Graceless Hearts

 Perfectly balanced on the tips of her toes, a ballerina represents all things beautiful and graceful. Every step, every artful arc created by her body is an epitome of grace. Years of practice and decades of experience create the perfect flowing form.

This ease of grace so easily seen by many an ignorant bystander far from reflects the person that resides within. Grace and poise are expected of a woman. She must exhibit these qualities on a daily basis irrespective of the wars and struggles being fought within her aching soul. For it is simple: love, hope, expectations and life in general bring nothing more than pain, despair, disappointment and heart ache.

These conflicts mar the soul, the person in their entirety. Eventually maintaining the socially expected standard of grace becomes hard to achieve. Yet it is required. This persona we project is the only constant within a world falling apart. Pretending we are okay becomes a must. We focus our energy and emotion into appearing normal and well, while inside the cardiac muscle that makes up our heart slowly begins to atrophy.

Inside words such as ‘grace’, ‘normal’ and ‘happy’ don’t exist. Your heart betrays the façade you have put up. It destroys all you are trying to build up. It knows not the concept of grace and beauty but turns into an ugly and decaying beast that will stop at nothing short of tearing you apart. The harder you try to keep your issues inside, to hide your dark and terrible thoughts from the rest of the world, the more likely you are to strengthen the beast that is your heart.

It feeds off the negativity building up inside of you. It eats away at everything you are trying to build up. Every attempt to become stronger, harder and to just simply find a way to move on is ruined by the graceless heart residing innocently within your thoracic cavity. Without a second thought it foils all attempts to make the façade a reality. It is a spiteful being that represents everyone and everything that put you in this situation.

Eventually the only option left is to carve out the mutated heart and opt for a heart transplant. There is no way of overcoming the monster once it has built its strength up on your many failures. It is easier and simpler to cut your losses and find something else to replace the heart that has done nothing more than cause you pain.

Plans

sourced from: http://www.zerochan.net/1249982#full

We associate the word with such pleasant connotations and look forward to planning ahead, creating a future and all other happy and wonderful things. Little do we realise that we are but a faint shimmer in the vast mirage that is life. How insignificant we truly are and above all how fickle are our plans.

I can no longer say ‘plans’ without a terrible loathing creeping in to my voice.  Vast amounts of time and energy have been invested in coming up with various plans and ideas and an even greater amount has gone in to dealing with the repercussions and disappointments constantly associated with the failure of each plan to be correctly executed or achieved. It is quite obvious that I am either not a very good planner or we are not meant to spend an infinite amount of time planning.

Being the ever so realistic person that I am I have chosen the latter option. Why do we plan? We want to feel as though we have some sense of control in our lives. We’d rather believe that we are in control of our destiny instead of accepting the fact that we are hurtling around the sun at about 100 000 km/h with no idea when we might collide with some asteroid. So we plan… we decide when we will wake up the next morning, we decide what career path we will follow, who we will marry, when we will get married,  how many kids we will have, where we will live and so on and so forth. The list is endless.

What saddens me most is how easily all these plans can fall apart. In one swift motion life comes swooping in through your doorway and you find that everything you have planned has suddenly fallen to pieces and you are left with nothing. With everything you ever envisioned for your future blown out the window you are suddenly left with no idea where to go. You are left meandering through the meadow and well… simply put… you have no future.

Or so you think. That is the thing with the future, we can never determine how it will pan out no matter how much we plan and prepare for it. It will always elude us and remain unattainable. Regardless of the fruitless hours spent planning for your future you will always find yourself at some point with your plans dashed to the ground and a terrible sense of disappointment.

The answer is simple. Don’t plan. Why not just accept that life has some plan for you and irrespective of what you want it will only give you your due share. If you can accept that fact you no longer feel the need to plan every big and supposedly important moment in your life. After all it is the unplanned and spontaneous moments in our lives that leave us with the best memories.

