The pandemic of loss

I’m hearing of what people are going through and trying to distract myself, wondering when will I meet my family, because it doesn’t seem to get any easier because it’s actually been a very long never-ending phase & honestly everyone’s too exhausted and is waiting for a break, a real pandemic & pain free break, that just seems too far away.

While I’m okay, many I care about aren’t. And while my heart & prayers reach out to them, I’m just a million miles away, can’t make them hurt any lesser, can’t replace their pain with joy, can’t do anything about the vacuum the loss has created in the lives of many.

The thought of losing loved ones is a nightmare, but the fact that so many of us have lost, seems so unfair. I couldn’t be there for my friends or family & I didn’t have the right words, no one prepared us how to handle loss, what are the right words, what do you do when you can’t hug & comfort them. What do you do when you feel their grief, see their strength and just wonder what is going on in their head right now.

We will all have to go through this loss, only a matter of time & we will probably never be ready for the inevitable, I just pray you find comfort, strength, peace & hope to pray for those who have lost, those who we lost & for those that have no one who’d pray for them.

The world is hurting, while we carry on life, pretending nothing has happened or we remain untouched, we can’t be so unbothered with the uncomfortable reality that sometimes life gives us something that we believe we can’t handle or something we aren’t ready to handle and accept, but it rips right through us anyway, like the rough waves of an ocean pulling at you and whilst you’re still reeling from the shock of it, knowing very well how close to the shore you stood for the inevitable wave to come hit you, sometimes you’re so numb to realise how deep you got sucked into that bottomless ocean.

My sweet love, if you’re in this ocean right now, wondering ‘why me?’ , I just hope you someday realise, it would happen to all of us, pain will come and rip us all apart , for different people in different ways, and yet in the end the raw hurt & grief would still be the same, this pure animalistic gut ripped open, heart stabbing pain. And our minds would be a storm of thoughts or silence of denial. The magnitude of pain sometimes we perceive to be different from people to people and sometimes we look at the good ones going through shit and wonder why , they did not deserve it, why would they be going through something incomprehensible. Well, I don’t know, I often try to understand that too. But it seems beyond me how unfair life can be sometimes. But this is life, we don’t really have a say when it comes to stuff we can’t control. We can only hope we have the strength to be upright or even the strength to breakdown and then crawl back up, so people who look at us for strength and hope know, that it’s okay to be weak, broken & shattered, but it’s not okay to give up on your pieces and trying, trying to hold yourself together, trying to resurface post the trauma, trying to exist & breathe and get on.

Either way, with time we learn to be okay with it, we learn to focus on little moments and little joys, while they say you forget, I don’t think we ever do forget , we just bury it deep within & get on with life. The ‘whys, ifs, what…. all keep adding up & the questions without answers sometimes don’t matter anymore. Because we survivors learn to take one day at a time, one step at a time, one breath at a time.

Sometimes when it gets too much, too overwhelming, we shut it out, we keep it at bay & we pretend to be okay in a little bubble we create to thrive & exist.

It’s made me question alot, I wonder how we all are truly doing, how mentally exhausted we are. How drained or blest we feel with being in the same house with people we love, day in amd day out, craving for the people we can’t meet or haven’t seen in a long time, missing out on the good big days of our loved ones, missing out on being there for those in their loss. We have missed to share our joys and sorrows in person, and as digital as this world gets, slowly losing sense of human connection, slowly becoming more monstrous, more inhumane, filled with more pain, how soon before we all shut our humanity, because we can’t take it anymore or would we rather hold on to the little bits of hope, faith & the need to be loved and to love, to be held and to hold, to cherish & to overcome, to dream and to work hard, to push & to hold back, to learn to grieve & be brave, to be there in some way that doesn’t make sense now, but to just be human, even when we don’t understand.

I pray as together we are in these trying times, may someday the better days that I hope would come for us all, we be even more together than today.

