Once upon a time...

...I wasn't Phoenix. I was Envisager, who wrote silly poems and prose here, a blog I cremated two years back for reasons unavoidable, unmentionable. And before that, I was noone.

Except what I still am. A nobody who isn't even a Nobody. As a friend of mine said, the basic nature of people doesn't change easily, or never perhaps. I'm one of those who long to become either the quintessential Nobody or the quintessential Somebody, and always stay somewhere between the two.

Unbelonging, that's who I am and have been; that, is how I truly feel. Deep down, I know I want to belong. To something, someone, some place, just about anything. I just want to really belong to it, not in the name, address, college, company, phone number, blog id types form-filling way...but really belong. I'm not sure I'd ever be able to do that. No place would accept me, nobody would own me; I'm too evil to be owned and called so.

Perhaps.

I take solace in writing; rants like these and random words disguising as verse or prose make me feel temporarily lighter, like a vomit, but a big part stays inside and unexpressed, and instead of making me feel full, makes me feel emptier all the time. When I was Envisager I was younger too, and fresher. Barely 18, I dared to imagine and envisage more than I can now, and although I can't say when the downward slope started, I feel more tired than I ever have. And only 20 am I. Twenty. I never expected to live this long though. I wanted to die a nineteen-year old. I still hope that when I die, I preserve a 19-yr old's heart. But I fear it's hoping against hope. I am getting emptied. And the bigger the crowd around me, the smaller my sphere of existence shrinks, and the bigger this feeling of not belonging grows.

So much has changed between last summer and this one. Not the internship bit, not the monotony of life, but everything else. I had a full life then, with hope, things to look forward to, love, friendship, blessings and pain. Hardly anything of that left now. Not externally, but internally. Even whatever I still retain doesn't feel mine any more. So much has changed between last month and this one too.

Maybe it's just a phase of disillusionment, maybe it's just me.

Or perhaps not.

I still have a quest though. THE quest. The quest to find something I belonged to and wanted to belong to, the quest of being just like Somebody, or Nobody, the quest of finding the one heart who understood me and accepted me because it wants to, the quest of finding the security I want to reside within, forever and with contentment, the quest of finding the one place or one thing I could come back to and call my own (futile attempt to which is this blog), the quest of finding one end to live for (futile fantasy for which is my dream of living alone with a single adopted child), the quest of finding the ears that always listened and eyes that always talked to me, everything, the quest of finding a purpose and an identity that I could place over everything else, over "I", the quest of being truly understood and forgiven, the quest of the beginning and the end of this interminable tale of chaos. Peace.

I know I need to fight for it; I know I'd never find it. All of us know it inside our hearts. This insecurity is not just mine, it's shared. This borrowed optimism and instinctive pessimism aren't unique to me either - doesn't 'belong' to me.Yet I know periodic despair wouldn't lead me anywhere either, and still that's the way it's gonna be, and recur.

Once upon a time, I dreamt. I dream still, but I dream more these days of a sleep with sweet dreams. I was innocent, but I lost it. I fought through loneliness with a spirit that wanted me to bring out the best in me, and it worked. But whatever outcome it generated, didn't belong to me. I don't know what I seek, I seek in the world outside me or inside.

There was a time I seeked love. It came to me too, a few times, but it didn't appear to be mine, and I shunned it. Destroyed, insulted, rejected, murdered - I did everything heinous imaginable. Over and over again. Obviously, all that had to come back to me in some form. Yet luck held out, and I found love within me too, and loved the love. Still do, and it's enough for a lifetime. I do not seek to love any more; doesn't happen twice. But I seek something still, unworded and forbidden, and unachieved it shall always be.

Once upon a time, I was alone and I began to walk. Company was found and lost, hope was kindled and diminished, and finally I'm out of the illusion, knowing, that although I'm tired, walk I must -alone.Once upon a time, I was me, and that was all. Then I grew - Time made me - but 'me' didn't grow alongwith, and now I is bigger than me, and all that grows is the void, making me more and more Incomplete each day.