Planning for every eventuality will see you miss the chance to find yourself lying on the grass on a glorious day and just being content. If you had to think back on all your best memories you would realise that most of them occurred through some random twist of fate. Forgetting your keys on a seemingly random day could result in a whole new experience, a whole new lease on life. Had you planned each detail you would have found yourself missing out on one of the best experiences of your life.

Life is fleeting and time waits for no man but at the same time, if we spend our entire lives planning when exactly are we living? 

Consumed

Trapped within the eerie bowels of the Earth you lay naked- covered in nothing more than your guilt, shame and pain. Arms stretch out to cover your bare chest and legs pulled up beneath your chin you find yourself shaking, sobbing, losing it all…

Quivering with fear, goosebumps begin to appear across your bare flesh. Hurriedly you try to rub some warmth into your arms and fail miserably. It isn’t the cold causing you to react as such; it is the voices within you. The darkness tethered yet straining against its bonds lets out a snarl. Angry, it regains its lost strength and begins to fight against your weakening resolve with renewed vigour.

And the voices… oh the voices assault your every hour. Pressing your hands tightly to your eardrums and taking in a deep breath you find yourself screaming. Throat raw from the force of the scream you find yourself trembling. The dam begins to overflow and fall apart and you sob hysterically, uncontrollably. You show no restraint.

And the voices… oh how they mock you. Tossing insults and jeering as you attempt to gain a semblance of self-control.  Their words cut through your exposed flesh as though it were paper thin. Bypassing soft tissue and bone they find your centre, the one place within you that has helped you stay sane for so long. The voices find your weakened soul.

The darkness lets out a howl of laughter… at long last he shall be freed, he shall reign terror within the caverns of your being. A shiver runs down your spine, sweat cascading down your clammy flesh. Mouth dry and eyes red with fear you try to articulate your fear, desperately clutching at some way out. The earth damp beneath your feet, insects crawling among the crevices of your body, your fear palpable…

The laughter fills your ears, echoes in every cell within your body until all that exists is the rich tenor of its glee. Your mind shatters beneath the weight of it all and you give in. With one final ounce of sanity you look up to the light so far away… so high above your head.

The darkness consumes you….

Vicious Destruction

It is but a simple matter of deciding to call it quits and attempt to move on to something bigger and better. We delude ourselves into believing in the simplicity of it all. It is easy, time will heal all and eventually everything will be back to how it was meant to be.

Sounds simple doesn’t it? Delusions are easy to come by. They are built up on the idea of hope and result in the creation of an unattainable mirage of sorts- an image hovering over the horizon promising to still the dehydration threatening your demise.  The idea that you have moved on is akin to a confabulation.  Fabricated memories become the order of the day as you fill the gaps of your life with ideas and beliefs of happiness and grandeur.

The truth is you are but merely at the starting point of what can only be described as a vicious cycle of despair and destruction. You allow yourself to fall prey to the vulture hovering over your slowly decomposing corpse. You believe your heart is dead of emotion and this same dead heart is now ripe for devouring by the vulture of dark thoughts and fearsome panther of pain within you.

And so the cycle begins. You let the idea that these emotions don’t exist within you govern your interactions with every person you meet. You treat them as merely another mechanism by which to prove to both yourself and the rest of the world that you have moved on. Anything is better than accepting the fact that you have a long road of pain ahead. So rather pretend everything is okay, let the world see you happy, seek a sense of acceptance and hope it lasts.

However, acceptance can only take you so far. Eventually you find yourself reeling from the sudden stabbing pain within your chest and you find yourself within the darkness of your room lying in the foetal position and hoping the tons of analgesics you have just ingested will still the pain. When it has subsided to a mere dull ache at the back of your mind you are forced to take stock of all you have done and you find that you have achieved nothing in your pointless meanderings. This menagerie of people you have let enter and leave your life in an attempt to seem stable and whole has only served to further tear you apart and take a full 360 back to the start.

