To Be or Not To Be

In between the two of you, when things are not how it should be, when do you know, if it's time to leave?

Life is like this open space filled with little enclosures. Every enclosure is a relationship, a room, where there are two people.We each, by our own merit, own several such rooms, some big, some small, some, which we rarely visit, and some, where we love to spend most of our time. The memories form the bricks, building the walls little by little, until they grow from one little brick to a full room, in which you reside. But then there are rooms which are much like the witch's hut that we have read about in the story of Hansel and Gretel. Oh the roof is of ginger bread, and the walls are of chocolate, and the windows are candy and the carpet is candy floss. These rooms are attractive, colorful, and don't we all love to be in there! But soon enough, the realization dawns upon us, the room is devouring us more than we are devouring the parts. The cost for that little fun, that little sense of belonging, and that little mirage of love is much more than we can afford. The question is, what do we do now?

Once we have the realization of what is really happening, many options open up to us. We may brave it and win over the situation. We may sit in a corner and wait for a miracle. We may want to change it and find ourselves too weak for it. The most difficult option here is to find the door, and leave. The room in itself is not the biggest problem, the problem is the person we are with, in the room. Given a chance we would still want to leave the room and look at it from far away at times, wondering away, but it is this person, that we can't abandon. This person who has given us all the sweetness and care and love and warmth, we can't just leave them out there, that's selfish, that's wrong, that's almost evil!

These moments, when all of these emotions and thoughts rush in, and the heart is at a war with the brain, deciding to do or not to do, to be or not to be, these moments feel like ground glass under our eyelids. They must be dealt with, yet they hurt so bad. Everything comes into play, all the time, energy and emotions that have been put into building the room, how strong the walls have become, how each and every brick of a memory seems so precious, yet how each and every moment in the room seems to suffocate the life out of us, we can't breathe, our eyes water, and we feel more weak with every passing moment.

One small thing that we tend to forget is that, the doors to these room are never really shut. They are always ajar, just at the stretch of our fingertips. Whether we will reach out for it, or we will sit and wait for the never-to-happen miracle, is solely upon us. The least that we can give to ourselves is some fresh air to breathe, to get our thoughts straight. Nothing is more important to us than our lives. We are the architects of our own lives, we build our own spaces, we break and rebuild them to our convenience and comfort. Our biggest responsibility is nothing but ourselves.

As selfish as it may sound, our world actually revolves around us, cause if not for us, that world will cease to exist. So if by chance we find ourselves in one such toxic room, for the sake of everything, we must take the chance, get hold of the door and step out. Standing outside the room, breathing fresh air, or maybe visiting another room to lighten our souls is all the help that we need to find our way. Not always do we have to abandon a person, sometimes good ways come out of nowhere, sometimes, the person just follows our suit and gets some fresh air themselves. Yet, not all spaces can be saved.

If you have followed this far, and can relate to all of it, you know, sometimes, you have to let go. You have built it once, you can do it again, you have all of it in you. If you feel drained, all the emotions sucked out of you, all the energy put to waste, all the time just gone by, know it for yourself, there is time, as long as there is life. There is nothing that cannot be replaced. Give yourself time, to heal, to feel, to know what more is out there in the open. We are all weak after we recuperate from an illness, give yourself that much time and care, and with time, the weakness is bound to go away. The world is your oyster. You will find what you seek, in a new place, at a different time, better and stronger than before. It might be you get your old person back in a new and refreshed form, it might be it's a different person altogether, but there will be someone to hold you again. Just make sure, that by the time you find this person, you find yourself completely. A new room to fall back upon is always welcome, but the strength to build that new room, bigger and brighter than ever, should be in you.