It all started a long time back. When exactly, I don’t know but it was always there, that thought at the back of your head which slowly steadily becomes an attribute. It just happened one day, the realization, of course, sitting in a coffee shop and telling the person, whom I accidentally happen to love, about how I would love to live in a house such as that shop. A glass front, a walk in kitchen, a small living room with a spiral staircase leading to a bedroom and well, I did muttered something about a Ducati parked in the driveway but that was it. All I wanted was a place for myself, a place where would exist as I have always wanted to, a place which I would fill with my books, my music, my iDevices and my idiosyncrasies. I place where the only sound would either be that of mine or guitar strumming punctuated by drum beats.
I often wondered when people said they needed to be alone, to think or to do whatever they do. I wondered because solitude always quietened my thinking. Only thing I need to think when I am alone is what to cook for myself or what to read next and yes I do think about what I read but that’s just a part of the process. I read, I think and if I like it, I let the idea lie at the back of my head. It’s not that I don’t like people or that I am anti social, well I am to a certain extent which involves eschewing all forms of meaningless conversations and goodbyes and I often don’t say hello to people because I don’t like exchanging pleasantries post that, but it’s just that I don’t feel the need to go out, extend a hand and relate.
That brings me back to the thought that became me, the thought that I could possibly live alone for the rest of my life. The thought that I am complete in myself, that what I need is within me. Companionship, appreciation, belonging, the feeling of being home, the things which people so desperately crave but even after trying hard, walking round the fire or down the aisle or accepting someone through a muslin cloth, still couldn’t find. To be content you have to be complete and you have to be complete in yourself, thinking someone else would come along and fill the holes in you would just leave you with a perforated yarn, scaffolding so fragile that an iota of doubt could make it shiver.
I want to be alone and free until I outgrow the void inside me, until I have been and done what I wanted to do, until I have fulfilled every last desire inside me, until the fork between solitude and companionship becomes one, until I have something to share with someone, something which begs to be shared not for the sake of an entitlement but just for the sake of sharing. Until then all I want to do is live in is a house just like a coffee shop.
