I haven't been here in a while. It has been a conscious choice. I have held myself back largely. There are several unpublished drafts that I don't think I'll publish now. In fact, I have been thinking about taking down this blog for good. I think it has run its course and served its purpose, to whatever extent it possibly can. I have to pay some money to run it everyday. I anyway cannot do that indefinitely and I don't want to host it anywhere else.

I have mostly ok days. I am busy, occupied and going where my life will take me. Some parts have changed in my life, others I have made peace with. I do remain emotionally volatile and erupt now and then. But I hope thats almost like a volcano, possibly never going to go away only transition from active to dormant state. Thats life.

This is it, thanks for listening to me.

I am out there somewhere. But not here. I have become so nervous about the weekends, that I go and numb myself with liquor even before they fully kick in. I finished a bottle of wine and ate a whole of pizza.

Today was a day, where you accidentally fall out of an airplane and then then somehow survive that but land into a bone crusher. Every news that I got incrementally since morning was worse than previous one. I feel sympathy for my boss and what he goes through on daily basis.

First, the work killed me. If you are the last straw to break the camel's back do you hold it against yourself? I tried to do some good, but it was seen as too much intervention from me and someone I respect is affected by it. So much that they have chosen to leave the organisation. I have been debating whether I am responsible for that? My intentions were well placed and I am not a political person or at least I think so. Can I be wrong about everything? There is so much self doubt today. I feel like I have no mechanism to keep a check on myself. And I guess, I understand why people say that "leadership roles are very lonely". Because unlike lot of roles, candid feedback is missing. People often won't say anything. And you have to assume so much that it is easy to be a jerk and single minded or to be a pile of self doubt. Anyway, I don't have a choice but to make my peace and move on. But this was not the worst. It was news after news and by the end of the day I felt like I should just sink into the ground and disappear.

I saw a dream last night. I saw I was visiting a ancestral house. An old lady lived there. She was affectionate to me and my kids. I had my whole family with me. A person came and sort of asked me these questions about how I knew her. I didn't answer him clearly and then he sort of asked this leading question about if I could really forget the person who I knew her through? And I remembered who I knew her through. Lets call her S. I knew the old lady through S. He smiled and said, I knew you knew her through S and was just making sure you have not forgotten. Fucking mind and its mind games. Anyway, the lady was really sweet, we had a good time and she told us how she had aspirations in life. And then there was a window which allowed us to peek into her past. When I looked at it, I see that she was hit by something in her back and had a sever episode of cancer. And it took her a lot of years to recover. All her aspirations and life goals were put on a hold for that. She survived, but at what cost? She was happy but regretful about how things turned out. And we said out goodbyes and left.

So many things. S, my mom and so many subtle messages. I know my dreams are an immediate reflection of what goes in my mind. I won't even try to interpret them.

She pinged me that she found a T shirt, that I said, I didn't even realize I was missing. Did I really not realise that? It was one of my favourite and most comfortable night t shirt. Last time I left it, I think it was drenched in sweat at her place. Of course I remembered it. But I was hoping/thinking that not returning it was a conscious decision. Some part of me with some part of her. Just like a perfume bottle that I don't use, but I smell time to time. Not for the smell of the perfume, but for the hands that held it. I don't even care for the contents.

The day has just been a mess. I have three sips left to stare at the bottom of the bottle. And I cannot wait. Somedays I just feel lonely and there is no escaping that.

My situation at home has improved. It is not that I have not made effort, I have. But irrational love is irrational love. And sometimes you have to just accept that.

It has been a month since I started tracking my mood to build a better understanding of whether I am on a path of recovery yet or not. Looking at the data I would say that the verdict is still not clear. I do feel that a week back I was lot more neutral and ok, but suddenly the last few days or a week has been difficult. Maybe this is what peaks and troughs look like and over time they will flatten. If I look closely, I can see the upward and downward slopes somewhere between those points.

What I do know is that I have not been travelling much and that sort of has kept me busy at home, however starting next week I will be travelling a lot more, sometimes across timezones. And I know travel aggravates loneliness. But hopefully I'll manage it better this time around.

I do think my mind is actively working to help me tide over this. A lot of my dreams are worst case scenarios which sort of push me to move in a direction where I'll start to actively move on. Sometimes I nitpick and find flaws that don't exist to conceive incompatibilities that do not exist (or maybe do, since I am starting to become unsure about some things). I try to find reasons for hate, and while hate is impossible, it is an attempt to counterbalance my feelings. I have been thinking about finding people who can be just friends, meet and have a chat once in a while. I made my first attempt yesterday, lets see if it happens, I am far too unsure about meeting, but will take a leap of faith to reconnect with old friends who have grown out of touch. Have a friend visiting in early March, lets see how that goes, if I am back from my trip in time.

