This withdrawal from the norm and everything else that accompanies it, came to me very early in my life, but in recent times, it has grown to unimaginable heights.
I am finally writing because being grateful is an amazing feeling. Thank you for tolerating my absurdities in not responding to your messages and mails immediately.
I do things for myself now. If I do things for you, it will only be because I want to, not because I am obliged to.
And oftentimes, I really do not want to respond, not in any way, because of you, but because a two-way conversation is too overwhelming for me.
The normal feeling attached to us is of rejection when someone fails to reply our mails or messages as soon they have read them. We wonder if we said or did something to upset the other person. Thus, we assume, overthink and get affected.
My philosophy is simple. Two can perceive the same picture with different conclusions. What the artist portrays is not what the viewer receives. Assumptions always outlive their uselessness.
May I please request you to stop asking me how I am.
If I say I am extremely unwell, you will sympathize and give me your warmth in words or offer me free advice after inquiring further.
If I say I am exceptionally happy in my solitude, you would think I am lying because no one is really happy alone.
But the truth is just that. I am majorly unwell physically, and over the moon happy alone. I neither wish to keep repeating it nor do I seek or want your response to it. Perhaps, that is the reason I do not communicate.
I bask in my own company in a madman sort of way defying John Donne’s `no man is an island’ statement. Neither company nor comfort from others equate happiness for me.
The greatest thing in the world is to belong to oneself, the greatest freedom, the greatest happiness and the greatest friendship. When you are your own best friend, even fettered chains will not hold you.
Forgive me, perhaps if you want to or don’t. It does not matter to me, not because you don’t matter but because the comfort and friendship I have with myself far outweighs anything you say or think about me.
Even after this letter, I will not hope that you understand my `deranged’ behaviour. Hope is the devil, succumbing to illusions and delusions.
You and I are very different, and if you say we are not, I can list down the differences that might surprise you but the point I am accentuating here is that you will not understand me because I am not you and vice versa. It’s as simple as that.
We judge, assume and empathize from our perspectives, from a version of us, not of the other person’s because we are not intellectually equipped to do that.
I prefer if you do not inquire after me. I have nothing to tell you that will make you smile. You will perceive me as negative and a lost cause. I may perceive you as the same.
I stopped mincing my words giving diplomacy a bad name. My honesty is brutal even to myself. And no matter how honest I am with you, still, my truth may not be your truth in a parallel duality that never meets.
Remaining incommunicado grants me an aura of happiness drenched in silence. It’s the same silence I obsess with, the same rhythm, the same beat, the same sound that permeates my pores in an orchestral melody.
Though any normal person will feel an overall uneasiness and concern for my words, I want to say that I appreciate you more today than I ever did earlier in our relationship, but that I don’t need you to understand what I have become.
I don’t even need you to accept me.
In fact, I don’t need anything of you or from you, not even a message and I will still love you.
I love you more than you possibly think but I reject the normal accepted ways of displaying love and affection because the stereotypes do not suit me.
I was there once too. And I wasn’t happy.
My choices changed and I accommodated growth in a circle I encompassed for myself, caring only for my version of who I am.
Insults and praise from others stopped having an effect on me. I figured it is absurd to live my life on people’s thoughts. Your dos and don’ts aren’t mine. Your advice is your perception. Your thoughts are your bondage and your inferences come from your experience. None of them belong to me so why should they decide my path?
What you take from this letter will determine the way you think and perceive things. If you are upset with what I said, you should question why you are upset about many other things in your life too.
But if you are not perturbed or in the slightest way disturbed, I commend you for not allowing your emotions to overpower you. It is admirable and displays great strength to not yield to praise or insults, rudeness or warmth, honesty or lies but to take them as they are, learning what is needed, sieving the rest.
I started out this letter with every intention of sending it to you.
But the hour glass has been a constant companion in my solitude and I learnt silence from it. I however, did ask myself why a letter written for you isn't being sent your way.
As a friend pointed out, people cannot handle the truth, and that is why I preferred blogging my thoughts in a neutral space, not responding to you and not requiring one from you in return.
I would like to end with this.
Leaving people alone and asking them to leave you alone is an unequalled skill.
And I have mastered it in my solitude.
