Madwoman

My life was finally amazing. I just moved to the city of my dreams, to do the course of my dreams, I loved my flat, it was the cutest little nook, and I had the time and space to be exactly who I wanted to be. Life was going swimmingly well.

And yet, and yet. There's this feeling that has been suffocating me in those lulls and silences, whenever my life paused. This feeling, this weight, this fear. An unspoken, unhinged anxiety, a deep inexplicable restlessness. I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

I usually choose to distract myself with proactive tasks or sometimes vices to silence the turmoil inside of me, but this time I tried to tune into its frequency, and listen. And maybe if I was lucky, even empathize.

And what I found astounded me. Sorry for the clickbaitish segue, but it really did stun me to my core.

I realized that I had a deep fear that my life was passing me by.

I finally could feel it crystal clear. I couldn't help feeling that I was letting my best years slip away.

The retrospection

Did I have an objectively valid reason to feel this way? Now, let's analyze. I am twenty four, and sure, that feels old, I sometimes still wish I was 18 and I had six years of mistakes ahead of me. And looking back, my life has indeed been meaningful. I have made extremely valuable friendships, I adore my family, I've been very lucky to have traveled to many countries and to have had the opportunity to see the world, I have dabbled in writing, photography, tennis, swimming, dancing, fitness, and several hobbies, and my career and path to financial independence are also on track. So then, why did I still feel this way?

The symptoms

I do get myself to do a lot of wonderful things. I take myself on beautiful walks, I work on interesting projects, I spend so much time with friends making memories. I even discipline myself to do all the stuff that needs to be done, I do laundry on time, I clean my room and organize it everyday, I cook. I keep my life spick and span and pretty much drama free. I have every reason to be happy, elated, excruciatingly brimming with joy.

I feel like I am currently living my life from outside of a glass house. I feel like a spectator, and at best, a puppet master. I am in control of some things, like I can get my character in the glass house to study for a test, and to do the dishes.

But I'm not able to get her to feel.

I am a person who has, at some point in her life, inadvertently surrendered to fear. And I've ousted love from my life. I have completely scrubbed my heart of love, until it turned barren and empty. A heart without love, led to a life devoid of all meaning. Everything is hollow, everything is meaningless. I have lost the capacity to appreciate the blissful moments of life, the everyday bliss.

And it'll go like this, if this continues. I'll live the life of my dreams, but my heart will be dead. I will be able to see the mélange of dripping purple and magenta skies during the sunset, but I won't feel anything. It'll just be a moment in time, only marked by a flap of a butterfly's wings. But what I really, truly, madly, deeply want is to immortalize is an etch it in my heart, and bleed in color.

Right now I am going through the most decadent, stunning moments of my life with a cardboard heart.

A madwoman

I yearn to be a madwoman.

A madwoman who loses herself to a song on a quiet Tuesday afternoon, closes her eyes, and sees god when the chorus comes on. A madwoman enchanted by the delicate pirouette of beautiful prose. A madwoman who writes poetry about every city she visits, or even a casual Sunday brunch, or about seeing a koala at the zoo. A madwoman who is mad enough to still believe in love, after a thousand and three heartbreaks.

The only way out is to be mad enough to choose love over apathy.

But love is heartbreak

Love and heartbreak fuse together and you can't have one without the other. If you want to feel excited about something, you're also opening yourself to feel disappointed and absolutely shattered by it.

So, this journey to love will be etched in a hurricane of heartbreaks. Brutal, unforgiving ones, too. They'll pierce right through everything you believe in, and make you fall and beg on your knees.

All I need is a reason, a purpose.

I need a reason to endure the heartbreak, the hurt, the pain, the ruins of my dreams, and the ashes of all my desires. A reason to endure deeply, and still love, deeply, even deeper than before.

My reason is this. I believe blindly and have complete unwavering faith that there is something out there that deserves my love, in all its ferocity, the absolute perfect storm that it is. It could be a gorgeous sunset by the Venice canals, a lip lock under the Eiffel Tower, a picnic in Hyde park with my closest friends, a girls trip in Santorini, adopting a baby Golden Retriever named Lily, buying custom presents for my family, or simple everyday things like waking up at 7am and cooking a healthy, delicious breakfast for myself. I need a full, beautiful, brimming heart for all of this, overflowing and gushing with love. These things absolutely, absolutely, absolutely deserve my love.

And that is reason enough.

Reason enough to be a madwoman.