The trouble with longing

What was the first conscious thought you had today when you woke up? Can you still recall it? Chances are that you can’t… but sure enough, you remember what you felt. It’s not by happenstance — emotions have a way of subtly defying our thoughts and defining our way.

Longing has long lived in my heart, often surfacing at the most inconvenient of times, stealing from me, at occasions, the better part of the present — like while walking up a crowded escalator at the metro; when sitting across colleagues laughing at some joke Rachel made; when staring into nothing and everything, looking at an art piece hanging on the wall of an art street. Memories bubble up like soda pop when you least expect them. They burst open the lid of isolation that you try so hard to put on your inexorable self.

Do you remember that memory from your childhood, when you were playing on the swing at the playground below — just back and forth and back and forth and back again — the sky just within the reach of your palm, the ground just within the reach of your feet, the whole world yours to touch and feel and live in? At times, you would lose your grip and let go, scraping your knee or your chin; sometimes crying, sometimes just brushing it off and moving on to some other ride. You would not ponder what could go wrong, or what would happen afterwards, or what had happened before — only what was happening. There was a simple beauty in that present. That beauty is still here — in my present, in your present. We simply choose to long for the one that was, and not what is. Rumination…

“What we long for is rarely the past—it’s the feeling we once fit inside.”

I have felt pain in many forms, but longing is not one of them. I’d like to think it comes from being true to oneself and one’s feelings, but then I muffle despair, hurt, guilt, and doubt, and romanticize what I choose to emphasize. Are the other feelings so acute that I wish to crown my morals for my longing? They are not. But humans are fickle creatures, and at times, we treat our own emotions as foreign to safeguard what we pretend to be right (or did I?).

Did I fall in love with the flower,
And not the root?
That love grew whence blooms shower,
But not the cold air brute.

Epiphyllum oxypetalum, commonly known as the Queen of the Night. It never asked to be noticed, heard, smelled or felt. I long to be lost in its fragrance once more, as I did 60 moons ago, and yet… the Yellow Gerberas that I received from Olivia will stay with me forever, even if just in memory. Just like, I can still smell the Pink Rose that Ariel put in my tote bag that one afternoon. Those flowers never wilt, their roots are in my memory.

I feel like I can conquer the world. The ground almost within the reach of my feet, the sky almost in the palm of my hair. I am dancing with the cold slashes of wind; winter — a fall of the seasons. I am in my bed. The earth is stationary. The skies are non-existent. The air is stale. The colors are pale. The sounds do my senses impale. Should I get up now? It’s morning again. The blanket smells of warmth and comfort, but my eyes stare at responsibilities. I should shut my eyes again, listen to my heart, taste ease — but my brain takes over. The escalator waits. The door needs to be opened. The shower needs to be started.

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My colleagues are calling again, I think Rachel has some new jokes that she wants to try. Maybe this present can yet be had. I may laugh again this while.