Standstill

Life has come to a standstill.
There is so much happening around, but when I close my eyes, I see nothing.
And the feeling of nothingness makes me shudder.
I find no love, no creativity.
Everything bland and dull. And the fears and controls of the past come back to haunt me.

The songs and the laughs, all seem monotonous.
The freedom chains me to this fixed, boring path that I'd rather never stray from. It doesn't challenge me anymore, and has nothing new to offer . . . but I carry on, thoughtlessly.

My tears are my only refuge to get away. But there is no pain, and no relief.
Only emptiness.
I cry and cry and cry, all alone, at the death of my soul, and at the spirit that could not even come alive. I sit and cry at the person I've become.
I cry.
I've lost myself among the crowds. I've never had any more friends, and never been any more guarded!

I fail, I FAIL miserably every time I try to communicate with myself. Nothing ever comes out of it, only tears... and I don't know what they mean!
And I cry more, because I can't bear this not-knowing. I can't bear the aimlessness and hopelessness of life any more...

My feelings entrapped within me want to burst out... but there is no outlet. I search and I search, but it's all dark.
I speak and I speak, never knowing if I mean it really.
I hear and I hear, never knowing how much of it really matters to me.
I try to read, but hardly understand.
I have no time... though I seem to do nothing. I see no future. I have no dreams anymore.

It's all a blur.
And the magnitude of this blankness hits me, right in the face. It overwhelms me every moment.

The hustle and bustle has numbed me to the point of believing that nothing is ever meant to happen. It's all just a rush without any feeling, and I am part of it.

Holding me back.

A few days back, I came to my old city -- the city where I grew up, learnt all that I learnt, saw all that I saw; the city where I had stared at sunsets, tried to capture the clouds and danced with the rains.
It was the city of my dreams once.

I came back and felt like I didn't belong, came back to feel a certain uneasiness.
This was a place I had started finding hard to live in, and had almost felt liberated to leave.

I could not answer all the questions posed to me here, and yet wanted to connect as if I'd never left. But I felt cramped to be there. The roads I'd travelled a thousand times suddenly seemed so small, like little village tracts.

It was strange, and I actually physically felt the buildings cramping down and encroaching upon my path.

The crowd of people was again new to me.

But maybe it was not the roads and the city and the people. In fact, I'm sure it was not. It was me realising that I was still trapped within the confines of my own mind and fears.

I was still struggling to get away from what was holding me down.
I had got angry in that place, I had shouted and screamed. I had howled and cried.
I had sat in a dark room all by myself.
I had wanted to break anything that came my way.
And I had wanted, to for once, be seen as the victim not the perpetrator. I had wanted to see SOME empathy, SOME concern... that I didn't really believe was there. But I had wanted it anyway.

I wanted to go off like a bomb. I so wanted not to be there.

Maybe that was my way of trying to break free of those chains, my way of fighting for myself and what I wanted, of feeling that I could have things my way.

And I realised, I'd never left. I was still in that city, or at least the city was still in me, wherever I went.... and in me were still all its fears, the bondage, the sadness and anger, the disbelief and distrust, the disillusionment with life...