Breaking through: Living Alone blues

I am Twenty two. I live alone in an apartment in the Capital. As soon as people hear this, they bombard me with questions.Questions concerning my securities, fears of living alone in an apparently carnivorous city like Delhi where men see you as meat, then, they mellow it down to how do I manage my food or 'kill' my time, etc. etc. Thankfully, I face no issues in dealing with any of the above posed problems. In fact, living alone was a very conscious choice. It wasn't the first of course, but, when circumstances lead to it and I moved in an apartment alone, I questioned myself for not having thought about it earlier. Living alone is bliss. More so for people like me who are greedy for their own space and company.

The struggle is not the fear of a paranormal activity, robbery, theft or molestation. The concern arises during times when all I long for is a human company to bring me back into the real world from the parallel world I am then inhabiting or a chain of thoughts that has led me way too astray, into the real. It arises at times when you spend hours sitting in the same position, thinking, and you don't realise the amount of time that passed meanwhile. When a soul shaking idea recurs in your head and all you want is something to protect you from it or at least distract you. And there is no one. It is a fit of loneliness that either brings along restlessness or leaves you dazed. I crave to concentrate all my energies and thoughts in one place but pertaining to my womanly multi tasker mind, I can't. My mind wanders away in thoughts and places that I fear the most. I want to sleep it off but either insomnia hits or my overtly active subconscious keeps a dream picture of the same thought ready to haunt my sleep.

Those moments are horrifying but I HAVE to cope with them on my own. I have to wipe my tears off after an uncontrollable session of crying. When one cries, mostly there is someone to ask them not to but crying alone is a commitment. You know you will cry your heart out and then will have to shut yourself up. But when it's over you know you won't cry again. You learn to wipe your own tears and get back to work. You don't starve yourself too long because there is no one to offer you food or force you to eat. You have to help yourself. You are your own friend, the one who never leaves your side. It's really a fight between the conscious and subconscious. When your fears that reside in your subconscious overrule your stability by entering the conscious mind, you break. If you succeed in holding yourself together and act as a dam against the flowing in depression, you have mastered the art of living alone and if you fail, you will learn soon. Just don't give up.

Living alone makes you strong. It is frightening, challenging, back-breaking and demanding but, it helps you discover yourself. It is an experience, it's like your den, people come and visit but you're the one that lives and rules. If you're a lion/ lioness you will survive and your problems will fear you or become your meal ! And we all know "food" is always welcome, we know we shall finish it !

After all, there is always yellow light(I like yellow more) at the end of the tunnel.

I do.

Rings that teasingly came forth but vanished before she could say, I do.

They warn. That's all they do, warn you. Don't drink. Don't smoke. Don't go out in the night. Don't fall in love, it's a trap. Love is a lie. But, these two were thousands of galaxies away from those who warn and those who complain and all those who exist. They also say "Don't make a person the center of your universe !". But, they had created a universe of their own. A niche where the center or the corner didn't matter, they owned all of it together. They were like the first borns in the garden of Eden only without the fear of a forbidden fruit or the temptation of limitless knowledge, or anything at all. There was no fear. They merged to create the sublime. What then was left to fear ?

She was like the ocean to him, with a body that was curvaceous like the waves and her presence, an encompassing stretch so elaborate that she conquered his vision. All he could see was her limitless beauty. As far as he searched, all he could find was the depth in her eyes and the truth in her existence. She had cast her spell and he was taken. For her, he was like the sky. Where ever she looked she found him looking right back at her, gazing with eyes pouring down pearls of love. He was a poet and his poetry was the mild breeze that blew through her hair and tickled her face as she smiled.

They lay together all day, drowning in each other's eyes and falling in love each moment. Together they were art. Even lying on bed together seemed like a beautiful piece of art, where the artist has carefully placed two bodies and worked on them so religiously that their eyes make them one. He loved reading to her and she loved listening while she played with her dark deep wavy hair, he thought were like a flowing river. He leaned against the bedhead, with a book in his right hand and a cigarette in his left and read to her. She listened carefully for exactly a minute or two and then blew along with the smoke rings with each fag.

She didn't like that he smoked but was guilty of basking in the artistry that lay before her. She somehow relished watching him smoke. Each time he smoked she was so bewitched watching his bare torso resting on the bed-head and the belted jeans stuck at his hipbone taking drags of the cigarette and reading love sonnets to her that she found herself enmeshed. As he pulled at the bud with his firm lips, a dense array of smoke rings followed that commence together from the halo that his lips form and then disperse. She made castles of the smoke in her head, imagining one smoke ring to tie them forever while another would make a headband.

When the cigarette lounged between the first two fingers of his left hand, she noticed the shape his hands took. Once again she was captivated by the perfection of the carvings of his hands, she looked at them and wished to hold them between hers for the rest of her life.He tilted the cigarette on his fingers and tapped on it twice to drop the ashes that had stacked on the lit end and redid the poetry again from bringing it to his mouth to dropping the ashes in the tray as she lay with him adoring the whole act until the cigarette was pushed against the ash tray and all that remained was the residual bud, last trace of the mesmerizing art she bore in her mind but never produced. Like the wedding ring she saw coming each time but he never produced.