As you lie in this position, overcome by the dark emotions overflowing within you like a fountain of blood cascading from a severed carotid artery, you realise the unutterable truth. You have a heart, a heart aching for love, for completeness, for some sense of reason to keep going. In that epiphany of sorts, a profound life changing moment emerges. Realisation that you still feel and still yearn for something beyond just a pretentious show put on for the world, results in opening one's inner eye to a world of possibility.

You are not alone, there are others out there who feel or believe they no longer feel. It is a simple matter of finding some such person with whom to put together all that seems wrong. It is merely a matter of breaking out of the constant cycle of debilitating pain you have allowed to cripple you for so long.

“Merely” …. If only it were that simple.

Fickle Hope

Legend has it that when Pandora’s Box was opened all the evils were unleashed upon the earth. Envy, Crime, Hate, Disease, and Greed: you name it and it was released. However, amongst all the evils contained within the box, Hope remained meekly at the bottom, the last of all to be released.

We always allow ourselves to feel hope despite the severity of our situations. It is the one thing that makes us feel as though we can get through anything, or so we make ourselves believe. Hope is a fickle, reckless and fleeting emotion. It is very easy to hold on to this emotion but all it serves to do is set you up for further disappointment.

Hope is dangerous. It is a state in which one believes that a good outcome is possible when all else seems to fail. However, in my experience I have found that all hope does is makes you believe the impossible, makes you go against all logic and reason. It is associated with the heart as opposed to the brain. Clearly, it is something illogical, pointless and painful- as is everything emotive.

The problem with hoping is that when things don’t work out- which is quite the usual occurrence- you find yourself with a raised JVP and tender liver heading toward heart failure. It isn’t worth it really. What makes it worse is realising that you are the cause of your constant disappointments and pain. If we didn't hope that things would get better then we wouldn't find ourselves disappointed if it didn't work out.

I guess that is the true reason that hope was contained within a box of evil. It is the sort of painful emotion that is so well disguised that we don’t even realise the damaging effects. We offer hope to any person we see in pain believing that it will make them feel better. Worse, we even feel a sense of accomplishment when we find that we have managed to make someone smile in spite of the pain they are in. Yet, when their world comes crashing down, all the hope in the world is not going to make them feel better. If anything, all the hope you offered them will only make the fall that much harder.

The problem lies in that we have lived off the detrimental effects of hope for so long that it has become second nature. It is so easy for us to fall into the spiral of despair and believe that hope is the anchor that will save us from drowning that we fail to see the harm in it.

We all hate to admit that we are falling off a cliff mere seconds from crashing in to the earth, so we hope that our backpack will miraculously turn into a parachute. This truth is we are going to hit the ground. The difference being that is will come as quite a shock, laced with unbearable pain, simply because we were living with the hope that we’d be soaring in the sky instead of ending up a bloody mess. 

The Tinker

With everything step she took a strange rattling sound emanated from her chest. By now however, she had gotten so used to the clanking that it no longer bothered her. Unfortunately, it did not escape the notice of her constant companion who was highly bothered by the sound.

“What is that awful racket? Are you carrying metal tools or something in your blouse?” he asked, indignantly.

She replied rather nonchalantly, “Why, I’m not quite sure. I guess I've never really paid it much mind as it didn't seem to inflict much harm.”

“Well I fancy myself a tinker of sorts. Would you mind if I took a look to see what is going on with you?”

She contemplated the offer before curiosity won her over and she agreed. With his tools in hand he laid her down on the table and began to open up the framework of her form. Her clockwork was quite priceless. Exquisite detailed etched across her face and body. She was indeed a work of art.

Suddenly, he exclaimed, “Oh dear! I know what the problem is. My darling, you have a broken heart."

Sadness dulled all her senses and rather mutely she replied, “Not much we can do about it. Just close me up and I’ll be on my way.”

