This Too Shall Pass

It feels like the end of the world. The pain is excruciating. The sorrow of this one moment effaces from the memory, all that has constituted my life so far; all those happy days, happy moments, all the love and all the fortune of this life that I should be grateful for.
It’s like this every time.

It engulfs me so completely that I become blind to all else around me.

When I walk, it is as if in a trance. My walk has slowed down. This load in my heart is taking away the spring in my step.
I feel guilty of not living in the present moment and I try to shake away those thoughts. For a brief moment, I force my attention to the beautiful morning, the blossom laden boughs that sway in the gentle morning breeze, the tender rays of the morning sun, the tiny glistening leaves, the beautiful houses lining the street and their gardens and the blue sky above.
And the next moment, I am in a trance again.

When I eat, I am in a trance. What used to take me 20 minutes now takes 45 minutes. I put a morsel of food in my mouth and then brood. I look out of the window at the faraway trees and the faraway sky as if I am looking for an answer. The grief welling up in my throat does not allow any more food to enter. I force another morsel anyway.

When I read, I am in a trance. I open the pages, begin reading and my thoughts drift … I jolt myself out of my reverie. I bring my attention to what PG Wodehouse or MK Gandhi is saying. I am eager to finish one page just so that I can take a break and brood some. I read for 5 minutes and pause for 10 minutes.

I listen to music more than before. Every other song brings a tear in my eyes. I might as well have composed and sung some of those songs.

Sleep isn’t the same any more. It’s an experience of sinking into a bottomless well and resting there through the night…. dreaming of the impossible….thinking of that which I will never possess... imagining all kinds of miracles that will turn the impossible to the possible and trying to believe in those miracles.
And in the morning, waking up isn’t easy.
Swimming up from the bottom of a deep well to its surface takes humungous effort!

A wretched moment’s accident –perhaps it was a part of the grand design – has turned into a futile occupation of the mind.

When a cinder enters your eye, it hurts every second and every minute that it’s inside the eye. You could try ignoring it and doing other things… talking, working, eating, singing, playing… but the cinder will not let you rest for a minute. Your fingers will rub your eye without a minute’s rest.

But this is not the first time. It is a familiar pain. It is a familiar ache. It was as cruel, as unforgiving last time as it is now. I thought it would kill me. But it didn’t. Time healed.
What had once seemed unbearable, now lies quietly and innocently in the recesses of the past, having gathered the dust of time.

This too shall pass.
I only hope it shall pass soon.