Melancholy

I am very, very sad today. Fearfully enough, I would have lived through this day not knowing that I was sad. What brought home the realization was food.

It was a perfectly productive day. There is a lot about my work (as opposed to my job) that I really like. This is despite the fact that I have been thwarted for it several times. But that’s okay. I believe that I should be certain of at least one skill I bring to my job. That must remain sure and steadfast, even though no-one else notices it. The song of an eclipsed moon. I know that song and that is why I get hired, or berated.

So, things at work are good. My other life, which I shall unimaginatively refer to as ‘personal’, is good too. Parents are happy, even though there is tumultuous distress over who gets the remote. I wonder why my father even bothers to try. He will keep complaining that he is sick, to which Ma will want to know whose fault that is and why should the remote go to a weak viewer when it can entertain a more robust spectator. Brother has finally stopped gelling his hair. It is indeed relief-worthy because his nut had come to resemble a track Road-runners practiced sprinting on.

Also, someone loves me. It’s not quite the groovy kind of love that is sung about, because he compares me to a perfectly argued criminal trial. It’s a comparison my ever optimistic self somehow can’t be happy about. But wooing techniques aside, I am loved with the certainty people usually reserve for declaring vanilla ice-cream to be the best flavor ever. That is good because, well, it is reciprocated. And I do think that way about vanilla ice-cream too. Whatever my notions of love were, I most definitely had not counted on it being so peaceful and happy. But it is. Funny.

And as usual, money is scarce, so there is no alarm of finding unspent wealth in my account.

Therefore, I should not be sad. And as mentioned earlier, I thought I wasn’t.

But then I marched into Mac Donalds and ordered six burgers (three Maharaja Macs) and ate them all. One by one. Each shred of lettuce, each drip of mayo, each soggy, scwardum of bun.

I am seasoned enough to know that I wasn’t feeding my hunger.

As I glutted over each burger, and as my jeans steadily became snug, I felt a sort of buttery soothing come over something deep inside me. I was blunting something sharp and edgy. Something I used to feel in what seems like a lifetime ago – something that feels like ‘I don’t deserve to have it so good.’

I know it will go away. I will wake up tomorrow morning and do my crunches. Make myself an excellent cup of coffee and read a few splendid pages of Rushdie before I get dressed. I will make quick, swift calls home to find out how Ma is doing (not too good because Dad is strangely getting very intrigued with VH1.) I will write notes to my bai and pray quickly before I lock my door and dash.

And then the day will wear on. It will be pleasant and laborious with nothing spectacular happening. It will be a mundane passage of time. That over, I will go home, open the door, step inside the darkness, and switch on the light. I will look past the furniture, clothes, pieces of poems I had written and illustrated. I will see the cavity and hope of an empty room and a crowded life. So much evaporates.

Tomorrow I will smile and genuinely be happy, looking forward to a Friday. But today, I shall sit by myself with my scarred epiphany.

Returning makes leaving so impossibly hard.