The Other Arrow of Eros
I sit, engrossed in my work, staring at the laptop screen. Time seemed to dawdle past me, while in reality, it was gushing past me quicker than I realised. I sat back, and sipped from my cup of hot coffee, when suddenly my senses awakened and I felt a rush of cold air through my hair.
I looked up, and saw that it was raining. The cool breeze that accompanies rains had turned into gusts, and I saw trees swaying violently, people rushing for cover and safety outside the door of the cafe. I got up and walked to the large French window.
Coffee in one hand, the other a part of my folded arms, I stare at the window. The droplets of fresh rain seemed to race against each other, clearing the mist on the panels simultaneously. Vague shades of lights and other colours came through my eyes as blurs, muted patters of the raindrops bouncing on the roof shed outside seemed to cater to a peculiar melancholy. I hold the cup with both hands and sip once, and take in a deep breath.
Work was always going to be a drug to drive you out of zone you don’t want to be, but what happenes if that very zone houses your home? How trepid it would be to go out and fight the world, and eventually come back to your own shelter and lose? Is it even a loss, one that counts, if you know you have to fight the same battle again, the next night? Is this perpetual battle to win – win against the world and my world – the definition of my life?
Funnily, this battle is one of the things many will not understand, at least, that is what I hope. I do not like to think many people live in such trepidation of their own skin and mind, and if they do, it shows a real dark undertone to colours of life.
This battle has been set onto me after liberation. Yes, liberation. I was liberated, from the shackles I placed on myself, and entered an arena where I battle the beast of my creation, and his blessing.
I sit on the couch, clench my knees around my clasped hands and layman head on the backrest and stare at the light right on my face. Any time now, the beast will arrive, and we will spar again. The beast, of course, is none other than independence, and within that independence is a certain dependence anchored within me. The beast is armed with the bow of Eros, with all but one arrow in his quiver, one which hits me every day, one whose counterpart hits a certain someone everyday as well, I think. The beast has an essence of my belief in myself, the poise of my own confidence, and the glow of my own strength.
My beast is none other than my own lineament.
Paradoxical, isn’t it? How can my own characteristics, distinguishing and positive ones at that, be the source of my own troubles, stemming from my own cognition? You’d think people would target my weaknesses to break me. Little do they know I break myself every day when the sun sets, and gather my pieces every morning.
Thats the thing, the world attacks your weaknesses, and in turn, may end up building you up. I attack my own strengths, and in turn, end up disregarding them and breaking myself.
But no. Recently I realised that I am not attacking my strengths. I am attacking, and probably searching for the source of my strengths. I am searching for that anchor of dependency which has been holding my independence steady. I am searching for the other arrow of Eros.
There are some strengths that I had, and I had build a stone pillar around them. Some strengths I had stuck in the freezer, some strengths I had packed and thrown in the dingiest corners of the attic of my personality. And try as hard as I could, I failed to break the walls or thaw the ice, or find the strengths within me again.
Until he showed up.
He healed me from wounds I never showed, nor did I ever mention. He ironed the creases of doubt within my own esteems, built a hard hitting system of belief in me. He took out the frozen courage and thawed it, slowly and excruciatingly. He chiselled on the pillar housing my fight, and made me rediscover the warrior within me. He found the packet of conviction I couldn’t locate to save my life, and gifted it back to me.
He made me, me again. And in that process, I lost some bits of myself too, to him, and finally came to be me again.
And very much like how a crushed magnet still searches for its bits and pieces, I am still looking for the bits I lost to him.
Every night, I do not attack my own strengths, I search them for him.
I realise that my independence is one of the greatest gifts I have. I understand that my lineament is the biggest legacies of him.
I don’t attack my lineament. I scourge the legacy, and I search for him.
I search for the other arrow of Eros.