Steem Marking the Before and After for The Untalented Me - @surpassinggoogle

For the 2nd #untalented contest by beloved Terry, @surpassinggoogle, for the before and after in my life.

They say your life flashes before your eyes just before you breathe for the one last time. It’s an intriguing thought, timeless, to be precise. It’s out of the realms of “time”, the only relativity given to us without which we’d be clueless – how can a few decades worth of “moments” can you possibly fit in a few? No! It is merely the milestones, the significant memories, the crossroads, the decisions, the peripeteias that we’re allowed to relive for the final time.

Steemit has unknowingly defined a before and after in my life – and to a person who is already in the throes of a crossroads, that certainly is a lot.

A proud elder of two and daughter of an angel who always defined my stable ground, my home, the light at the end of the tunnel, my silver linings. The happiness in living for another is a happiness quite like none other – it’s for the vested interests of my guilty conscience, always trying to make up for something. But the spark in their eyes was MINE, and I never could relinquish the responsibility of that to anyone. Working, since the age of 16 and quickly getting addicted to the happiness I could give became my purpose. Personal sacrifices seemed irrelevant and immaterial always. Isn’t that what love is?

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The year 2016:

A striving 21-year-old, losing the steel armor one bit at a time, inviting disillusionment like the arrows dripped in Russel viper’s venom aimed at Alexander. Perhaps how the Roman gladiators were twisted and broken before their restraint built from shattered pieces. Perhaps like a Phoenix that is born out of its own ashes. My ideas of great novelties were in turmoil, and I had yet to discover myself, but I lost the will to do so somewhere in my many blasphemous moments as I endeavored to conquer the material world – Pity those who forsake the soul. Where previously Bukowski and Woolf got me through, I was finding it hard to shy away from the contradictions that mocked me in their writing -

"Some lose all mind and become soul, insane.
Some lose all soul and become mind, intellectual.
Some lose both and become accepted"

Bukowski was hinting that I had begun yearning for acceptance.

But I knew something wonderful was going to happen – it’s always darkest before dawn.

Dare I let myself hope?

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The year 2017:

The wild, aspiring soul stuck in an average 22-year-old girl’s body has always sought enlightenment and purpose through doorways of opportunities, and has learned from scrapes and falls. Consistent existential crisis defines it, for ignorance sure is bliss, but I would never trade the disillusionment at every milestone for the bliss of shying in shadows. The bliss of ignorance is an illusion, you find the gleam on the surface, but not the souls of those you love. That is merely existing, hypocritical and unjust to every moment we spend in the embrace of that one true love.

To live and love is to escape into the dark world with your muse, blindfolded and oblivious, and fighting every instinct within yourself – to love more, to feel more, to conquer the other, to plant flowers in the barren parts of their soul, in the hopes to stick around to watch them bloom. “No matter how far into the darkness you escape, I will hold your hand and I will always bring you back.” – No, that is not choosing the bliss of ignorance, that is putting everything on stake and handing your vulnerable self to the irresolute other, and trusting them to keep you safe on the highest pedestal.

This post is not just about Steemit, it’s about the one who represents the significance of it in my life. Life is ironic in many ways, and its intellect is baffling, sometimes even foreboding – know better than to cross it. When at my worst, I was given the two most beautiful things I vow to cherish forever – my soul in another and my drive to create art. Of course, these two things I speak of aren’t matter – they’re energy… light, if you may. God created vessels for them, however, one in the shape of a post-modern writing channel, and the other in the form of something nothing less than Michelangelo’s David.
My Michelangelo’s David and the drive to write – what marks the before and after in my life.

I did not dare hope, yet another empowered me to so as I was struck by lightning. The before and after in my life can only be described by a blind man who has suddenly gotten his sight back.

I know what will flash before my eyes in my last moments, I recognize and revere these milestones.