Wanted - Dead or Alive

 

'When I'm dead, you'll remember all the efforts I took to cook you tasty food. You'll acknowledge me when I'm dead'. 

Oh no! Gasp! Just the thing I did not want to say. But it was too late. I had already said it. And of course, now that I'm a much more emotionally mature and spiritually aware person, I immediately realised what that smelt like. Self pity. Self loathing. Playing a victim. Damn, no matter how hard I try, I fall back into those familiar patterns. 

Now the thing with this line, 'when I'm dead... ' is that it is a form of self solace, a sort of consolation that even if now people don't recognize your worth, one day they will. But it is the worst form of doing so. Because it also means that you believe that no one acknowledges you right now. It is also a sort of warning to the other person. Hey, if you don't see my value, then may you suffer when I'm finally gone. It reeks of low self esteem, manipulation, gaslighting and even to a certain extent narcissism. 

Yes, narcissism because even though you play the poor sad ignored victim, in the next instance you elevate yourself to being revered even in death. This is done to console yourself. It is really not for the other person at all. 

How many of us have hit those rock bottoms in life when we picture ourselves dead? We imagine our loved ones crying, missing us, their lives shattered by the disappearance of who we consider the best thing that happened to them - us! 

And then we find ourselves crying. How dare people not love or value us right now? Hold the thought. Why would anyone picture a scenario as terrible as this? Everyone knows that no one is indispensable, that life goes on. Yes, maybe we will be missed, and that's okay. But why would we want our loved ones to suffer? 

We don't. We want them to think they will suffer so that we feel important. When we think of our deaths, why do we want people to cry over us? It is to reinforce our value to ourselves. Because we are scared, we are so miserable in our lives right now, because we so strongly believe that we are invisible. No one loves us. Even we don't love ourselves. So why would anyone else? Okay, then maybe once we are gone, they would. 

Step back. Watch yourself say this. Did you mean it? Do you want to die? No, no, not at all. You just want someone to tell you how important you are. Is it pathetic? Yes. Is it cowardly? Yes. Is it psychological warfare? Yes. But is it okay to go through it because you are just another complicated fucked up human who does and say things that may not be perfect? Yes. As long as you can understand it. 

In the last four years, from all that I have read and gone through, I have understood only one major thing. Know yourself. Understand your triggers, your patterns, your behavior. Why do we like someone, love someone, hate someone? What is it about them that is like us? Because at the end of the day, that's all what any of us are trying to do. Relate. One can relate to understand oneself better. Or one can relate to make the other person feel understood. At the end of the day, hormones, relationships, love, affection, sex are nothing but a desire to relate. That is what the human journey is all about. 

I always used to look up to my grandfather. He was my idol, my father figure. When I grew up, I wanted to be just like him. He was brave, adventurous, kind hearted, magnanimous, larger than life, sometimes reckless and happy. When he walked into a room, everyone looked at him, paid attention. He was a tall, towering man with a booming voice. I wanted to be just like him. 

Or so I believed. As a child, that's what I wanted to believe. Today as I said the words, when I die... I remembered my grandfather saying the exact same words to people. When I die, you will miss me. When I die, you will value me... 

Was my grandfather not happy? Is that why he had a fixed routine, a glass of whiskey and the same fruit and salad platter every evening? Was he monotonous and rigid in his ways? Stubborn too, maybe. Did I see that as a child? Did I pretend not to? Is that why I think it's okay to stick to my routines like a clockwork everyday?

Maybe I'm not adventurous at all, maybe that is who I want to be. Just like he did. He went out of his way to be helpful and loving, but maybe just maybe, inside he was selfish and sad. 

Do I really want to be like him now? No. I want to break all the generational trauma that my post partition ancestors carried inside with them wherever they went. I want to release the mindset and baggage of my parents, their struggling deprived childhoods. I want to leave my own behind too, all that I suffered and treasured as my own identity, I do not want to carry that anymore. 

So no, I do not want to die for anyone to value me. I want to live long enough to value myself. Because as much as I believe in rebirth like my ancestors did, one life should be enough to make sense of a lot of things. One life is enough to try to change. At least, try. 

'You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough. '

- Mae West