I come a full circle

I don’t know who I am.


I have lived with myself for close to 23 years and yet I know not what I am, who I am, why I am the way I am.

It is a pain in the bum, living with a stranger.

When I am in a dilemma, I don’t know what to do, because I don’t know what I want.

When something hits me in my head, I don’t know how to react because I don’t know what reaction is the right reaction.

When danger stares me in the eye, I stare back. I know I should run, but I can’t help but play with danger. It is enticing. It is dark. It is sensuous. It cajoles me with sinuous fingers that curl around my little heart till it is sedated and sated. Passions abated.

I am at conflict with myself. I like the way my skinny jeans caress my ankles. But I rip it in half because it is so hot outside. I like my new skinny shorts. But I miss my skinny jeans.

I like ice cream. I eat ice creams all the time. It bothers my tonsils sometimes. But I don’t mind the pain. I like pain, depending on my mood. Like the pain I feel when the one thing I cannot truly possess looks me in the eye with anguish that equals only mine. Some pains are nice. You gladly suffer them. You feel enriched by them. But that tonsil might need to be looked at sometime. It might have to go under the knife. May be the one thing I cannot truly possess will go under the knife too. Sometime. In good time.

In good time? What about time is good? It just keeps passing you by doesn’t it? You cannot control it. I find that I dislike the feeling of not being able to control something.

No, I am not a control freak. I let my dog Lolakutty do what she wants, when she wants. I am accommodating.

But I will not accommodate that pesky rat that chews up my shoe laces. It will be punished. Creatures that destroy strings- shoe strings, heart strings, blah strings, bloo strings- will face my wrath. I can be evil.

I can also be Holy Mary. Like when I helped that man who had fits on the road outside my school. He said thanks and said I was like Mother Mary. Hah! Hail Mary. Hail me.

That was the past though.

That immature letter still lies in my treasure chest. It means a little more than the rotting banana peel lying in my rubbish bin now. But it is my past. I like holding on to the past. When my past phones me to say I am not the past yet, I wish I was the past. Perhaps I like the past because I know the result of the past. I know how the past plays out, pans out.

Which isn’t to say I am fixated with the past. I like the future too. I like the future so much that I dream silly dreams about it. May be I like the future because it is as uncertain as the location of my next monthly zit. I hope it isn’t my chin again. I like my chin. My cousin says I have Vyjayantimala’s chin.

Personally, I’d choose my eyes any day. They are magic. They cast a spell on you. They say I have cat eyes, not because of the colour (I have gloriously black irises) but because they hold an unsettling feline guile. They called me Catwoman in college. Promise me nine lives, baby! Pffft…I can never look as hot as Halle Berry in a catsuit. But cat or not, my eyes are something else. They look into your listless eyes and decide if you are the part of the past or the future. In the present, they play mind games with you.

The present is the only tense that bothers me. I rant and rebel against the atrocities meted out to me. I grovel and grumble about the unfairness of it all. I am discontent with the present.

I love presents, though. Especially materialistic ones. I am a material girl.

Oh, except when I preferred the look in that person’s eyes to the look of that shiny, fancy gift wrapping that held promise of some hardcore material bliss.

That stupid girl, who thinks she’s doing womankind a favour by being a feminist, calls me a hardcore male chauvinist. Yes, so I happen to think men are awesome. But does that mean my core is hard? Because let me tell you, when I die, my core will putrefy faster my memory. Not that you’re going to dig my grave and check. Shudder. Someone just walked over my grave. My mentor recently read that when someone walks over your final resting place, a shiver will race up your spine. If it was you, go back and place some nice flowers. Actually, I don’t fancy flowers much. They wither.

I don’t like things that wither. They look ugly, they litter the place and are a reminder that beauty is but a phase. Hah, but have you seen my mother or grandmother? Their beautiful phase lasted an entire life time.

A life time of undying stability vs a life time of adventurous instability. What would I choose? Well, who says it is in my hands?

My hands are small I know, but they’re not yours, they are my own hands- Jewel, singer.

And I like it when those big, warm palms wrap around mine and lead me on.

But let go of my hands at some point. I don’t like to be guided all the time. Like that time I went on a treasure hunt and I was almost there when you came and annoyingly told me where the prize was. I would have found the prize on my own. You ruined it for me, you imbecile. Constant guidance takes away from self-satisfaction.

And as a scar, I despise guidance of all sorts now. My father tells me to skip. I won’t. I might have skipped, had I thought of it on my own. Daddy, it is that imbecile’s fault.

But it is always my fault. I am faulty. I am faulty by default.

I am also intelligent by default.

I am intelligent because I don’t know my own intelligence.

I don’t know my intelligence because I don’t know who I am.

I don’t know who I am.

I have lived with myself for close to 23 years and yet I know not what I am, who I am, why I am the way I am.