Chocolate On The Moon
This may need a couple of takes, but here goes –
I should’ve seen it coming the minute I wiped out the fridge’s contents and frantically searched through the pile of empty chocolate wrappers for any sugar to be salvaged. But the sugar situation was complicated – what with Diwali and Halloween, festivals of Light and Darkness, of Mithai and Candy, seducing me on the same week. And so it came to be that I was blissfully bloated when I bumped into her.
She lashed at me with lame limericks and cackled uncontrollably as I lapped up every word:
There once was a girl filled with dread
Who nurtured dastardly demons in her head
Would they need one last kiss?
Her empty tears they won’t miss
Mommy, wife, daughter, nobody – she was better off dead.
She watched me oscillating between self-pity and self-loathing, thinking less and less of myself – hopeless, thoughtless, worthless. Then she shook me in an impatient rage, “You won’t do it. Just like everything else in your life, you don’t have the balls to make a decision and just go for it. Caught up in an endless stream of details – the hows, the whens, the whys. Go ahead, settle. Live your meaningless life, but know that with every passing day you are less of who you once were”. Less and less of myself.
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I didn’t kill myself of course; died a little, maybe. Not just due to the lack-of-balls factor. But because I saw the blindingly blue wall in my living room. And because I saw the moon and I remembered Sylvia. I counted days; was it time already? Perhaps. Perhaps I can label it, walk around with a tatoo beneath my stretch marks, “Remember Null Pointer, you have PMDD”. But such ignorant self-diagnosis belittles those who actually have the disease. A disease. Any disease. Am I actually looking for solace in a disease? Am I actually that fucked up to think that something tangible would make things easier? Fucked up – there’s a diagnosis for ya.
That was 2 days ago. Today I am numb. Stuck at a 7am powerpoint presentation on goals for 2011 kind of numb. Zonked by a Complexity Theory proof after a night of practicing neele neele ambar kind of numb. A laughing, dancing, cuddling, blogging kind of numb. When the next wave comes, will I ride it like a pro or fall flat on my face onto a bed of broken shells and stingrays? Only time and calories will tell.
