Thank You, Fire! :-)

You know the story of ‘The Highwayman’; the one where the guy is in love with the girl he is not supposed to be with, and she is used as bait to bring him in and he gets killed and so on. It’s my favorite poem, and for a young boy of 13, that depressing account of lost and failed love was SO appealing, it should have served as a sign of things to come. Because, years later, I would find love and become the highwayman of my own making. I would get destroyed, but of course, I wasn’t an immortalized poetry. So, nobody got to kill me off. I did it all to myself but just before death, I held my hands back and decided, no more. And that depressing story became one of heroism, where I was celebrated by my friends for having dodged the bullet. True. But then it still was MY fault to have fallen in love with a gun. A bad one, at that. Double barrel, shit included!

In that relationship, the first year I was loved. The second year I was deprived. The third year I was despised. The fourth year I was thrown out. The fifth year I stopped existing. And the sixth year…well, there was no sixth year. I wasn’t particularly hurt that I was not loved. Love is a choice. I am okay with that. But I wasn’t ready for the onslaught of disrespect, disregard, willful pulling down of my name and the immature actions that go with being the ex-lover, namely bringing your new lover to church where your old lover is about to begin his song! Talk about insensitivity of the worst kind. Sometimes, our anger and sense of self-righteousness make us so inhuman, we do things that are absolutely disgusting, completely oblivious to the hurt we cause people. Now, with due credit to my own intelligence, I don’t for a moment believe this person was unaware. I think it was purposeful, done concertedly to prove a point to me and may be say: ‘Hey, look! How great I am doing, without you around! How cool I am, without you! Look at all my friends! Look at my badly-worded posts about you! Look at my ‘this’, look at my ‘that’! 

Vanity, dear reader, is always beholden to the bitch, pedestrian or otherwise!

Anyway, jokes apart, I was hurt. I was shocked. Because right in front of me, a person had gone from being a person to a monster. So bad, I even wrote a song about it. I named it ‘Monster’, of course.

It went on for a while and then it hit breaking point. I got so tired of it one day…I decided no more. By that evening, I had landed up in a hospital with major petrol burns on my body and a house full of soot and my mother rushing to Bangalore, to find out how my clothes caught fire while cooking! Truth is…my clothes didn’t. The clothes belonged to said Satan’s spawn! I had attempted to burn it with petrol, in a closed bathroom! Turns out, my anger was real. My sense of science wasn’t. Hence the trip to the hospital!

The final closure happened sometime in July 2014. I had gone to a local eatery for breakfast with a friend. Suddenly, out of nowhere, he exclaimed: Look!

I turned around and it was the face, I had loved and loved, over and over again, walking into the hotel, with a few friends. That moment, what I felt in my heart was absolutely blinding. I froze. My heart got caught in my chest. I felt the friction inside, like a panic attack. I mean, certified panic attack. I looked at my friend, caught his hand and ran out thru the side door. I sat on the road for a moment to compose myself and then left. I kept walking and never looked back. 

When I got back home that day, I realized something. It was over. So over! Somehow, over days, months and years…I had ripped that face out of my heart. It wasn’t the end of romantic love. That had ended sometime in early 2013. I am talking about the normal ‘loving’ and the left-over side effects of a relationship long gone. In fact, one look at that face and I had run out like I had seen the proverbial swine, finally rid of the pearl. 

Until this day, there has never been an apology for what was done to me. I mean I had gone through endless guilt over what I perceived as my mistakes in the relationship. However, there is only so much you can feel guilty for. How long can apology be one-sided? There was no apology tendered to me for my wasted years, my wasted relationships, the pain I caused my family, the financial detriment I put myself and my business through, the strain I put on my own self. But again, why should there be an apology, right? An ass will always remain an ass; cud, turd, hole and all! So, it was actually my fault to have fallen in love with one.

You see, at crux of it all, is this truth. Nobody belongs to me. And I don't belong to anyone. Nobody owes me anything, not even an apology. We are individual people that choose to love, choose to hate and choose to stay or choose to leave. Nobody has a certified hold on anybody. No religion, no value system can mend a heart, when it is hell bent on being broken. I got hurt, went thru pain…and that is because the other person was never mine, never meant to be mine, never should have been mine and never will be mine. I chose to build on a house that was not mine. I chose to spend my time painting a wall that had someone else’s door. 

You see, at the end of day, after you’re done discerning the love, the pain, the abuse, the hurt and everything else…you will find one thing that stands as truth:

You can either be your friend or your enemy. 

And that will determine whether you are burning clothes or wearing them! 

I am of course on good terms with said ex-lover now. I think people might even call us friends. The past is already forgiven. I am still fond of the person, regardless of what went wrong. I still respect the person, whether it is deserved or not. And I still cherish some of the good things that did happen, some of the gestures that can never be duplicated and some of the great things that I was blessed with, despite the shit that came after. But, the entire episode is in the hands of destiny now, to bless where it warrants a blessing and to avenge, when time warrants a reaping. There, of course, will be a day of reckoning and a time of reaping. I am sure of that. The problem is, I don’t care about it anymore. I don’t care for retribution, I don’t particularly favor punishment and I most certainly don’t wish anyone any harm. And, who reaps what for their actions, makes no difference to the equations in my life right now.

This month, on a Friday, seven years will come to a close, since I kissed and began that self-inflicted misery. I write this post as a symbolic closure, you know, to honor the biblical seven-year kind of ‘end-of-era’. And today, more than looking back and weeping, more than looking thru and complaining, I actually find myself rejoicing.

Not for my family, not for my friends, not for my gifts. I rejoice for my enemies. I thank God for the pain they caused me. I thank them for dishonoring me, for disrespecting me and for belittling me. I bless them for having cursed me.

You know why?

Because, I would never have become the joy-filled, at-peace, content man I am today, if I hadn’t entered into the lion’s den yesterday. For that, I am grateful. This ex-lover of mine and everyone else that hurt me, they were my destiny. They were my slingshot to greatness. They were my divine trampoline in an endless cycle of launch and fly. In fact, I have been blessed by my enemies more than I will ever be blessed by my friends. 

So I end this with a heartfelt thanks. 

Thank you, Enemies. Thank you, Detractors. And thank you, Fire.

And while I'm at it... F-you-too! 

Yours truly, Aden.