To my loved ones who have lost, who have gained, who have won or failed, who are trying to be afloat or remain sane, who put on a brave face , I love you. I pray for you. I hope for you. And I hope to hug you & let you know, you matter, you’ve always mattered. I did not have the right words for you at the right time, I still don’t have them. I don’t know if anything I say would ever make you feel any better or if it even matters. But when I can’t understand how, I shall hold you in my prayers . Take care. Be safe. Stay strong.

There’s no stranger danger.

You don’t have to befriend every human in existence.
If you don’t vibe, YOU DONT VIBE.
DON’T FORCE YOURSELF.

Sometimes being strangers or mere acquaintances is good for the both of you. This way life is more civil, less toxic, more of blessings, less of hate, negligible drama.

It is only when you feel forced to vibe with people who too feel the same, you’ll know there is this strange barrier in your head of non acceptance, somehow your brain will try looking for flaws & specks in the other to strengthen the thought of hate or dislike into something more dangerous.
Stop. You are trespassing the negative territory. Parents should understand this, when a child is uncomfortable with your friends kids , do not force them to befriend each other, they will grow up having this animosity inside them , learning the art of pretence for your sake.

Sometime back, no matter how good friends we are now, I faced a confession, that stuck in my mind. She said she hated me back then as I was the unwanted intruder. I got the vibes back then but what I didn’t know it was that she actually felt the whole why are you forcing to befriend her thing until now. I understand how your brain is made to adapt and adjust and how the negativity simply becomes an acceptable habbit of indifference. Now, we are simply acquaintances. And I like that. There’s nothing toxic. We respect each other, we talk and smile without a trace of ‘we haven’t spoken in ages’, it’s normal & good.
When things can be so normal, why pretend to feel indifferent when you actually force yourself to accept & gel along.
The problem with me is, I’m at this phase where I’m so calm, collected and thinking all those childhood stages, phases and understanding what was right, and what was wrong & why it was wrong.
So when time comes for me to mother my kittens, I know not to bound them to unhealthy norms of a perfectly acceptable lifestyle.

From the ruins, I found new life.

I’m not a writer by chance but by the events of my life & by choice to creatively use the energies smothering me.

Yes, I was headfast & too driven to simply achieve greatness, and I still want that. But I needed to stop & understand that I was after futile things.

What good is your education after you die?
What good are the grades ? What good do they do if they suffocate you in your worklife? What good does it do to focus so much on a temporary life? To live like immortals despite losing lives around us?
What good does it do to party every day & live like it’s your last? You are focusing on your last so much, aren’t you attracting death?
But isn’t life to end in death alone?
If I lose my soul & gain the world, what have I even gained? Nothing lasting, everything immaterial, perishable.

I’m not saying I’m not proud of the goal-achiever I was/am. I’m saying my mind as a child was too focused on material things. Now, my hunger is everything that holds energy, that lasts.
I focus on God, love, kindness, grace, gratitude, visions, energy, the vibes. Because this is real. Energy lives on whether I live or not. Transforming it into art or words or simply gestures and acts of simplifying the complicated life.

I crave a connection that is deeper, sensible & awakening, I won’t settle but something that’s only the surface. You won’t understand a thing of what I said, only because you have no idea of what revolution does energy do to your existence. I’m still learning how to transform the negativity into positivity, that into possibilities & those into the life of gravity & attraction of everything beautiful, divine & lasting.

If you are a faithful person like me, you’ll be a God-lover & Know that there is no energy that is as supremely & divinely enchanting & infinite & mystical.
Do not fear what/who can be loved.
Stick to your virtues, there’s magic in these beautiful things. For hope, love , faith shall always remain.

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Thanks for liking my words.
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Don’t be a victim of cruelty.

Remember, you give away yourself when you only have the desire to indulge bashful deeds of prejudice.
For years, I wondered why I couldn’t fit in with some people, why I never felt a part, no matter what I did?

Why? Because one or two of them always had hurtful things to say, be it body shaming or something else, & never once did anyone stood up to them for me. Because all around they laughed, as I pretended it didn’t hurt all that much, but it did, more because those others found it funny.
Today I have all the clarity I need in life, when it comes to a tribe I can be with & includes none of you. .

