they are just missing their friends, or maybe they fought with someone dear to them, or maybe someone said something to them and they got hurt and did not want to talk to others. Maybe their loneliness doesn't tarnish their hopes. It just seeps in for some moment and then leaves them.
Sitting on the edge of the rooftop railing, I think of dying. I think if I fall from this concrete railing of the rooftop, how will the wind react, will it flow rapidly or will it freeze sucking all the oxygen from and letting me fall, how miserable the wound will be if my head crashed into the ground, the concrete ground will bruise my head, and blood will ooze out smashing my skull. My bones will break and I will collapse on the ground unconscious, will it hurt? How much? The wind surrounding me will cover me with its sand-filled expanse. Slowly slowly my breaths will spill out my body, and my heartbeats will go down to the point of not breathing at all. Finally, the numbness will consume me and with a huge panting, my last breath will be snatched from, sucked from my entire existence leaving a mere body. I will start flying higher higher and higher, I will be the wind's companion, it will caress my wings with its and we will fly without anyone seeing us, our laughter will echo over the wailing down on the ground, I will match my hands with the wind, we will sway our nonexistent bodies and our wings will never catch fire. The wind will embrace me and carry me to the creator, and my free soul will howl in happiness. I won't be able to handle this much freedom but I will be cooperating with it. The pain of that broken body lying on the ground won't be felt, the bruises won't burn anymore, the whimpers won't come to my ears, the pleadings, the grief will never reach me. I will be free from the bonds, from the strings, from the memories. Memories? I think I will never forget the memories; the memories are crafted in my soul, then how can I?
My body won't suffer anymore. That will be a relief. My body won't harm itself, my body won't be miserable anymore.
"Hey hey, what are you doing? Get down"
I turned and looked at a rather pale-looking Javi, stilled colors smeared against his face, he looked dull, after his father's death he became so quiet nowadays. It's been a month.
Javi kept standing until my fingers called him to me. He sat beside me as I looked at his eyes, sad but sadly not dead. He was alive. He was beautiful. His eyes carried so much warmth, it could be a blanket of all the homeless slaves. He basks in the sun but isn't a sun. but the most shining star in the entire universe. if I didn't see the sun and got burnt. I would have held the star and let him take me to his world.
He is a muscular man with the beauty of Aphrodite. he has an innocent face with moles dripping from under his lips to not be cast by any evil. He has the tone of the first ray of moonlight, the moon turned silver-hued. as if the silver rays caressed his face and twiddled with his ears which sometimes turned red. He is a beautiful color, to name him a color he is sky blue.
this man standing in front of me, staring at me as if I am the most lively thing he has ever seen. knowing I died a decade ago. I adore this man, I wish I could write him in my books. but a particular sun-eyed boy took my entire carton of pages and filled it with its sun rays and eventually, they got burned. we were always warned to stay away from the sun so that we can't get burnt, and here I am looking at a star with a burnt heart and a burnt body, nothing to give him.
I gestured to him, and he cradled me against him, a hug so needed that I could cry. a kindness so needed that I could cry, a warmth so needed that I could cry
"Why Hiraeth?"
His voice is laced with a melody, whereas Tristan's voice is a song.
Why couldn't I sing it then?
The way he says my name, as if it has a meaning to it, a different meaning from the original. a meaning he so wants to believe.
"I am sorry"
I am sorry for everything Javi
After I left the world of concrete Jungle. I found Javi. A home I couldn't have gotten even if I had prayed a million times
He saves me from my attempts, he saves me from the cruel hallucinations, he gets me out of my imagination, he wipes my unshed tears, wipes the blood, wipes the wounds, wipes the cut, but the cuts don't heal. I could have named him my whole world. I named a man who never considered me my world instead. Ironic.
Loving him was easy. loving him was blissful. but I didn't, and he accepted it. My dearest Javi deserves the whole world. but the grip of his tells me that he considers me his world nonetheless.
"Let me tell you a story, Javi, okay?" I dodged the questions, as I always do.
He nodded as I pulled out of the hug and rested my head on his shoulder
"I had a friend, yes the word which sounded so much different from the friendship I just described. The friend who put me aside because of her friends. In this very line, the friend word is divided into two different words. I am a college student, studying physics, chemistry, biology, and all the mind-consuming stuff, which is blowing my mind out while going through it. I had found a friend a year ago I guess. Her name was Jessica. She was a university third-year student, studying business studies.
