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'Love Will Burn You Up'

Sometimes we are given what we ask for. Sometimes it is more than we bargained for.

All the time I was working at the liquor shop I could feel myself dying by degrees. Everything in my mind was rotting, decaying. My body was going this way too. My emotions were still running riot, just as vivid and colourful as ever, wracking havoc. Yet they were becoming increasingly detached from reality. They were becoming no more than abstractions to be used like pawns in the ever raging war of my mind. And emotions have no awareness of themselves - they play, they fight, they die. They do not care about tomorrow. Emotions are like children. The mind is weaker than any one emotion, but it understands the consequences of living. It can plan. The mind is no bad thing, not in itself. The mind is naturally just as bright and loving as those childish emotions, it's just tinged with a bit more seriousness, a bit more sobriety. Unless, of course, it's dying. It is then a fearful enemy, to anyone and anything, but most especially to its master.

And all throughout this slow death of mine, I prayed for some kind of deliverance or reprieve. I wanted my mind to be healthy again, in fact healthier than it had ever been - as healthy as it was meant to be. I wanted to be alive, fully breathing, fully blooded, fully thinking. The fuzzy existence of a pathetic individual, fluttering vainly against his own apathy was (and is) a horror to me.

Life has not been terribly hard on me, compared to some. Some might look at my life and think it'd been soft and easy. Still, there are serious losses, serious wounds that I will carry to my dying day - and hopefully not beyond. These are things that I've honestly tried my best to compensate for, by keeping a good demeanor, being kind and learning to have a sense of humour. The sense of humour is still pending.

All I want is to feel the hope of a boy, to know the determination of a man and be a fresh and aware human being. It was not too much to ask, though sometimes it felt like too much to expect. By degrees I can feel all this coming to pass. I am coming alive. My whole body spasms with life sometimes, as the bood and electricity return to muscle tissue long abandoned.

My mind is returning to life too, the decaying thoughts are being shed, and it has stopped manipulating my emotions. Now given liberty, my emotions are leading me down a new path - one I'd have missed not too long ago. My body is also regaining its health. Everything in me seems poised to take a dramatic leap into a wildly beautiful future.

Yet sometimes, as the sun goes down, my heart fails me. I can feel my body grow grey as it trembles with every quaking heartbeat. The old fear, unused to this newer self, resurfaces, riddiling me with doubts. I am on the verge of tears, thinking: "What have I done?" I go on long walks and try to tame my troubled mind, with its dark and bottomless fears, using mantras or music or telephone conversations. These things invariably work. There will come a time when I won't need to trouble myself over these fears, a time where my heart won't skip and my blood won't treble in my ears at night. Until that time, I will have to bear the pains of the awakening I have begun. It was, after all, the very thing I desired. It is just surprising how painful it can be, at times. Why do my hands shake, sometimes for no reason at all? What is this sleeping dragon I am awakening?

What is it for? What's its destiny?

What have I done?

(Why am I speaking so cryptically?!)

It's alright though. I'm too curious to see what happens next to stop what I have begun.

Om Klim Kalikayei Namaha

(I off this sound to Kali, the destroyer of the negative ego)

This is what it means to be in love.

Learn more about this author, Christopher Lapinel.
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