I can't stop thinking about you..

Is this more about me than about you?

I carry out my day with your thoughts running in the background. I can’t quite put a finger on what part of my brain carries you with me while efficiently carrying out other tasks more important at hand. And I can’t really tell when your thoughts quietly creep into the other part of the brain, when I am suddenly distracted and daydreaming. Now, your thoughts are no longer a background noise but consume my being.

Just like that.

But those are not the days when I miss you the most, where it almost feels like an injustice that you’re not with me, an irresistible urge, restlessness to the point of choking on my breath, an ache in the chest. On certain days, I wake up missing you like this, for no particular reason.

Like, we belong together, like we exist in duality, light to darkness, void to space, yin to yang, Shiva to Shakti. This might make it seem like we are opposites, but when looked at closely, we are mirrors to each other, a reflection of each other’s existence. We are meant to be known together. Without one, the other simply can’t exist.

But this hollowness that accompanies this one-sided affection compels you to turn inward. After a hundred pages of letters confessing my love for you (you’re probably never going to read), and then another hundred pages of journaling to understand why you occupy my brain. I was tired and, honestly, irritated by the command your mere thoughts had on me. I sat deeper with this thought. I questioned if this is something I crave from my relationship with self, but end up searching in you, because after all, you are a mirror to me, you reflect not just the light in me, but my shadows too. The shadows, I have repressed in the darkest corners of my subconscious, where no light can reach. But either your light is too strong that it managed to reach the depths of my darkness, or you unintentionally reflect that darkness to me. Anyway, you stir something deep in me.

Your thoughts are like caterpillars feeding on leaves to become a butterfly. Because when I admired you for your kindness, openness and fierceness, I also absorbed those qualities from you. It became a part of my becoming.

You became a part of my becoming.

Now reaching to this understanding took time. There was longing, frustration and evolution. And slowly my brain has let you go. Your thoughts don’t tire me anymore, nor am I bothered by them every passing second of my life.

But I am surprised that my heart has still not been able to give you up. Your purpose had been served, my obsession is over, but even after my denial, you creep in on lonely nights in search of a companion.

And a two-second gaze in your eyes is enough to undo the hundred pages of journaling I did the night before to convince myself that I have moved on from you. That’s what your presence does to me.

I circle back to you now and then, fall into the loop and ask,

Will you become my light when I master the art of darkness?

Will you take space in my chest, fill the void when I rip out my heart for you?

Will you be inspired to be my Shiva, if I penance like Shakti?

Something I wrote when I was frustrated but equally in love