Kafka time

I'm in the city of Udaipur, the impossibly romantic city where a major part of the Bond- movie "Octopussy" was filmed. There are turrets and palaces and temples meeting the eye from every direction, and it is not surprising that the city palace is soon going to be host to another lavish royal wedding.

It is however during times like these, when in places like these, that my self-pity rises to astonishing new heights. It is when being surrounded by all this beauty, that I get acutely aware of my loneliness, and the fact that my "husband" is nothing more than a cheap 7 dollar ring with the brilliance fading fast.

I find myself crying when I should be rejoicing, grieving over my solitude when I should be strengthened by my independence, tears falling for loves lost, loves never had and loves that never will be. The emptiness and loneliness claw at my heart, sharp as a raptors talons, and deepen the already ragged scars that never seem to heal.

I sit here now, with the pains of the past and the present as my only company. I am not religious, or a person of faith, but sometimes I wonder if I'm only but a pawn in a game of the God's in the sky. And the irony is not lost on me, that the harder I fight, the harder I fall victim to the very enemies that I strive to conquer: loneliness and abandonment.

I remember when I travelled through South America on my own a few years back, two months surrounded by scenery un-rivalled in this world. But my memories don't take me to the eerie beauty of the saltlake of Uyuni, or the imposing mountains up at La Raya, or the solemn faces of the Quechua women in their colourful skirts. Instead I only remember nights of darkness, endless hours of emptiness and the stifling feeling that I must have done something horribly horribly wrong to deserve this, to experience all this beauty and wonder with no-one to share it with. In my world, this is possibly the greatest punishment of them all. If only I knew my crime.