i wonder

The darkness came in steps, in phases, in cycles.

Now I wonder when the change first came, when I first fell into the dark. Three years ago? Seven years ago? Maybe it was scripted to happen, the way I was made, the way I am. Was it the day I learnt that I could create? Was it the day I began to believe, the reason I lived was to create and annihilate? My life became art and art became my life, and I suppose the cruel duality of hate and love, that came when I tied myself to it, will haunt me in my blood and bones forever. Is it the day I learnt what 'death' is, and 'hopelessness'? Was it the day I realised that I had the power to destroy myself?

I wonder when my will was defeated so. Will to live for anything else. Will to trust myself. Will to be.

Perhaps life back then, however unimaginably torturous it seemed, will always be better than life in the recent years that have just passed and fled. At least, then, I knew how to know when I was happy, how to be happy, how to hold onto it. Certain perfumes and aromas remind me of the red arches and the gardens a little too small, among which--I taught a friend a song under a staircase, I lost a thumbdrive, I gazed at a bent-tailed fish, I played a game I've completely forgotten.

I wonder where that happiness, that happiness in storybooks past, has gone. I wonder when I stopped loving the snow. I guess it all happened the day I grew up.

At certain checkpoints in my life, I pause, and begin to think: that I'm a little sadder now than I was before. I think to myself that I won't ever return to the way I was when I was six. Sadder and sadder, year by year. A one way road I would never walk again. Turning back with rue and nostalgia. Wishing my happiness goodbye, as if it would never return.

But now this is strange, and I never expected it. I wonder why I feel as if a darkness has lifted from my life, a darkness I didn't even realise existed till now. I wonder why I feel happier today, than I have for the last seven years of my life.

I never realised that my happiness had vanished, until I found it again.