Quest for Equilibrium

Let me be.

My blank stares hit the walls with a dull thud. The day is young and moving out is more snubbed toes and misplaced boxes than the excitement movies show. Decades of life have been thrust into unlabelled, brown cardboard boxes – the sight of the cramped, filled-to-the-brim boxes is suffocating.

I’d always preserved my hope in tomorrows. Tomorrows were safe and happy, the place where hope thrived. There were days where these walls held music captive – the same song playing loop after loop with occasional advertisements recommending podcasts that could apparently turn my life around. And that was it – everywhere I looked, it was a constant stream of resources and advice to be the best version of myself.

15 Habits of Self-Made Millionaires. 4 Ways to Attain Success. The Secret to Happiness. And I was sure – I was a problem to be fixed. I love problems, I love the hunt for solutions – the mindless researching, stumbling across solutions so perfect you discover they were simply ridiculous and the final run knowing you’re just a few steps away; the irony wasn’t lost on me. I was one problem where the research would be as questionable as the subject itself.

I’ll break before I suffocate.

I wanted to see it all. The better part of my teenage was left abandoned in haunted dreams with an affinity for nursery rhymes – their predictable repetition and rhyme comforting. I wanted answers. I was older than I should have been when I discovered adults lied too. It was here in these too loud, too quiet, funny but haunting dreams I discovered identity.

It wasn’t mine. Like the songs that kept growing louder and more repetitive and the advertisements that tagged along – this identity was a noisily clad, patched up vessel that appeared in fluorescent blues or mellow reds. She was as disassociated as I was – people didn’t make sense, the world showed you how to resolve yourself the way you might a vector, but there were no loud articles on finding your own journey. It was either their way or no way.

I think I’d like to fly.

Over time, the newfound identity and I began to resemble each other – not entirely but just enough for a resemblance to be called into existence. We experimented; recklessly and happily – with people, words, colours and textures. Sandy silt was a good day, silver was magic, people who smiled in the first ten seconds were nice, ‘keep’ stopped being a word after using it more than thrice. And gradually – identity connected to the world, found a generation to belong to and began to say things like, ‘in my opinion…’

Words became my personality. Clothes became my idea of fashion. Colours became my moods. And now I wasn’t a problem to be solved but an entity to be presented. Sometimes I leave my soul to fester in random art – poems and paintings that tell me to come to my own conclusions, sculptures that invite me to dare, architecture that doesn’t shy away from being bold and intimidating, colours that speak in rhyme.

Watch me make bad decisions but carefully.

My blank stares glide to the ground, shattering at the slightest contact – tucking themselves away in nooks and corners. These cardboard boxes hold much of my identity – there aren’t many articles that can make sense of what’s in there – maybe it tells the story of a human who grew up or it’s simply an assortment of first loves and bad decisions. I step out with a few precious belongings in hand – the streets look content and for a moment, all of it feels just right.

Identity and I are in a constant battle to find common ground – our state of equilibrium where we can come bouncing back after messing up. But there’s only so much you can do to eliminate imperfections from a story that’s perhaps fated to be experimental. 

Let me be.

Thoughtfully yours,
D