#NoFilter - The Things We Do To Make Ourselves Feel Alive 

When you have been single as long as I have been, you learn to do a lot of things on your own. You know how to get yourself to parties - to go shopping on your own - to cook for yourself -  to defend your own honour - to get yourself to the doctor…etc. It is without a doubt a very independent road. Until of course you knowingly and willingly take a detour... 

To those who have been in relationships almost always or have gotten used to one long one perhaps will not be able to relate to this. When you fly solo you become used to yourself. You on your own become your own couple.  But oddly enough that becomes insufficient, because to feel something for someone is in fact biological. 

It is not this perpetual thirst for love and marriage that is in the equation here. That is an entirely different topic altogether. But here in this case it is desire. Either desire of the mind or body or an idyllic combination of both. From a completely female perspective, when it comes to seriously deep attraction it is 90 % brain. It’s not that women don’t appreciate a well chiselled body but it is really isn’t a necessity with the right words, said at the right time - you got us swooning. 

But when it comes to feeling alive it’s the experience of being wanted, needed and above all relentlessly desired that we yearn for. Our very soul aches for it and it is not something that can be fought or ignored, like I said - it is biological. And eerily enough you find your satisfaction in the most volatile of situations, complete with a set expiration date. It may be in a few weeks, months or years, but either way it will come to an end. 

For most of us it is quick fix thing. To add a little spice in to our lives which obviously means that whatever it is and whoever it is with it, it must be exciting. And when I mean whoever, I don’t specify on a gender. No judgements – but it is topic for later discussion. Anyway, what I wish to emphasize in this maze of conjecture is of course a humble warning - careful who you invest in. 

Attractions such as this have a way of clouding your everything, from your better judgement to even your trustworthy female instinct. And again, it is an understandable circumstance because the adrenaline rush is what you crave for. What you need to remember is no matter how electrifying those precious moments are it also simultaneously elusive. That person who made you weak in the knees isn’t just that person, there is an entire personality there and you are probably enjoying a very small part of who he or she is. 

Teach yourself to eventually expect the worse. Thereby try not to emotionally invest and have no expectations – not even common human decency. There might be a time in future when you bump in to each other and they would see through you. And it doesn’t matter how intimately you have known each other, or that you in fact you have a basic sense of manners, in a scenario such as this you yourself have to see through them. 

Of course you are wondering is whatever worth all this unpleasantness. There is no need to state an obvious answer to your query. It is those fleeting moments, however unhealthy they might seem that make us feel alive, relevant even. If that is still difficult to grasp, just bottle it down to essential human experience. The thrill, the pain, the anger, the nothingness, the disappointment, the disgust, the sadness… it’s one gigantic life lesson. One that’s likely to be repeated. 

By S.A Hamid