Friday 3 May 2013

Unravelling at the Seams

It felt as though your life was hanging precariously on a slender thread. Your life was knitted together by this thread – it held all the fragments of your being together. At the same time this thread kept your life hanging up high, protecting it from the terrifying fall that would most likely blow it into smithereens.

This life that you chose to lead started off easy at first. Everything seemed to fall into place with ease and life was simple and pleasant. When it seemed like hardship was on the horizon you found yourself tackling it head on and working your way out of it as easily as inserting an IV line in your residency.

This was all before you decided to grow up. The day you decided to wear your big girl pants and open yourself up to more than your usual mundane activities was the day you began to put stress upon the metaphorical thread that governed your being. Opening yourself up to other people, allowing someone to enter the cavernous halls of your inner sanctum, is a moment of maturity, or rather a step toward maturity.

The moment you overcome the fear of cootees and embrace the idea of a relationship that transcends the boundaries of friendship can only be viewed as an awakening of deep set emotions that should be left to hibernate for eternity. This realisation of the existence of sexual urges and arousal only leads to pain, heart break and also moments of ecstasy, elation and happiness.

Eventually, you reach a point where you find yourself drawn to a singular fish in the vast ocean that is human kind. You are drawn to his charismatic nature, his ease of grace and the enigma that defines him. You find yourself laughing at his jokes, smiling for no apparent reason and suddenly the world seems right.

However, all good things must come to an end whether we would like it or not. A rude awakening of sorts will emerge from the darkness that was once kept at bay by his presence. This opening of one’s inner eye, this sudden understanding that people aren't always what they seem and that the figurative heart that beats with emotion can actually break, occurs so suddenly it can only be akin to the electric shock administered to a dead beat heart – the shock is life changing.

You find that the weight of emotions that have suddenly overcome you, like a wave of morning sickness, is too much to bear. The thread that is holding you together is under tremendous stress. Slowly, almost unnoticed, the thread begins to unravel and little by little you begin to fall apart. While the bulk of your essence remains attached, fragments of who you are come loose and with nothing to hold them to the greater picture that is you, they fall to the ground and become lost in the jungle of time below.

That is the problem with building a large portion of your life around a person, when they change (which they will eventually do) you are left with this gaping hole and no way of filling it. This sudden loss of substance causes the unravelling of the seams that hold you together to become to noticeable that you can no longer ignore the truth – you are hurting, you are dying an emotional death.   

And so you hold on with dear life to the thread supporting you. As much as you may be dying inside your will to cling on to life is a desperation that cannot be explained. Holding on with all you have is the only answer, the only way to move forward and rebuild your life. And so you do just that… tighten your grip on your life’s thread and at the same time you begin to let go of the dead weight. The anger, pain, tears, hurt and everything else that is weighing you down and fraying your life line – you toss it over. Rather let the seams unravel and lose what is unnecessary than to continue to harbour emotions that will only serve to snap the thread.

Letting go is when you know you have made a move toward maturity and happiness. It is the needle that helps one to sew back their lives, suture the wounds, dress the burns and accept that although people will hurt you and tear your world apart, there are others out there that will be kind enough to inject the anaesthetic as you sew yourself back together.  



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