It just feels like, that my mind, this complex machinery is doing everything it can to nudge me and say "survive".

Some days are better than the others, busy ones for sure. One of things I am quite happy about is that my work is back on track. I am focused, driven and unyielding. I hope it stays that way. But I am also not surprised, there has never been a crisis in my life, that affected my work for long. Work and financial stability is the foundation my life is somehow built upon. I take some sort of pride in that level of reliability. My whole mind is wired that way and thats exactly why my weekends are the hardest.

The news at work is not great, but my stress is much lower today. Mostly a neutral outlook. I think I even enjoyed listening to some songs. I even cooked for myself and ate something I like.

Hopefully tomorrow is going to be better.

Sometimes I wonder why do I write everything that I write here? And then I stumbled on a letter that Richard Feynman wrote to his wife 16 months after she died. And it reminded me that sometimes we write for ourselves and not others.

I adore you, sweetheart.

I know how much you like to hear that — but I don’t only write it because you like it — I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you.

It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote to you — almost two years but I know you’ll excuse me because you understand how I am, stubborn and realistic; and I thought there was no sense to writing.

I just dreamt about her whole night. The one I saw in the early hours stuck with me among the different ones that I saw.

I was living in London in the house that we use to live in. She sent me a stand-up comedy show link in a message. It was at 9 pm. I took bicycle to the show. Reached the place, it was a library. I was looking for her but couldn't spot her. Messaged her to check where she was and she replied I should look for UAE flag section. I spot her sitting and sit next to her. Happy to see her finally. After few minutes she asked me if I could sit a few seats away as her Date was also on the way and will be there soon. I was thrown back and asked her why did you ask me to come if you were on a date? She responded that the message was just to share the fact that there was a show, not an invitation.

I sat there thinking for few minutes about what was I to do knowing there was a stand up comedy in the city if not come. But she was right, in my anxiousness to see her, I overlooked the fact that she'd didn't ask me to come. Anyway, I got up to leave and she asked me where I was going? I said, to find some snacks and will be back later. She says there are no food counters here. Told her it didn't matter, I was going to leave as there has been enough comedy of errors for one evening. I was just being polite about it.

And that was that. What hurt me most after getting up from the dream was that I can't picture her face. I is getting hazy in my dreams. That just makes me sad.

My emotions have been running unchecked for 2 days now. Leaking corners of eyes every few minutes. Three only thing I can do it look away and try and shut down my mind, distract it or play a game endlessly on my phone. And then as soon as I pause, all of it comes rushing back.

I am not sure what is causing it. But this is as bad it ever got. I am hoping it will pass.

I don't know how to reach out and say something, just to hear a response back. So I pinged to ask for museli recipe. 1 hour after I finished my Museli. As expected she replied earnestly. I don't even care for the recipe. I already know it. Simple words is what I was looking for. It made me feel better, atleast momentarily.

Just so I don't think about her, I finished 120 levels in a new game that I stared since last evening.

Hopefully this weekend will be over soon and I can go back to being miserable but atleast busy.

This week went faster than the last one. Work slowly consuming me as I let it. A constant thread in the back if my mind about how every passing day stacks up on the previous one to make the gap longer. We haven't spoken to each other and we haven't messaged either. She resides in my head like an ambient noise. Something that is constantly there to a point that I am not even actively thinking about it. I have stopped talking to her in my head as well. There are moments when I get low and miss her suddenly. Last night right before I drifted off to sleep, suddenly this feeling of sadness swept in. Same happened while driving to office today. I am mentally prepared that as weekend creeps in, the emotions will take a stroll in my heart and crowd it.

I got to know about someone close who is possibly in a state, I could have been a month ago. And I wondered if it was lack of courage that kept me from leaping over to the other side. Is it the sense of responsibility that kept me tethered? Was it a decision that was driven more by fear or because of my level-headedness? I can craft and narrate the story as I see fit to myself. It doesn't matter. What matters is that I am here. Sometimes I appreciate the simplicity of my current situation, and other times I wonder if I am just existing and doing what I did for so many years.

I am seeking the feeling of numbing myself down today evening to ensure that I don't get overwhelmed. I get dreams about seeing her with other people now and then. I wake up sad and lonely. Then the things get better. I wonder, if I am aggravating my sadness by being stubborn about not moving on. Expecting to move-on makes me feel like a fraud. As if I fabricate all this sadness if I am able to move on that quickly. I think whether she has moved on and while I hope she has I also hope she has not forgotten about me. It is such an intricately complex set of emotions where I am constantly battling fending for myself and then trying to love someone I pushed away purposefully. I feel this bubbling anger for myself. I have given in to this lack of clarity and hurt so many people. Remain perpetually confused and stuck.

