Baby Steps

Chapter 5

Day 1

Do you want to see something utterly beautiful? Look at her eyes after she just wiped her tears. The brown lightens up. Becomes more transparent. Like the heaviness was weighing down the colors and now it's gone. So the colors feel lighter, more beautiful. Look at her lashes, and on God no amount of mascara can achieve that beauty. And the lightness her eyes reflect, if that's not beauty, I don't know what is.

A breakdown episode of mine just commenced. I don't think it had a specific reason. It was the accumulation of everything that was going on. When the things happened, they didn't feel hard to carry, but I got home and I couldn't stand straight from the weight.

Maybe tears are nature's way of telling us to reconnect. A warning that we have strayed too far and away. That we should look at the sun for inspiration, the moon for support, the clouds for company, and the stars for their beauty. Maybe it's a warning to hold on, to not let go. To never lose our roots however wide our branches have expanded.

Laying on our terrace, staring at the moon, I wonder if it is always going to be this way. If same way life is growth after growth, change after change, if it is pain after pain, break after break. Or if we will become resistant to the pain and adapt. If ever it will get better.

It's been years with me waiting for better to come. I don't know if I am doing something wrong which makes things stay the way they are or if better is an illusion I created in my head to get me going. To keep moving. Or if I am too hung up on the mess, to appreciate the beauty and the actual better things I have got. That things are actually better but I am too bitter to realize. It hurts. It hurts that I don't know. It hurts more that I don't know if ever I will.

This gets me thinking, what if worse is also a state of mind. Something we created in our heads. What if I have the idea of better to get me going and the idea of worse for some other reason. What if I just need a shift in my reference frame to make everything better. Just look at things from a different angle. That sounds interesting, doesn't it?

And I bet it would work. You know how seeing someone suffering instinctively makes us feel better, not necessarily because we are terrible human beings but because we appreciate our own situation more in comparison to theirs. How seeing someone limping makes me appreciate my walking straight more. How a severed hand makes me love my ability to write more. How a concussion makes me value my painless state. How a terrible teacher makes me genuinely appreciate the good ones. It's when we see what we could possibly miss that we appreciate what we have. And that's just sad.

It's then that I decided I am going to follow a plan. I am going to write all the things I have and internalize that. Appreciate everything and be thankful for them. Love the me I am so I can prosper and be the me that's better. Let her grow so I can have what I want as well. Me and her, we are one and the same with just some modifications. And I will reach there.

Something I know for a fact is that what I have is enough to help me attain what I want. Always was. And thus my journey began.