I have seen mighty minds crumble, the sane go insane, and the resolute losing their temper, the brave becoming wimps, faces being forgotten and children absconding. Now that I think of it, all of it has happened around me. When I dip my head into retrospection, I notice all the fingers point to me. It feels like an epiphany, a revelation:

It has been me all along!

Sometimes I wonder if I am at the bottommost layer of the human emotional evolutionary chain. That I think too much and that maybe it would one day be the reason for my passing.

How are others nailing it so well? How are they able to laugh through it all? Why are they so unfazed?

I feel I am very hard to live with, that I push people away. Unknowingly but voluntarily, I often end up forcing myself into my very own fortress of solitude. No wonder I choose to live alone in my dusky lair.

It is almost as if I seek grief deliberately. That I have always headed towards a disquieting pit ahead, and no amount of saving could actually save me. My downfall was written in the stars, and this is how I was meant to go. Sulking over spilled milk, lost under a countless what ifs, with a mind brooding over different outcomes and a body playing out different stories.

I have often heard people talking, how if there were no bad times you wouldn’t know how to appreciate the good ones. Then I wonder what if I like bad times? What if it makes me feel alive, makes me feel what people feel when they talk about living on the edge. What if I am more of me in its company? What if I am trying to forever seek a tearpit hammock to rest?

I might like this waning, the bittersweet demise of my body that gradually takes me away into the oblivion. What bothers me the most is my blunt malignancy whilst getting there. The repercussions that emanate therefrom hurt others in the process. That’s what is killing!

When I see all those fallen people around me, I can’t help but curse myself:

What have I done?

In my brazen meanness to get what I want, I end up doing the despicable. I end up torturing them, burning them down with my pathetic rancour.

What did they do to deserve me in the first place?

Insecurities follow me like little ducklings around and they mess up everything good going on in my life. They smear my face with its kohl making me beyond obvious. What a tragedy to be me!

Only a fool would wish to stay. To knowingly entwine their lives into mine and welcome their slow death. I can’t do that to a person. It’s a cost that would go down really heavy on my head.

All this contemplation often directs my thoughts to other grief-stricken souls in the world. In my very own private moments, I often think out loud:

Are there others like me?

And if yes, how are they still alive?