As time will move on, how I feel, and what I am willing to do, will eventually become moot. The only person who will be affected by all of this is just me and maybe that is what I deserve and that is fitting to me. You get what you deserve.

I slept well. Saw so many dreams mixing reality, past and imagination with fictional TV content. As I step into the morning, they fade fast. And yet, I feel tired and sleepy. Uninterested in everything, feel like lying down and just wait for the day to go by. Everyday, this feeling, as if this life has no meaning and I am just on a pointless journey to an end. I don't think I am depressed, just grieving, maybe. Again, woke up with a sense of loss. Reminding myself how I cannot have everything in life and it is ok to let go, even if slowly. Inch by inch, everyday.

Stuck in this quandary, whether in my journey to scale this peak of sadness as I hang here in middle, if it is ok to let go, crash to the bottom and restart my climb or just hold on for a moment more? Maybe I'll find the energy and will to push myself up and get out. Just like how I need to get out of this bed.

There are so many times when I wished that I would somehow get away from everything and everyone and no one is able to find me. But it mostly remained a momentary wish. Something you say but don’t really realise or experience. This time however I may have ventured far away from everything. There is truly no one who is going to find me here. Finally I am alone with myself. No matter how loud I scream, what I say, it is going to go unheard and be lost into the void.

Even though earlier I was mostly talking to myself all this while, there was some solace that someone else was listening in on it. Not anymore.

It feels a bit lonlier than it did before. Nothing that I can’t survive though. Right?

If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one to hear it does it still make a sound?

Bit by bit, I have navigated my path to detach and distance. Incrementally doing the hard thing to lead myself where I need to be. No one checking in, no supervision.

This is possibly what inflection to being alone finally looks like.

What am I supposed to say? How am I to respond to something heartfelt? You can't be the one to put up a wall and then pretend that it doesn’t exist.

The words clamber to the tip of my tongue to die there. They lie among the things unsaid. Possibly for the best. Short term vs long term trade offs, right? Where does this path go? Do we need to walk this? Do we even have a choice?

Sometimes, we simplify the choices that we have, we reduce the arguments we face, we answer simply in our minds, sidelining the nuances, possibilities and complexities. We want decisions to be taken away from us. And be made bystanders to our lives so that we don't remain answerable to our future self.

How do we we get past this place? How do we both find peace?

The chasm that divides us
one that grows bigger by the day
is too big for words to bridge now
no matter what we have to say

the burden that is ours to carry
despondency that precipitates these sighs
before we crumble under its weight
our hearts of steel must say their goodbyes

There has to be a way.

Woke up with a longing to hold and see that I can’t explain and have not felt before.

Sometimes I wonder if she remembers me still. The fast fading memory of a time and person that was transitory and ephemeral. Maybe one day she will wake up and the day will pass in pre occupation of things and people that matter more and reside in the mental space that I once claimed. Not anymore. I will be an after thought. Unintentional and unexpected.

Days, weeks and months will pass with a feeble recollection of those moments. Debating the accuracy of what really happened, if it did at all. Maybe laughing on the silliness of it all.

While I sink deeper into this marsh and quicksand of memories. Reliving and drowning into those moments, as if they occurred last night. Stuck in time, stuck in this loop. Unable to get out.

I was going about my business as usual. Mind galloping through the fields of memories and then suddenly I stumbled on this realisation that talking to myself constantly in my head was such a usual part of my life for so many years. The anxiety to tell or share something with a real person didn't even exist. My usual routine was to do celebratory cheers and sullen whispers in my head and move on.

Last few months had completely changed that. I had a totally different outlet. I was talking to a real person. Looking forward to it. Instead of listening to music in my car, I would be debating, learning, arguing or laughing about something or the other. I am back to the music, the loud volume trying to drown the thoughts in my head. I am talking to myself once again. It doesn't feel unnatural but something feels amiss. It happened without any warning, in a split second as if a tsunami of thought released a feeling that was deeply buried somewhere inside and the emotions ran unchecked. Took me a bit to recover but I did. Rest of the day went running post to post. No time to breath.

I am lying in the bed now and out of nowhere comes this deep sense of loss of friendship and loneliness. And I am back in the emotional trenches. These emotions come as aftershocks.

They are sudden, come without a warning and take over me rapidly. I am trying but I don't think I can replicate how I felt again. And some part of me is even scared to do that. There is only so many times you want to give these jolts of change to yourself.

Hopefully, the aftershocks will pass and I will be a person I was. Cruising an unexhilarating life on auto pilot, living and subtitling it in my head, as I would have a year ago.

Alone was never this hard before.