During the pandemic, our suffocation of staying at home and the darkness of restlessness and anxiety shined and we got each other, we found each other online, I used to write some stories, fantasy-filled little cringe-worthy stories and she used to read them, she was my regular reader, she used to comment every single day and encourage me every single time I posted. I felt giddy inside, in the generation of non-reader friends, I had found a person who expressed excitement and enthusiasm. In the era of no encouragement from my other school friends, in the era where my small writing efforts got mocked, she was the only one who showed up at my doorsteps asking for more chapters, she became the only reason that made me continue writing just to see her reactions afterward, suddenly so much affection made me blind. I instantly liked her so much. I used to write for her just to read and say how it was. She made me smile in the year when my old school hags were nagging me about lacking shine, lacking talent, and lacking fun. She made me feel giddy all over, not in a lover's way, but in a way I felt valued, respected, and loved by someone I could call my friend. She called me her soul mate, we talked sometimes the whole day, we talked sometimes till late at night, we talked as if she wasn't a university student and I wasn't a college student, she supported me, encouraged me, and we made beautiful memories. She made me feel warm and protected. I have always seen her as my sister."
I said as I huffed a breath, and looked at him, his eyes listening to me so attentively I could cry.
"The pandemic reduced and the lockdown was broken, so she started going to universities. The differences between us seemed so great that it was hard to ignore that time. I was a college student and dependent on the warmth I was getting from her. Suddenly I started feeling cold all over. As if I am pushed over a cold river. I started drowning in the river
Diving my head under the layers of water waves, I felt blankness, I felt inert, and I felt a certain numbness running through my veins along with blood. It is even bearable in our daily lives. When we hear something high-pitched sound resonating straight into our ears, in between its creaking noise which almost rips our ears, we hear a certain thin screeching sound and then eventually it exposes nonlimited sounds which we can hear actually. It simply makes our brain cells get confused in finding the source of sound and it can't handle more pressure. Similarly, I was feeling, numb after a loud growl which life just spit at me. I was jerked out and it affected me so much that I could hear my limbs vibrating. But I couldn't see it, not even the trembling waves; not the moonlight shining on top of my head, not the now seemed too far away bank of the sea.
We often encounter blinds right. Blinds are often considered as the color white or as the color pitch black. We often can't relate to blinds as our eyes don't experience the blankness and nothingness of a vision. Our eyes reflect it with rays of color lights and it brightens our vision
Well, I can relate, and maybe Jessica too."
"Then?"
He said out of nowhere and I looked at him getting curious. How easy it is to talk to him. Why did I fall in love with the wrong person then?
"Jessica met a guy. I wasn't jealous because she got a partner. For god's sake, she was like my sister. After meeting the guy, she started entering into his world, his friends became her friends, and his work became her work. He was a karate trainer; she joined the karate center and got involved with that guy due to his sweet sugar-coated lies. I saw my sister, my best friend, my soul mate falling into a maze of fine white lies, of a well-planned betrayal, she was so naïve to see it, I kept telling her I didn't trust that guy, but as we all know, love makes a person blind. My world faded for her, she wasn't no longer a part of my happiness. Her world expanded, her love for the guy increased, we got distanced. She ignored my doubts and went with her instincts. She was so sure after 6 months that she would be marrying him, my questions, and my views never mattered to her after that. She kept me in darkness, she got slightly affected by my words and she started ignoring me. It's not her fault. Everyone in love is blind. I wasn't then. I could see her getting hurt in the future, but I forgot she already diminished me from her future. I got hurt, I cried. Tears were the only source to suffuse the pain right. I cried every night. From sharing everything to rarely talking. What is it? Growth or decrease in growth?
You know it's like being stuck in a labyrinthine. A maze. Being a blind person is just revolving around different kinds of waves which just never lets us revolve exactly in the circle but it just swoons us all over. But you know, in her case she was revolving in the exact circle. I could see, she was happier than ever, she was dreaming of a future which included that guy, but not me. But I was okay with it until I kept seeing her happy, she was being calculative and was following a routine of being disabled. But suddenly she found herself drowning on the very center of the circle and was hit by a wave so strongly that her limbs got shaken. Trust me it sounded cliché to me too. But what could I have done, she couldn't see her wave that time just like I can't see these water waves. And she was way too far to even imagine her tangling with that wave and being blind again. Eventually, the cheesy clichéd love story with her wave ended with a quiet large cyclone and they dissolved in different directions.
I was disappointed in her for believing that guy so easily, but everybody is blind when it comes to happiness right? Nobody thinks right when it comes to love."
