Who I AM?

By Sadhogopal Ram

Not too long ago, I knew who I was. I knew what I was doing, and what I wanted. I knew the purpose of my existence, and I knew the reason of my passion. I was fully aware of myself, and I was at ease with who I was. I knew the path I was treading, and was aware where it will eventually lead me. But somewhere down the line, while treading the very path, and doing what I thought I knew I was doing, I lost it. I lost myself; I lost my purpose, the reason of my passion, and the very premise of my existence. I lost my ability to think. I lost the fluidity of my thoughts. I lost the words, their meanings. I lost writing. And, months into this ‘lost-land’, I am yet to find myself, or for that matter, writing.

And now, I have no memory of my own premise or the existence on which it was supposedly based. I find myself drifting to an altogether unknown state of a perpetual insanity, which I never knew or ever thought of. Over the period of a very short span of time, I, from being tormented, have become a tormentor of the heart, mind and soul of the one I love.   

To call myself a beast, who feasts on the fears of the one who loves him, would be an absolute understatement. In fact, I find myself dangerously close to the characteristics of the vilest of the vile insect ever found on earth – the parasite.

I have become what I always dreaded I would become. A perfected version of the monster, my father, who mostly fed on other’s fear and guilt, and at last succumbed to his own in the most undignified manner.

But that is not what I am, and certainly not who I am.

So then who am I? On what premise was my existence based?

I have no memory of it, but the residue of the time long gone by, tells me I was something else. A bit humane and a bit something else, the remains of a seeker in his perpetual state of search, now lost… for maybe forever, tells me that I was a path in search of meaning, a wind in search of space, a voice in search of purpose, a will in search of freedom, an attempt in search of success, a loner in search of solitude; it tells me that I was a man in search of logic and reason.

I have stopped being that man now.

I have stopped being myself now.

My name is just a name now.

It no longer means what it meant once.

Although I still go by the name Sadho, but I, somehow, have lost the meaning it carried with it. No longer a seeker, I now find myself uncontrollably, unknowingly drifting to an altogether unknown state of a perpetual insanity.