It is bipolar on steroids these days, and has been so since
the past month or so. The prospects look both promising and grim: unburdening
rewards on positive results, and a bleak resumption of ‘making a living’ should
the results appear negative. Either way, the time testing, continues. I wouldn’t
say I am particularly enjoying my life on a whole, but what is required of me
transcends my capacity of liking life or not, and calls me for an elderly behaviour
for doing what one should. To suffer without complain is the only thing we have
to learn in this life, said one of the stoics. And while I am not suffering, I am
not ‘not-suffering’ either. When the highs hit, which can be on many occasions
in a day, it goes from frenzy excitements to buoyed optimism; and I hate it. Excitement,
a sister of optimism, is bearer of equal mental strain, arguably positive some
might say, as anxiety or stress are, in negative manner. Both these extremes
put you in a non-normal state from where you will most certainly fluctuate. Highs
shall dip into lows, and as for the lows, well they appear to be of a repeating
nature, and makes sure you only await or notice its eventual descend rather than
its lifting. What remains is Aristotle’s golden mean: a midpoint between these
extremes where one is neither worried nor optimistic. One just, is - preferably
lazy, but at least accepting of life and its normalcy in general – doing, or
rather being able to think and do ‘the next right thing’ as Carl Jung suggested.
But shamefully, humans aren’t tranquil creatures.
I will use the privilege of my past life to build a narrative
up to this point – something I love to do. The year started on a high, after
the ‘wintering’ that I supposedly went through. The strain of being jobless and
the frustration of not being successful in acquiring any had been minimized by
my stay at home and just sort of retreating from the pressure of it all.
Convocation brought back some much-needed reassurance and a sense of achievement,
a revival to soldier on. Friends visiting Karachi involved me in a spray of almost
daily, and nightly, tours of the city, which only added to my humble attraction
for ‘this city of filth, robustness, and sheer perseverance’ – not ‘the city of
lights’ at the marketers and snobbish people tend to hypocritely portray it as.
Then my first job came out of nowhere. It was occupying, modestly paying, and window
for me to meet new people and spend a good time with them. I believe it taught
me the need to be ‘nice’ even if you don’t have to, and to carry, or even start,
a conversation in earnestness even if it requires faking it. It is worth it: meeting
people warmly is worth it. Plus, it feeds into your ‘need’ of being liked, so
yeah. Fun while it lasted, I’d say, which were only the three months of the
promised six months of training. Where my modest salary came and went, ever more
modest after my non-paid leaves (accident, Eid), I don’t remember. I wish I had
some saved, but the habit of spending money when you have to never allows you.
At least, I helped capitalism, in spite of my intense dislike of it. I was laid
off in June, just when I was beginning to find it okay even if I ended up
working at Diamond Mart. The next four months I spent at home – ‘doing nothing’
while not liking, at all, Odell’s book ‘How to do Nothing’. Which contradicts
me immediately of course, since I did do something, I read books. But isn’t
reading, when you have nothing to do, as normal as like using your phone or
meeting with friends. It is a leisure activity, something to lighten the unbearable
lightness of being. Whatever, I did pick my reading pace after its dismal
record during the first half of the year. Highlights from home were: Eid, weddings,
abundant free food, Muharram, more food, hello monsoon, floods, cricket, and then
of course, the need to leave and ‘make do’. I was almost criminally calm during
those four months. I did nothing to help ease the burden of preparing for the exams,
for which I told everyone I was preparing for – since you always have to be ‘doing’
something – and once again cramped into a short time-span about which I am now
stressing like an adult (I was about to write ‘child’, but children don’t stress).
Then Karachi, and my realization of me having wasted time, and a gnawing
reality of me, still, not having a job like last year.
But since leaving home, things have picked up unwanted pace
and activity. My observation of autumn’s arrival through ‘a sense of things
starting to happen’ wasn’t far wrong. With Mohsin’s job in Karachi, a momentum
shifted which is still in motion. Not that his job had anything direct to do
with my life, but it was, I guess, something that shifted us from our slumber of
the long summer and the stagnation from the floods. I, for once, finally came
here after a heroic cricket performance, and started on what I couldn’t afford
to postpone, or avoid, anymore. My three, very bothering, weeks here in Karachi
resulted in a birth of systemic preparation which is my only saving grace from
the potentially colossal failure that I might face in the upcoming competitive
exams. But the sad thing is, I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to appear for these
exams. This was a diversion from the path I started on. Yet I had to take
shelter here for there wasn’t any other engagements that could save me from
myself and from the scorn of others, specially those near me. And this is the
core of my confusion and unrest at this point, preparing for an exam that I don’t
fully want to participate in, but have to since I failed to be prepared, or of
grit, for what I had to do in my career in the business fields – let alone my
once buoyant hopes from formal writing. I still feel stuck. I still dread when I
think of February, when the veil of the exams will lift and I’d have to face
the world again – bear faced. Will something happen then? Will I be able to
make something happen? Where is faith? What is faith? I’ve been here. Just last
year.
