Bittul is the stripping down of ourselves through suffering. Supposedly, it is only by going through this suffering--this stripping away of the self we once knew, the acknowledgment that the things we held so dear and so close no longer belong to us--that we find peace and even an actual new self.
But on the topic of old selves, I saw a ghost just now, in the gourmet market on my corner where I buy my dinner most nights of the week.
It was Thomas, or not Thomas but Z., my childhood and then teenagehood friend (see Tale of a Thirty-Year Crush, 7/2).
It wasn't him, of course. When I walked into this same gourmet market with Thomas several weeks ago, however, he sniffed the owners out right away. They're Persian, he said. I could start speaking Farsi to them and they would answer me.
Say something to me in Farsi I pleaded, half joking. The sounds he made in imitation doubled us over with laughter. But it was as if he wanted to say, This is a language so horrible to me it can not bear repeating.
When I walked into the market tonight, I saw him. It wasn't Z., but it was--it was an almost-teenaged Persian boy, very tall, gangly, with that one eyebrow that ran straight across his forehead. I probably see boys like this all the time--maybe even this very boy. Tonight he stopped my heart like a truck.
His beauty was startling. It made me remember wanting to say something clever enough to make Z. laugh. Then it made me remember him laughing. It is such a similar laugh now, yet very, very different. Not necessarily better with age; just more complex.
I stood on line with my watermelon and my eggs and my wild arugula and my eyes could not leave this child's face. He stood beside a cash register, being teased into helping his father or uncle or cousin--an older man who nods in polite recognition to me whenever I enter this establishment. The boy was so innocent. This was an innocent child.
What child isn't?
The thought struck, hard: I want everything back to the way it was.
I want everything back to the way it was.
Everything.
I want my husband at home, hungry and restless and waiting for me to walk in the door and ask him why he hasn't ordered dinner. I want to have the same old arguments about whose turn it is to do what and whose failures matter more. I want no more time spent wondering about calls or emails that go unanswered, or take too long to be answered. I want to be on the inside of a couple again, instead of on the outside looking in.
I want everything back to the way it was.
I want my grandfather back. I want him on the other end of the telephone, his beautiful spotted ancient hands shakily holding his end of the receiver, calling me Sweetie, telling me that life is a game to be played but never for stakes higher than what I can afford to lose.
I want my mother up and about and bitter and rageful, twisting the world with her chaos and horror, not lying stilled and finally one-upped by life in a hospital bed.
I want no more ghosts stopping my heart at my corner market.
At least that is what I told myself in this moment. Give it all back to me, I pleaded. Please let me undo it all, let me hit the celestial control + z, let me make this have been a long, sick, frightening, feverish dream.
Even if it means feeling mostly empty most of the time.
This is when I begin to understand bittul.
There is no longer any way forward that does not include diving deeply into great pain.
This is when I rush home quickly, because I am certain that the sound of what is inside of me coming out will easily terrify the whole world.