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If you read this, you will feel this, you will remember those moments where I felt betrayed for accepting toxic behaviour, betrayed because I expected alil more kindness, deceived even when I tried to help.
And then, I couldn’t help much ? .
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You will remember that there were moments I went aloof.
And it’s this. I, unknowingly, began protecting what I could of what was not damaged of me yet.
So, I stood up for me & made peace with breaking free from you.
You don’t understand how much damage you do to a person with your words, because you can’t see the cracks & bruises you inflict.

Today, I have my peace and answers to the questions then. And let me tell you, I am finally alright with not having much friends, not trying to force me to fit in when I feel otherwise. I don’t need you, I never did. Not then, not now..
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I have a select few, who even if I meet after ages are still so closely bonded, I have no doubt I’ll be seeing them greying with me in the future.
I have faced many demons. And I have conquered. And I’ve tried to understand, why people are like they are. And day by day I learn something new. That everyone is healing from something or the other in ways they are discovering fit for themselves.
Stay blest.

Commit to your peace.

It was only through the worst , I found me at my very best.
And for that I am truly grateful.

No, you don’t need an armour to win your battles, if you don’t have peace within, you are a lost cause.
First win the battle within, commit to your peace, learn to keep it there, alive and vibrant, being calm , helps you realise, half the storm was the noise in your head of the many “what ifs, why, why not, should I? , Maybe, if,…when, how, where, what…”

Half the storms are the zillion questions questioning your beliefs, your worth, your existence, your confidence, your journey, you. Half the questions are so repetitive, asked in different variations, making you believe there’s more to your iceberg than you see it.

Darling, most often , your storm is on the surface, the waves of the ocean, but you find yourself battling in it’s depths. Why? Because you are terrified, anxious, panicked.

You need to stop. Unplug. Detox. Think. Jot down if you must. Analyse your situation and breathe in the calming breaths of life. To win a battle you need to have a plan. A plan that you must sit back and put together and only then march into your battlefield. You can overcome anything, if you will yourself to do it.

Become accepting.

If there’s one thing I learnt from my past two workplaces is that I didn’t want anyone new joining there to feel unwelcomed.
I didn’t overdo it, trust me, but whenever I could I would try to make them feel less uncomfortable, not weird.

I very well remember my first days at the past workplaces, they didn’t know me, so yes there’s that stranger danger vibe, it takes time. But the aloofness initially was a tad bit disheartening. Like it’s not like I took a knife and went for their throats, the least expected was a smile. But all I saw was the staff murmuring together something something something about work and the newbie.

As much as everything and everyone grew on me in time, those two days I just had promised myself whenever there’s a new person recruited I would try my best to not make their first day their worst nightmare.
It’s not only about a workplace or some event or some other platform, try to make people comfortable when they around you if you sense that rigidness of mixing around, some people are shy, some people expect the worst and some are intimidated. Well there are some that be totally aloof, that’s fine, everyone is different.
If you can make some feel at ease to be themselves and make them feel accepted and not judged, do it. Be kind & accepting, because deep down everyone wants to be treated right, respectfully and cordially.
Most importantly be willing to listen and take advice from anyone and everyone, age and experience will not always credit your expertise, there’s always something to learn from everybody. Sometimes its children that teach adults that living life is more simple than the complicated scenario they think of.
Keep that pride, ego, superiority complex aside and just be human. Humanity is full of empathy, embrace it.

How are you?

So no one asked nobody, for nobody wanted to undergo the wrath of somebody and feel like a fool.
So many died without a real soul talk,
and many just lived to die through this monotonous walk.

If you live life with no one your soul connects with, what are you living for?
Material world is a thief of joy and peace. It has nothing lasting.
And if you can’t look a person in the eye and read them, how can you expect anyone to read you, understand you, vibe with you?
If you want to keep the people who actually ask you about your mental well being, stop holding onto ego, pride and the superiority complex.
All souls are equals, connect on that equal level, leaving the realms and prejudices of the material world behind.
Back in old days, asking everyone we meet “how are you doing?’ came as a habit.
No one asks you that anymore with a reason to actually know how you’re holding up, except to nod off to the ‘I’m fine, wabt you ?’ banter.
This is so robotic. 🙄

Every person is fighting a mental battle. We are all learning professionals of showing off “Nothing can hit me, I’m Rock-(wo)-man .”

