Total Defeat - 300th Post

This is the 300th published post on this blog. Strictly speaking, this is not really the 300th post. I have one post on 'Addiction' that has been sitting in Drafts for so long. But it is so intensely personal, I have not had the guts to publish it yet. Also, there were a few previously published posts which got deleted. Nevertheless, as things stand now, this is the 300th published post on this blog.

I started blogging about two months after I moved to Phoenix, Arizona. This blog has been a companion through my life since then. It has not been the kind of life I expected at all. It has been intensely tough and trying. I feel like the arid desert has sucked up the love and vitality from my being, leaving it dry and lifeless.

I came to Phoenix in late November 2003 with hopes for a new beginning in life, in love, in my career. When I came here, I had gone through some unhappiness and defeats in life, but I still retained some part of the original happiness and undefeated spirit with which we are all born. Incredibly, I even had some of my original innocence.

The pre-Phoenix unhappiness and defeats were nothing compared to what has happened since then. Now, I have utterly lost it. There is not a single sphere of life in which I feel happiness and contentment, in which I feel I am in control, or at least feel like I am an equal partner with destiny - not in personal life, not in personal relationships, not in my finances, not in my career, and certainly not in love. I am totally tamed, utterly powerless and with no free will to influence any of these aspects of my own life. The loss of spirit is so complete that I don't even know for sure what exactly I want in any of these areas of life!

Is this what they call mid-life crisis?

The state of my life is hard for me to believe. I know it would be unbelievable for anybody who knew me from my previous lifetime. That was a time when I was fiercely independent and strong-willed. I used to live in a kind of special aura or halo which protected me from all the mundane trivialities and hardships of life. I was untouchable and impeccable. I did pretty much what I wanted to do and the Universe had a way of conforming to my will. Eventually, life used to turn out pretty much the way I expected it to go. I got better grades than almost all my friends, got a real job before any of them, travelled abroad before any of them, made more money than them. Success was something that just happened. Love used to be the only thing which did not work like I wanted it to... but I had this blind and total faith that it would eventually work out just right for me.

How did things come to this state? For the most part, I thought I made all the right choices. At every stage, in every circumstance, I did what I thought was the best. But every choice, every action seemed to have totally unexpected and undesirable consequences. All I could do was watch in helpless horror and defeat as each attempt of mine to make things better only resulted in things getting worse. And it all happened so fast. The past four-and-a-half years in Phoenix are a blur. It still feels like I landed here only early last year. Yet, I have stayed here more than double the amount of time I spent in the previous city!

Today, in this early morning hour, I look at each aspect of my life - my personal life, my personal relationships with family, friends, colleagues, my financial situation, my career and my love. And I still shake my head with disbelief. I had never thought that at this point of my life (31.5 years old), I would be in this state or situation, in any of these aspects of my life. I never thought that I would be so simply and totally defeated.

This blog is more about my journey through love, than anything else. So, I'll talk about love. Even at this stage in life, love is as usual the one thing which causes me the most angst and discontent. It is stuck in my throat like a golf ball-sized lump. Can't swallow it, can't spit it out. It chokes my breath and tears my eyes. The utter inability to communicate, to feel, to share, to care, to just BE, together, in unison, in sync for even a single moment is terribly defeating and immensely painful.

Things were simpler and orders of magnitude less painful when my love and defeats were all solitary, one-sided. But the addition of others, their feelings and their angst into the mix multiplies everything exponentially! It is so overwhelming, I am not even able to express it in words... So, I'll just end this here.