I breathed as I thought I was talking so much, would he still listen he was. He was listening. I felt a sudden giddiness. Someone who can hear you is a blessing. He rested his face this time on my shoulder, almost snuggling to my neck.
"Disappointment was never a hindrance in my feelings which were always on the verge of being burst with grief, but at that time I wasn't even half experienced what grief could feel like. I was hurt for sure. Still now burying myself in the depth of waves and waves and waves, I do not care if I am being a disappointment myself for her or not but certainly I am grieving for me. Like yeah actually grieving for her too. And the grief is so much excruciating that I certainly am filled with a consciousness of getting unconscious. I often get high by drinking the consciousness of sadness. Now I am commonly sad, not disappointed. Never nearly disappointed. But I am constantly upset after everything.
This is how I finally found myself alone again. This is how I lost her. Certainly, she came back to me saying she made a mistake, but she never verbally accepted her mistake. She just said I was the only one to share her miserable life, I wish she could see me warning her from getting into that miserable love maze from the very first. But she sees me now but I don't. I can't get myself to talk to her after what she did. I can't let my heart break again, I can't let those pains come again, I am sore. I am still wounded."
Tears trickled down my eyes remembering Jessica; I don't know how she must be doing now. might be somewhere living her best life with her lover and her friends, I heard she found someone, I hope this someone doesn't care about the damn concrete jungle when it comes to her. I saw Javi sleeping beside me on my shoulder. Finally, the boy slept after a lot of sleepless nights.
His breathing is swift, serene, and warm, I can bathe in it. my eyes are devouring him while he is still sleeping thinking this is his home. Am I? or was I?
There is this nagging inside my head, which keeps repeating itself saying there is something I am missing, but what? I remember every single detail that happened to me. or I still miss my sun-eyed boy.
I shouldn't. How can I be unfair to Javi? my star-eyed boy? I looked at the starless sky. It was almost midnight, but the moon was lonely because the stars aligned together and got stuck in his sleepy eyes. A man can be this much beautiful, I never knew. I breathed heavily, letting Javi take a nap here, then I woke him up. A cold breeze was bathing in us, with us. It was peaceful with him.
Even when I was in high school, I remember every incident of that time. I remember Fati who chose me in class 5, when some group of popular kids wanted to befriend her and not me, when we were still in primary they wanted her to leave me, but she didn't. She chose to stay with this boring nerdy girl, who used to love to sketch while sitting on the corner bench of the class and didn't talk to anybody. I don't sketch now, but I remember myself being so passionate about it at one point in my life. I remember Fati and I changing schools together, I remember we took the entrance exam and topped it, we went for viva together but because we were one of the toppers of that entrance exam, we didn't have to participate in vivas. We just got our forms. We got admitted and we were so happy to be in the same class, but the sections separated us. I was in A and she was in B. But still, we met every lunch break and used to eat our tiffins. Suddenly in class 6, her parents told my brothers that she was going to study in Italy and she had to leave after taking the midterm. At that time, I didn't know that this would hurt this much, seeing her nowhere in that very new school was something so hard for me to adjust to. It was miserable for a couple of months for me. I felt empty when I was surrounded by a bunch of people. I didn't know anyone back then in that new school, I was never used to making friends, Fati was the first one who came forward and befriended me. So after her, I never knew how to make friends. This needed communication, which I never learned. I just thought I would be forever lonely. Which is indeed true. She left and I never cried, but I cry now. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if she hadn't left. We might have been friends, and I didn't need to grow up faster than needed. Tears never cease when I think about her. I wonder what she might be doing. I heard she is in England now. I am sure she became an engineer or a scientist. She was a brilliant student, I must say. I miss her. Maybe I will meet her somewhere around the world. Or is it too late to say that? The warmth she radiated is still inside me.
I look at Javi thinking about how I found a star sleeping on my arms. shining rays are radiating through him. How is he so alive? His pores are glowing and his breathing chaining them around me creates a spell to not move. I want to hold him forever, especially after the heartbreak. I don't know if he will stay with me after everything but I want to grab every opportunity I can get with him because if I die, I can't. I need a friend and Javi is that warm friend of mine. A home of mine.
I kept looking at him, drinking him in, his features, his breathing. I need to memorize it. I can feel my insides buzzing so hard. I am dead, but I can feel his heart thumping making mine thump too. I felt my head being heavy as I rested my face on his neck, snuggling more into him as I fell into unconsciousness. I hope I die like this or I hope I find my peace like this.
I hope I forget Tristan.
I hope I can make myself believe this buzzing is for loving Javi, not for missing any sun-eyed boy.