indescribable

indescribable

somehow.. i just got dragged through an extremely painful part of my past..
now, i don’t know if i outgrew my pain or i just ran away from them..
they don’t hurt anymore, neither are they painless.. i don’t know what this feeling is suppose to be

25 January 2023

Forty minutes, 2241 hours to 2320 hours to be exact, that is just how long it takes to drag me back to the most dreaded part of my memory to date. A simple, routine texting with an old friend somehow dragged me through an extremely painful part of my past. Looking back, I don’t know if I outgrew the pain or just ran from them. They don’t hurt anymore, but they are not painless either. And now, I don’t know what this feeling is suppose to be.

I was 18, when I stepped foot on to college. College for me means going away from home, become slightly autonomous but not fully independent. Bound by a triad of financing parents, college curricula and societal propaganda. Blown from all sides by the unexplored aspect of the world from which I was ever so meticulously protected when I was under my father’s roof.

Then I was 19, then 20, and I aged on. Then, during my twenty-third year of life, around the ninth month of that year, I found myself sitting with the darkness of the room which was now far from the “comfort” but was nonetheless the place called home. I hated the state I was in. I wanted to scream at the sky and ask the world how had I arrived to this, but I knew deep in my senses that I was too afraid to tell myself the exact reason why; I was afraid to even admit that I so clearly knew the reason.

My peers had gone ahead but I had not, and the worst part was that I was too proud to admit the reason why. My family offered no psychological support. My father reveled in branding me a failure, my mother kept on insisting that she prayed for me but all I saw was utter frustration emanated from her face whenever she looked at me. My siblings fared no better. I shouldered all the blame. Home was on a fourth floor, and many a time I found myself staring down with unwelcomed thoughts.

My head was filled with thoughts and feelings. Feelings overtook me, and I tried to reason with myself. I told myself not to succumb to my feelings, but failure was a hundred percent. Waves of feelings rushed into my being like a tsunami and overwhelmed me to the point where it felt difficult to breathe. Somatization is no joke, I understood that very well. If thoughts and feelings were oil and water, an ocean of emulsion overwhelmed me and suffocated my every being.

Came the next day, without ever progressing into tomorrow. I looked at the sky at noon, there was not a spec in the sky and the sun was burning unadulterated. But for reason beyond my understanding, my world was a shade of dark. It was burning bright, but it was also glooming dark. The light did not lift the weight on my chest, the day did not break the deafening quietness, and the sun did not thaw the chill in my being.

Now, at age 35 I find it so simple to think before I allow myself to feel, but it was not the same 13 years ago.

My therapy was writing. I wrote short, silly and mediocre articles. And as far from readable or enjoyable as they may be, they were my release. So, bit by bit, fragments by fragments, I wrote my pains down and started ending my turmoil. Long story short, thirteen years passed me by. Perhaps writing worked a little too well? I don’t know! Because I started to actually forget faces and names. Then, tonight, what started as a friendly, happy, naughty, silly conversation with an old friend dragged me to the one place and time in my past I thought I have closed up for good.

The past was agony, the past was gloom. No, it does not hurt me anymore. But it is not painless. It is a feeling the description I am not quite sure of. It led me to ask myself: Have I really wisened-up from the pain of the past? Have I really out-grown my past? Or have I just been running away from the pain?

What is this indescribable feeling that swells up in me from a simple conversation? Why is it neither painful nor painless?