Seeing the sadness so deeply etched in her face he couldn't help but feel his own heart ache for her. In that moment he made a decision. He would live up to his title of tinker and attempt to fix the broken heart that seemed to block out all other sounds from entering his precious one’s life. He would help her through her pain, fix her heart and fill her life with the sounds of life and not loss.

After all: he will either be really good at it and fix her right up, or else he will be unable to do much and she will remain as when he found her.

On hearing his offer she was flabbergasted. Would someone really offer to mend her? She was broken for so long that she forgot what it meant to be whole. She had been living with the constant reminder of her pain that she no longer knew what I was to just smile, to live, to laugh and above all she forgot what it meant to have a companion with whom to move forward with. All it took was a broken heart. If it hadn't broken in the first place she would never have found what she did in her tinker.

So the process began. Painstakingly slow. He carefully took her apart one quadrant at a time. He evaluated everything with such detail that soon he knew her better than she knew herself. It became his personal mission of sorts. He would find what was bent, dented or dusty and fix it right up. He would leave everything he touched clean and shining until one morning she woke up to find herself a new person of sorts.

He had worked so long and so hard on fixing the muddled cogs that made her function, that her world now took on a new dimension. She found herself not only living for herself but for the tinker as well.

He took what was broken and made it whole. He gave her life. He gave her reason.

Oppens Pollicus

While I delved into the world of human anatomy and basic sciences for an upcoming exam I was struck by the sheer brilliance that is the thumb, or as we in the medical field refer to it, pollicus.

Being among the superior species as per Darwin, we were blessed with opposable thumbs due to the brilliance of the muscle “oppens pollicus” which enables us to grasp objects as well as engage in a number of various activities denied to other species.

In that single moment, I found myself absolved in the idea of what life would be like were we to lose this simple digit we take for granted. Simple activities like brushing ones teeth or eating would be lost to you. How would you grasp your food or comb your hair? In a single stroke of bad luck you could find yourself reduced to an animal. It is exquisitely amazing how one small addition to a body can make a world of difference yet we never even give it a second thought based simply on the fact that it has always been there.

It is easy to equate the beauty that is the thumb to so much we have and so much we don’t even realise we have. It is easy to always have someone in your life and not even realise how much colour, life and laughter they bring to it. We see them often enough, speak to them all the time but never do we consider the repercussions of a life without them. Of course you will live on without them as you lived before they entered your life, just as you won’t die from the loss of your thumb. However, you will find your life drastically altered. Simple pleasures like laughter will be lost to you.  You find yourself struggling to find some sense of normalcy in your day to day living and everything that once seemed easy is suddenly drenched in the sweat of difficulty.

That is the problem with taken anything for granted. We don’t realise just how much our parents do for us, how hard they work for us and how much they love us until we no longer have them around. When they are gone, you find yourself thumbless: unable to simply stir a pot of food. The importance we place on the people within our lives is dimmed by the importance we place on ourselves. Too concerned with how we feel and how other people treat us we forgot to treat them well and to treasure them in the way they deserve.

It is simple to fall in love with a person but it is everything that comes with that simple feeling of “love” that makes the difference. We are quick to take on the task of caring for another person and their feelings but all too quickly do we allow them to become just part of the furniture. We forget that they are the reason we find ourselves smiling for no reason or laughing at a song based on a simple memory associated with it. The moment that person is gone we find our lives laced with sadness and difficulty just as our lives will be fraught with pain at the loss of the thumb.

Take 10 seconds to picture how you would eat a sandwich without your thumb. In that same moment imagine one person you would equate the importance of this digit of the hand with. It seems easy enough but when you try to imagine happiness without them it becomes difficult. This is simply because happiness has become such a normal part of your life that to suddenly lose it due to the loss of someone you care for immensely seems impossible. 

Just as the thumb allows us to grasp objects, we should also learn to get a grasp on our feelings, to overcome the denial we feel inclined toward when suddenly asked if we care or love a person. Why deny something important and meaningful?

Embrace it, understand it and it will never be lost to you.