There are all types of loss

Sometimes it takes a great tragedy for one to see what reality looks like. Because, in the aftermath of unhappiness and despair and tears, the rubble starts clearing slowly, and truths emerge. Suddenly you realise that people have changed, friendships have matured, and some folks have just moved away. Sometimes you realise that some haven't been around for the longest time but that in our constant need to maintain normalcy, we have been consciously overlooking the fact.

This is a loss of innocence and childhood. It's disturbing and unsettling and it's not the kind of thing that you want to think about. But the truth is, as the cliche goes, we live and we learn. And the less we cling on to willful self-delusion, the better it is for our mental well-being and the truer we are being to ourselves.

For the lies we tell ourselves are often the most involved and are well crafted to protect us, but they won't save us when the crap hits the fan. Instead, they beget expectations, which, as we all know, bring pain. More than that, they beget unhealthy, half-baked relationships based on old truths and private jokes, little vignettes that have now faded away into memory. Some friendships, it seems, die a natural death -- it's sad, but that doesn't mean that what was was not true, nor does it mean that the same friends are now terrible people. It just means that things have changed. And it would be wise and enlightened to remember that without bitterness or regret,

On being shape eke good with yourself

Life sure is a funny thing. It speeds by, you speed with it, and you don't realise how much it changes inside of you with its passing.

Today an old friend Whatsapped me about her wedding -- excitedly, we discussed plans, places, outfits, dance routines. I remembered that it was just a little over 365*3 days ago that we sat on our hostel-room beds in the college hostel, discussing boys, marriage, and life. We were young, literally jobless, and in that beautiful bubble that is university life. The world and we were yet to meet. I meet girls that I went to school with, on the streets of the city. Some are wearing splashy new rings on their fingers, others are sporting kids, like, multiple kids. After the requisite cooing, it always strikes me hard, how they have a life that is completely different to my relatively unencumbered existence. This feeling magnifies when I see their photos of kids' birthdays. Kids' birthdays. A few years ago, those existed only in photo albums of ourselves that our parents had preserved with careful love.

Assessing life is always mildly frightening -- you see your achievements, but you also can't help but see the many, many, many things you still have to struggle through. Higher studies, marriage, other adult-life-related bothersome details that don't bear thinking about on this gloomy Saturday in Colombo. But most of all, if I ever actually sit down and think about my life, I see how I have grown. And it's kind of surprising. I never used to do that before. I never read that particular author before. When did I start caring about Syria? When did I suddenly develop an interest in the Kuiper Belt that holds that icy dwarf planets in our solar system? What the frick.

It's weird. But then, I guess that's just life. Have come to realise that the thing that matters the most is if you like the person you've become/are becoming. Sometimes that takes a little more digging deep into the stuff souls are made of, but if you can actually do that, if you take the time off social media and growing up and being cool to actually do that, and you realise that, yes, I'm cool with this strange but pretty freaking wonderful individual occupying skinny limbs and female balding well-hidden by a fringe, then you're shape eke good.