TIME?

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.

TIME: It owns the most constant quality of change. A single moment can build or ruin not just feelings and relationships but even lead to better life or death. Be it good or bad, best or worse, it’s always easy to hold back to past because of its familiarity. A known pain from past feels comforting in the present when pitched against an unknown future feeling, no matter how good and pure we can make of it. Such is the limitlessness of Time that it helps the successful and wrecks the failure.

Our life is no different from one another; our every question ever felt in our lifetime has been or is being felt by someone or another also. It’s just the permutations and combinations of these questions, their subjective answers and their sequence that defines one’s level of success and failure in life. I am just one among the billions, yet the time that I am living is the only one that actually matters. How this time made me grow past my childhood and adolescence into adulthood at this ripe age of 29 is what really matters for me now.

Not more than a year ago, while returning from a Tuesday LGBTQ party, a friend told me in cab that it’s absolutely okay to go to such parties once in a while in order and enjoy your comfort zone without any anxiety of being judged. We are no more friends, for reasons unknown to me, but his words have stayed with me all through-out. Ask any “friend” of mine as to why Bhavdeep goes to such parties, ‘once in a month or two’, and the answer will be, “to enjoy with his friends, dance and just relax”. I feel normal and unpretentious, without being shallow. However, even amidst all the constant normality of party comfort, I did not foresee that things were to change big time.

The last party turned out to quite an eventful. From attending with a new and an old yet stranger friend to bumping into possibly every person I knew from the circuit, I had everyone I knew in my comfort. Even the ambiance was never-seen-before class personified with fairly sophisticated, physically well groomed and genuinely diverse attendees. Yet, for the first time ever, I felt like wishing for that one person with whom not only I could live the entire night at the party but also share a sitting for a good wine. WINE and ME – I knew it at this moment that I indeed have moved out of my childhood and adolescence stages into adulthood.

These three stages of life, namely childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, particularly take unforeseen importance in my Time now because it was just the same day, prior to the party, that I read about them. According to Herbert Fensterheim and Jean Baer’s Don’t Say Yes When You Want To Say No, CHILDHOOD forms the first stage where the child has his parents as the base of his security. The second stage is ADOLESCENCE where the adolescent’s goal becomes gaining security from his peers rather than his parents. ADULTHOOD completes the three stages of life, wherein the adult does not need the group for security. Instead, his life may center around a small number of people. Eventually, (even) this base narrows and the base of security centers around one specific person.

Was it a subconscious effect on me, to feel the need for that one specific person that night, or a genuine growth as an individual, it will be realised with Time. If there’s anything I fear in this positivity, it is sticking to that one night and not growing out of it. Gladly or Sadly, life did show me another part of my heart and mind within a night since the party night. Thanks to a “good friend” and his “relationship”, I felt lonely and sad, in all my positive approach for a bright future.

This friend is in a fairly new but stable relationship and I had even teased him about the new guy being the most decent looking of all his exes. Both are very comfortable with each other, with one calling another for day-to-day matters like regular couples do. But when my friend calls me at midnight of the next night of the now eventful party, I badger him on how I don’t have his contact number. To my not so pleasent surprise, I am told that the two are together at the latter’s place. I don’t really know how to exactly recall that ‘fateful’ moment of getting the information, but I felt empty unlike ever before.

Yes, I was happy for my dear friend and Yes, I felt their love over the phone as the two made time for each other in all the hustle-bustle of life to be together, even on a work night (next day being Monday and Office morning) but I did not show the my very basic and normal human emotion of jealousy. My telephonic conversation continued with the two for as much time I could be selfless but I did not feel like asking for the phone number again. I was just too jealous and lonely.

I stayed nocturnal the entire night, watched some porn and shagged, only to realise next morning how easily I get my positivity wane away. One moment I was feeling glee at my adulthood and hoping to have that adult meaningful relationship with One and suddenly I let myself swept away like a teenager without a junior school prom date. It was like I went back into the past for it was a known place, despite the pains and horrors.

Every breath I take

Feeling veins as blood rake

Waiting for a new Sunrise to shine

Sleepless I am living every night of mine

Missing the mornings by messing sleep hours

Time passing by like a prisoner marking daily bars

Reached my saturation from wrecked past life pile-ups

Remembering that throat holding past poison for immortal close-ups