On losing things twice

It's hard losing someone once. It's even harder losing someone twice.

The first one felt like you're suffocating, gasping for air. You thought you'd be dead. You thought your world would end.

The second one doesn't feel the same.

You've known better, so you don't worry that you're going to die or that the world would end. It only felt like a quick stab in the chest and then the pain went away.

But deep inside you felt nothing. Because in between the two losses, somehow you got nothing left of yourself.

Quick ranting

I sometimes can’t sleep at night and I feel unreal. Everything that I’ve been through, they don't feel like reality. I sometimes still see myself as a college student, walking down the campus hall. And then there will be flashing memories of me working as an editor. Riding Bajaj day-by-day to the office, doing coverage. It was just a year ago but it feels so far now, even further than the image of me as a college student.

I think my life changes too fast. Not that I don’t like it. I like it that I get to experience many things, places, roles with different people. But I’m afraid somehow along the way I lose myself. I want to have something to hold on to — a constant, just so I feel real again, just so I believe that I have always been myself, even in different circumstances.

Have you ever felt this way? Like having flashing memories of your life’s fragments, and suddenly feeling numb? I remember being passionate about my works, or being melancholy at night, but I feel like those versions of me are not me. They are separate entities in another dimension. And the me me, who is now writing this, is a completely different person.

Tell me what you think.