Cleaning My Closet
I have been cleaning my closet. I feel like a heroine. Perched up on a stool. Mops and dusters in hand. cleaning out the cobwebs. there are layers of dust settled on the shoebox that serves as my treasure chest. All my memories, safe inside it.
It has served me well all these years. But its grown old. Musty and moth eaten. Its crumbling now, of age. I handle it warily as I pull it out and keep it on my desk. Then as I lift the covers, my eyes get dazzled.
Its the smiles I once hid in there. They have been locked up too long. And they are so used to dazzling. I touch them lovingly. They are prescious. I take them out one by one. And put them in the jar that I keep my faces in. Besides the window.
Next to my chest are the speeding tickets. I unfold them one by one and read aloud. They are sugary tit bits. Pieces of my heart that I so carefully preserve. In the hope that someday some piece might be claimed by its rightful owner.
The golf ball. With a name signed on it. A matel pencil that once drew my picture. Some words that once warmed my heart. Some moondrops from a candlelit dinner.
Stories. That once were my life. Sometimes our loss is so profound that it becomes a part of us. The shadows on the walls remind us of different shadows. But that is also a part of all that was lost.
In our darkest hours, our waekest moments, that which we have reminds us of that which we dont.
All we want to do then is to turn back time. To set things right. To chase the shadows away. Or to bring them back.
Some one once told me that the fear of pain doesnt make it less inevitable. If it is inevitable, enjoy it.
True, pain is inevitable. But suffering is not. I refuse to suffer. At the hands of anyone. Pain shall not be the instrument of my suffering. Not now. Not ever.
It’s been a long time since I had tended to these fragments of my life. Today I am cleaning them and moving them to a bigger box. I am making room. For pain. If more of it decides to claim kinship.
I will never give up fighting.
- Neha
B says:
….pain is inevitable. But suffering is not….wow!
Thank you for that realization. Think thtz wat we need to deal with my worn out selves…
May 23rd, 2006 at 10:13 am
Baba says:
i have the same kind of almari.
it took me a long time to clear it up
i burnt all those photographs, sent back the birthday gift she sent me. tore apart her hand scribbled scraps. it broke my heart again and again. but the almari is my mate:) she stores every emotion i give her, she smells my odour from my clothes aur tun hojati hai…she lets me pour all my pain into her. but she loves me and you only can hurt the person or object you love the most….
May 24th, 2006 at 11:02 am