Mother’s unwell currently, and it is not pretty. I am afraid
her health will only worsen by each passing year, given her tendency for repeating
what are objectively harmful behaviours for her health, both mental and
physical. To her however, she may appear just as vulnerable to her pattern of living
as I appear to mine. Empathy confronts us with our own hypocrisy and it is a bitter
pill to sallow sometimes. Her chronic displeasure and her consistently
problematic incidents will only resurface the unattended questions our family has
been swiftly ignoring. The ‘mehr’, for I haven’t yet as beautiful a word in English
to use instead, in our family has gone scarce and is under starvation. When will
we come together as a family again? When will we feel a family again? We are
there for each other, yet the impression I get is that we are all for
ourselves, fighting to secure what is worryingly a cold and divided future. ‘Patience,
my lord’, as Tommy says. Give time, time.
This wouldn’t be an honest account of the winter of 2022, or
indeed a review of the year, if I choose to not write about what has mostly, enormously,
consumed me in the past three years. In an act of defiance, of which I am
condemned with since my last rude email, I want to skip this part, but I also
need to let it out, for it to appear understandable in the written words. Last
December happened the coldest of our breakups, in which I might have seen the beginning
of the end, and realizing it broke down and took a three days isolation. But
life happened, as it does, for worse at first, for better eventually. She did
return, as she does, but only to mingle and not adhere. Things got bruisy
again, I didn’t want to talk for I was beginning to get emotionally tired while
still remaining earnestly hopeful for her to become kinder. The month of Ramadan,
a month of blessing as the belief goes, became a month of torment for me. first
bike accident in Karachi, and both my ex and her, announcing their engagement
news. The breaking of the heart is, still, even considering everything else
that is painful in this world, a most painful, sad, and crushing event. I literally
broke down. I yawned at the news of my ex’s engagement and was happy at heart,
and it bit me back when the real news came from her. The yawning mocked my
desperate cries and the sudden darkness around me. I continued. May happened in
Multan, but the whole trip took an unsavoring cloak over it as my attempt to
bring back the broken pieces lead to my bleeding. But it had to happen I guess,
for her to behave so ultimately cruelly, it had to happen. That, combined with Arif’s
softening and hardening, both, follow up of the situation, and me continuing to
find shelter in my work at Diamond, helped me end a history that seemed to
forever to linger on. ‘We are past the end, so we so chase forever’ reads a
line from the lyrics of All We Know by @thechainsmokers. It was ‘the end of
history’, or so it seemed. And so it seems, still. She appeared again, privy to
her habits. I engaged rudely; she backed off. Silence for a couple of months. And
then again. I stood my Jaun’s defeated words ‘Khamoshi se ada ho rasm-e-doori’.
But it continued. She continued. I got irritated. I knew it was over for me,
but not completely. Part of anticipated her next attempt at contact, and
stopped from engaging for it would shoo her away for good. But finally, against
and despite myself, I did engage – and shooed her away. The end of history
remains firmly ended, I wrote, but I am less proud of it than it sounds. I remain
defeated, abandoned, alone. I have lost something. For her, life seems to be
happening. I remain stubbornly melancholic, painful, and privy to smoking whenever
I am reminded of her.
But life happens for me too, at least as much as I make it
happen. Azimi’s wife is a good company, the preparation gives me a good
feeling, three exams are lining up for me, friends are good, movies still
better, reading on a back seat but to back with full force, and at least in
parts, I finally feel detached. I can finally think about my life now without having
her in it. The reconstruction of identity from the pieces before her and after
her is working. I shall continue, but with Popova’s humble realization, that it
will be out of instinct, or habit, or compulsion, or having have to than its positive
sounding counterparts of hope, optimism, believe, faith. Let’s see what life awaits
us on a future date: what will I fill the days with and how, and what will the
forces outside of me, bring.
November 24, 2022