Monday, September 7, 2009

Letters to a Friend: Feeling of lightheadedness

Cowper St, September 7, 2009

My dearest,

There is a certain greediness which influences me when I think of the future. Looking back, I realized now how I've built my life into small portions of time. A series of plans made in advance which disguise itself as a confident vote for where I want to be, what I want to do and who I want to meet. Whenever one portion of time is reaching its end, I'd scamper in fury and neurotic apprehension, trying to put together another set of ideas for what is ahead of me. Anything, something I know I can accomplish.

Truth be told, this greed is often consumed by fear; of the unknown, of losing control, of disappointments. It's funny when people tend to see me as a mountain of rock, a steady pillar of strength cloaked with a blanket of trustworthiness. When all I see of myself is a floating bubble, a single water molecule bound to dissolve itself into nothingness at a touch of a heat, a ray of sunshine, an increase of temperature.

I've always wondered, what is it I'm trying to run away from? People I love, people I hate, things I want to do but I'm not allowed to, things I was generously offered but I had no interest for? Better yet, am I actually running away or am I simply moving at an incessantly fast pace?

Forgive me for beginning our correspondence with such long and winding babble of words, my dearest. But you know I had to let them all out. These bundle of emotions within me are torturing to carry and I cannot always tell them even when I want to. So in the faith of your willingness to listen, to continue to read, to always sit there silently at the other end of my every letters - I shall continue to write, to speak to you, and to lay bare my heart to you for as long as I shall live.

The thing is, in the impending arrival of my departure, a shower of uncertainties begin to loom over me. I am drenched with fear, I am soaked in the many questions of what ifs, I am drowning in the hovering breathlessness of losing something I love. At the same time, I am perfectly and fully aware of how utterly determined I am not to lose these moments to the idle calculation of my emotions. What if I only get one chance, one perfect moment, one truly kindred spirit to last me a lifetime?

Sometimes I wish I always know what to do. I can almost see you now smiling with amusement at such impossible thought and your eyes glistening with menace behind your glasses as you think of potential jokes to ridicule me about how hopelessly illogical I can be. Still, I wish sometimes life is as easy as figuring out those derivatives and integral formulas I used to get full marks for in school.

I know what you're going to say, and of course you're right. But for once please nod and smile and say, 'I know what you're talking about?

I am devotedly yours,
Ati A. Aziz

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