"...One never forgets the taste of certain tears..." - Fyodor Dostoevsky
There's this thought that's been itching inside the palm of my hand as if to signal that it needs to be let out. And writing happens to be the only way I know to voice anything. Ironically, it isn't an earth-shattering exceptional thought, far from it in fact. It goes exactly like the replica of a billion others I've already had - always had.
It says, 'I am in love with grief'. But I'm not sure if love is the right word to use. I've probably got it all wrong. It is not that I am in love with grief it is that it has spun me around and woven around me a cobweb that I remember all too well, even after having cut through it.
I remember its pattern and webs. I know where the strings attach to one another by heart. Hell, I could close my eyes and paint a picture of it. The point being, I know it all too well, much like a second language.
A home.
And, how exactly do I stop talking about home?
I feel as though it has etched its map around the walls of my throat. It is all my tongue is familiar with. It is the only sound my vocal cords are capable of producing. Everything I know is grief. That is where the story begins and ends.
So, I suppose a better way to put this would be that I can't stop talking about it. It is the force pushing me to graffiti on all the empty walls there are. I want to scream and yell and write all and only about the war that was fought inside the chambers of my heart and mind.
I want to let the world know of the dialogue that went on between the two. About the number of times I almost went insane but caught myself on the edge. About all the times I was tired of life and fought for it nonetheless. Partially because I wanted to, more because I had no other choice.
Perhaps I want to tell a story without claiming it as mine. Or no...perhaps I want to talk about it without having to limit myself to the bounds of language. So, I do exactly what I do best - wrap it up in metaphors and descriptions till it looks more like beauty and less like pain. Till it is unrecognizable.
Then I sit and wonder if there is any other way to talk about grief; without the use of metaphors. The sky fell on my head. The blood in my body froze. I was beyond purgatory and into hell already. I realise, as I write this, that grief in its true nature, is beyond any bounds of language anyway. All it knows is metaphors, parables, and analogies.
Nonetheless, on heavier days, I do wish I could be lent an ear. One that I could talk to about the agonies that went on inside me in plain old language. No metaphors or beauty. I wish I could say, I was in pain...so much pain and simply be understood.