Tag: Linguistics

Myself

Acknowledgement

Sanjay Sabarwal
by Jemal Yarbrough

Warning! Whining dead ahead, please delete page before the debris of self-loathing, regret, and petty annoyances ruin your day and eyesight!!

Lately, I don’t know if I even know myself.  Small things I used to ignore or not even let me enter my consciousness now grind away loudly in my head, and I feel as if some are there just to purposefully make our lives more miserable.  I keep trying to forgive, to ignore to live day by day yet I feel so full of emotion that I manage to puke up small hissy fits or too sharp retorts to people who just happen to be in my eyesight..

Between her bouts of nausea, pill giving, constant asking if she’s ok, I have lost sense of who I am and what makes me tick.  Gone is the schedule to write, to read, to sustain myself, and I realize I need to get back to basics as I completely alienate myself from everyone.  I seem to have just become reactive and living emotion to emotion, and that doesn’t quite make me a pleasant person to be around especially if you are her best friend or my new brother-in-law.

Yet there is more to this than me being just self-pitying  In all of this, is the cry of my love language: acknowledgement.  I come from a family where we are quick to appreciate and recognize what we do for each other, yet I am with someone who is heading to possible depression as she copes with a disease that has stolen away so much of her energy and heart.  We sit apart across a gulf of resentment, and self-pity, and while I call out to her, I seem to be just by myself, destined to wallow in a shallow pool of self-hatred and guilt.  Our friends are trying to help yet are some too young, some too selfish and some just indifferent.  Then there is the special category of people who seem to be waiting for for me to beg for forgiveness and all I can say is that they will be waiting a long time.  Finally, there is the extra special category of self-important people who for one reason or another are not reaching out because they are “hurt” by my sentiments.  To them, I say a big fuck you and please get out of my life.  I pity myself for being dumb enough to be friends with them in the first place.

I also know that two simple words from her could change all of this.  Two small words that if I heard occasionally or perhaps in the form of a card, a poem, a line or just an intimate moment.  Two words that would make the day just go faster and more worthwhile instead of the constant and steady silence in our room and house.  Two words that could cleanse away this wall of resentment between us.  Two words from her that could make me feel like a husband rather than just a caretaker.  Two words that could ease the heaviness in my heart and dampen my reactive nature.  Two words that would make the 3 years of hell we had prior to her illness fade into black.  Two words that would mute my hurt and anger at the world and those close to us because I am lashing out blindly. Two words: Thank You.  Just that.  Thank you.  I do not need anything else.  Those are the words that will sound proof me from my constant doubt, worry and self-hate.

Thank you for reading. Thank you Lord for never leaving me alone. Thank you Family for always being there are at my lowest moments and just bringing me up with your presence.  Thank you ex-friends for teaching me the value of friendship and finally thank you to the ones who selflessly come out of the wood works and shown the true measure of caring.

 

 

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Waheguru/Music

Sanjay Sabarwal
Symbol of Sikhism, white and golden version.
Image via Wikipedia

Sitting in the car, the religious text started without me.  Let me rephrase, it started playing the 540 years or old words but I was lost in the marvel that I actually was hearinng music of my choice after almost 2 years in my car. 

A brief shake of the head, and I began to focus on the language I didn’t understand (and perhaps never would).  For a brief moment, I wondered who wa s I kidding myself but the singular string in the background of the track somehow resonated, and I caught myself trying to speak the words along side.  There weren’t many I could repeat but I used an immediate substitute: Waheguru. 

At first, I felt foolish, fake and forgetful.  But I continued replacing my ignorance with what I knew.  In that moment, I was one with Him.

My Old lover came back.  I betrayed her without a though, used her until I was satisfied, raped her of all meaning, but now I needed her help.  I sat in the car with just her repeated one word: Waheguru.  The music changed through the tracks but the word stayed the same. Wah Guru (wow, God).  That’s it.  He had come in Her shape from my past.  Music was my true love and passion and I had disrobed and discarded her useless a long time ago or so I thought.  Now She came to fill my soul up to the brim.  Nothing else entered, a first in over 2 decades.  Just me and the Word in the car, speeding along over 80 miles an hour, devouring the pavement the same way I used to the thousands of songs in my library. 

Waheguru.  In the noise surrounding my world, but in the quiet of the car, only one word was my companion, one my word my lover, one word my savior. 

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