It’s been quiet here for a while – after Sri Lanka, other things took over.

Today I want to share a few lines that came to me after some days of familiar heaviness – at the side of a friend carrying an unfathomable loss, while I watched guilt settle in her where none belongs.

These lines are for her. And for anyone standing in their own labyrinth of guilt right now:

The insidious nature of guilt is that escaping it is the one thing guilt keeps denying you.

So you feel guilty following guilt’s dictate, and any thoughts of mutiny or even attempts at breaking free are instantly avenged – by feeling even guiltier.

You think that if you only suffer enough, you will have atoned for your guilt at some distant point, but alas, this point will always remain in the future.

Then you feel guilty towards yourself for not being able to escape, for being weak, for not being able to just “shake it” as society dictates.

You get angry at yourself and fate for having to carry this guilt – and feel guilty for your anger.

And thus guilts gets heaped upon guilt upon guilt upon guilt, until it takes your breath away.

Guilt creates the illusion of eternity.

BUT GUESS WHAT?

You can turn your back on this losing game.

You can step out of the maze guilt has trapped you in, taking your head out of its toxic fumes that blur your vision and numb your very being to the core.
You can take a deep breath and start seeing again, creating your life step by step by step.

That is, if YOU allow yourself to see that guilt was an invention in the first place trying to make sense of the inexplicable: what other people choose.

But the only choices YOU have power over are your own.

Will you take that step out of the maze?

I’m waiting for you on the other side.