Alas! All music jars when the soul's out of tune - Miguel De Cervantes
It has been said, that according to the teachings of the idealists the words ‘live’ and ‘dream’ are rigorously synonymous. I must admit that I subscribed to this belief for as along as I can remember. Perhaps it all started the day I was eleven and wanted to jump off a balcony but my grandfather handed me a copy of The Hobbit as an alternative and told me that ‘reading’ would make everything better. “Only if you have an aptitude for it,” he warned and I didn’t understand his meaning until now. Being hurled into a world of perennial fantasy is extremely perilous for those that can adapt to it as easily and comfortably as I.
In retrospect, I believe I mistook my grandfathers meaning. I thought he meant that cultivating and constructing multiple utopias was a gift when it’s more likely he actually meant the opposite. That the illusory ‘aptitude’ was actually about retaining the ability to keep the worlds opening before you at a safe distance. To delve but not dive. Sadly, my realisation comes far too late - the damage is done and the illusion shattered.
My expectations regarding ideal company skyrocketed as a child and I have never been able to find even a close substitute in life. ‘Real’ people are boring, terribly ordinary, petty and predictable. ‘Reality’ is a self-perpetuating disappointment and loneliness is a pinnacle. Naturally, there are consequences and my loneliness isn’t always enjoyable, especially not when all those around me appear to possess that ‘ordinariness’, that ‘regular people’ ability to converse, coerce and crave company without doubting and deliberating absolutely everything that crosses their emotional spectrum.
And yet, I have come to realise and admit finally that observation is enough for me. I have discovered that I am not as jaded as I would hope to be or as, perhaps, I need to be. That my Valhalla is intact. I merely recognise that it is solitary and this is admittedly, a painful realisation.
A few days ago, I was trying to explain to my grandmother why I could not see myself ‘settling down’ as it were and it took me a long time to finally locate the words. “I think, Nano, that I am an unfailing, diehard romantic who knows perfectly well that romance is dead,” the words, while prolific were hard to choke out and to acknowledge. It was bittersweet to finally capitulate and admit that I was built to be alone.
I have been accused of being stubborn and unbending in the face of ‘reality’, which apparently requires a supple soul to manipulate. This is undeniably true. I find that I have an innate inability to ‘settle’ or ‘bend’ for others, perhaps cultivated over a lifetime of taking care of just myself. And it is becoming blatantly obvious now, at this precarious catch-22 corner of inconvenience where my age, my family and my culture requires me to affect a need that I simply do not feel. A need for a partner and for love.
But the viper in me refuses to accede an inch. I have always thought far too much about far too much and always in the way of incomplete anagrams. I have been called the ‘ice queen’, who feels only for strangers, lost ideals and an over-achieving standard of self-righteousness. I simply cannot resent the title and if I’m honest I wear it proudly. I do lack an ability to feel for the ‘feelings’ of others, I can empathise with their problems and trials but never their feelings. It was there when I was a child but it was quiet then. It is still quiet but no longer so because I am afraid. Rather I am alone now because I am far too sure of myself as well as my thoughts and not at all of others.
Also, my recent forays into the reality of heartbreak has shattered the many urban myths about the supposed ‘merits of companionship’. I am no longer looking for someone’s antique cousin to rescue me from myself, to hold my hand only when I need it held and to laugh with me for ‘as long as we both shall live’.
I have always had an overzealous imagination and I can create those men from hazy blueprints I encounter in person. The real men in my life have always, always, always been bullies. I have never met a man who wasn’t one, be it in the intellectual, emotional, physical or spiritual sphere. Truth be told women are bullies too but they are more subtle about it…I believe their employed variant is called ‘badgering’.
“But what is wrong with him,” my Nani implores me for the umpteenth time about the umpteenth candidate and I fail to understand how to explain that there need be nothing wrong with a man for him to be the wrong man for me. I am wrong for them! I was never one of Austen’s women, my imagination rapid though it is, never did jump from ‘admiration to love and from love to matrimony in moments’. My exegesis in masochism is a life style choice as I have circumvented the latter at all costs.
I shall remain, forever, unfinished. It is the only way I can keep myself.