How like us ! 😑

Anyway, I did want to check on you, I really do hope you are doing fine.
While, if you have no hope, suffice in the thought that I Hope for you. 😊
Stay blest.

I welcome you…

I welcome you ;
the good , the bad,
the nasty , the sad,
the disappointing, the revealing,
the expected, the unknown,
the peaceful, the envious,
the misfortunes, the glorious,
the lessons, the blessings,
the falls, the climbs,
the moments, the memories,
the gut wrenching pain, the freedom from letting go,
the venom hissed, the healing words,
the spite, the hugs,
the hurt, the love,
the cold, the warmth,
the luxury, the necessities,
the old me, the new me,
the family, the friends,
the betrayals, the loyalty,
the kindness, the arrogance,
the small things, the finer details,
the vivid colours, the rough edges,
the death in life and the life in death.
I welcome you all.
Thank you for making my life dazzle me on.
Grateful. Extremely truly grateful..

-Leandra Rodrigues.

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Thanks for liking my words.
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So vibe with me …
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Self love isn’t selfish.

Hi there sweet sunshine,
If you find yourself feeling guilty for indulging in self love and self time, please don’t. It’s not selfish.

Also note self love isn’t self obsession.

It isn’t selfish to love the self you are, cherish what you are, feel at home with who you are.

It isn’t selfish to respect your essence even if others fail to do so.

If you have love within you will have love to give around. The world needs compassion and kindness.
Almost everyone is fighting a mental battle, some wont even be aware.

The times now have exceeded the levels of pressures of expectations and horizons of dreams and wants and goals.

Sometimes you need to simply pause and refuel yourself, be kind to yourself.

Life is such a waste if you hate yourself until your last.
Why don’t you begin with loving the smaller bits you appreciate about yourself and slowly learn to love yourself in totality?

Selfish is not s/he who loves and loves evermore, thy-self , thy-life and thy world.

Stay calm. Stay blest.
Gudnight folks .

You are beautiful.

Listen you who are misguided too,
YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL.

Regardless of your face or body.

Your personality,
your character,
your heart, your emotions,
your sensitivity to others,
your values & principles,
your goals , your dreams,
your charisma, your nature,
your outlook , your optimism,
your inner being, your gratitude,
your smile, kindness, courage …….
And all of you is what makes you beautiful.

Please don’t let people tell you otherwise.
And please please stay away from people who make you believe that you are not.

I was friends with a person who made it so clear to me that I kinda admitted that beautiful was never going to be my cup of tea. I was a kid who hoped that someone would someday genuinely say it to me. It’s something what people long for. To be told that they are part of the beautiful world.

That’s a thing of the past now. And I really don’t blame anyone. It’s how I was and how I had to grow up to learn to look at beautiful in a different light, different perspectives.
And that’s when I realized the world had different varied visions and perspectives to look at the same things.

It is so difficult for some people to just say something good to someone, to appreciate them, to compliment them, and I mean all this for it’s genuiness, not fake flattery.

We live such shallow lives that are banked on ” I will compliment if she/he compliments. I will talk if she/he approaches.” Everyone is so shelled up and closed and unappreciative towards each other.
Why I wonder?

Go ahead and tell atleast one person how beautiful they are. Observe their reaction. They will have a smile radiating happiness and disbelief. Disbelief because no one says such good things to one another anymore.
Why look for people. Tell your parents and siblings what beautiful people they are.
When you become the reason to make someone happy, you will always be much more happier with yourself.
Beautiful is not the exterior that will go back to dust, beautiful will be that quotient of you that will leave behind a fragrance of fond remembrance even after your last.

Stay beautiful and blest, you brave soul.

Spread on some positivity around.

Keep smiling.

#leeevibes