i fucking hate everything around me rn almost everyone pisses the fuck out of me like HOW THE FUCK CAN PEOPLE BE SOOOOO FUCKING STUPID AND SOOOO FUCKING DRAINING???????????? AND YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE THE MOST ABOUT WRITING ABOUT ALL THIS??? THE STUPID FUCKING GRAMMARLY THAT KEEPS TELLING ME WHATEVER THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THE THINGS IVE WRITTEN TILL NOW AND YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DICKHEAD EXTENTION ON MY LAPTOP THAT I FUCKING INSTALLED, I DONT FUCKING CAREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE I DONT CARE IF I DIDNT PUT IN THE APOSTROPHE OR IF THE FIRST LETTER SHOULD BE FUCKING CAPITALISED YOU MORONIC PIECE OF SHIT

I DONT FUCKING CARE IF THERE IS SUPPOSED TO BE A FULL STOP AT THE END OF A SENTENCE OR A FUCKING COMMA U CAN STICK THAT DUMBSHIT UP YOUR HAIRY ASS AND YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE I HATE?????? I HATE THE FACT THAT I JUST HAD TO GET UP AND GET THE CHARGER FOR MY LAPTOP BECAUSE IT WAS ALMOST DYING

AND THE STATE OF THE WORLDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD I ABSOLUTELYYYY HATEEEEEEEEEEE THE FUCKING STATE THIS WORLD IS IN RIGHT NOW.

NOTHING IS EVER GOING RIGHT AND GUESS WHAT IM GONNA HAVE TO SHPW UP TO SCHOOL THE NEXT DAY AND HEAR TEENAGE BOYS TALK DISGUSTINGLY ABOUT WOMEN ON THE BUS AND THEN IN SCHOOL AND THE ON MY WAY HOME BECAUSE THESE FUCKERS THINK TALKING FUCKING BULLSHIT ABOUT WOMEN WILL GET THEM SOME BUT GUESSSSSS WHAAAAAAAAAAT THESE FUCKERS AINT GETTING ANYTHING OTHER THAN A MIDDLE FINGER UP THEIR FUCKSHIT HOLE

AND OH ALSO IM GONNA SHOW UP TO SCHOOL WITH UNFINISHED ASSIGNMENTS AND A BAJILLION FILES THAT I HAVE TO SUBMIT THAT I HAVENT EVEN STARTED WORKING ON BCAUSE GUESS WHAT U FUCKING IDIOTS I DONT HAVE THE FUCKING ENERGY TO WRITE A 20-SOMETHING FUCKING PAGES OF FILE FOR YOU TO JS TAKE ONE GLANCE AT AND NOT EVEN READ.

AND YOU KNOWWWWW WHAAAAT ELSEEE I FUCKINGGG HATEEEEEEE???????????? THAT HIGH SCHOOL IS FUCKINGGGG BORING AND DRAINING AND FUCKING ME UP SOOOO HARD AND I CANT WAIT TO LEAVE THIS FUCKING PLACE BEHIND BECAUSE I HATE ALL THESE MOTHERFUCKERS AROUND HERE I SWEAR TO THE FUCKING LORD ONCE IM DONE IMA CHANGE MY IDENTITY AND MOVE TO ANOTHER FUCKING COUNTRY CAUSE I CANT STAND THESE FUCKERS

I HATE THE WAY WOMEN STILL DONT HAVE RIGHTS AND THAT IM RUNNING OUT OF CHEESE AND CHIPS AND THAT MY PARENTS WILL ALWAYS BE DISAPPOINTED IN ME

I HATE THE FACT THAT I HAVE NEVER FELT LIKE I BELONG SOMEWHERE AND THAT IM ALMOST GOING BALD AND THAT MY BACK FUCKING HURTSSSSSSSS ALL THE FUCKINGGG TIMEEEEEEEEE AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH SDTFCVGBJHKNSZXDCFVGJBH

ok bye

If hair held memories, each strand on my head would be heavy enough with laughter, cries and glances I’ve fought to keep alive even after so long.

If hair held memories, then each strand would be tangled with all the pauses I took, only to feel alive yearlong.

If hair held memories, then every inch of your face is etched along the bend of every strand on my head.

If hair held memories, mine would smell like laughter in the corner of the classroom on a rainy day or a walk around the ground while rattling on about life that hasn’t happened, not just quite yet.

And instead of cutting it off, just like that, to forget,

If hair held memories, I would have left mine to grow, to remember, to know, to let it fall back down, let it flow, and not let it shed, not a single strand of my head.

But would I not cut them off to forget, even if they hurt me?

Would I not cut them off if they were pulling away from my scalp, begging to fall off, longing to pull away,

but unable to do so because of my lack of calibre to let go?

scarecely not

Because, Only If hair held memories, I would oil it every day if that’s what it meant to keep it strong with the reminiscence of small, quiet moments that I hold dear with a lot of weight

I would brush it like it’s the most fragile artefact I’ve ever held, refrain from detangling every interaction, every smile, every anecdote that maybe didn’t mean anything, but only if it did anyway

If hair held memories, I would bear the weight of Samson’s strength over my own

If hair held memories, I would braid the ones I want to keep close, tie ribbons on the ones all too discrete to let go and let the wind carry those strands to the places I never will go alone

And only if hair held memories, I promise to keep them tangled, I promise to keep them from falling, I promise to have them grow, I promise to carry them like my own

Because If hair held memories, I would use it to store love,

love like the coffee I had with you on an august morning, like the same taylor swift song on repeat, like the lamp on my desk, like your signature on my journal, like when we watched Pride and Prejudice for the 13th time, like when you looked at me with that look in your eyes

Love like when you bewitched me, body and soul

And I believe that hair holds memories, because mine holds you.

Can we dance along with the rhythms of a song if the singer is accused of committing crimes?

Can we enjoy the literary judgments of a book if the writer is said to be a bigot?

Can we still praise the glories of a painting if the artist doesn’t align with our political viewpoints?

The dispute of separating the art from the artist has been pirouetting for ages. Millions have had their fair share of verdicts added to this argument, and here’s mine.

If I’m asked to give one short answer to this question, it would be a no.

To conclude the justification of this question, we must know what is Art?

An Art is a reflection of the personal experiences and perceptions of an artist through paintings, writings, sketches, and much more.

Since every great work of art is by definition inexplicable and new, for an artist does not say what exists, but what does not exist; and by saying it, makes it exist.

The Art is when the artist uses their possessions: their exclusive worldview, their ability to see something new for the first time, and then expresses it in said forms for the world to see.

-

In her essay, “Letters of Notable People”, Milena Jesenská states, and I quote,

Anyone who has inspired others with their music, poems, paintings, is bound to be a very, very, unusual person, one who possesses certain inscrutable traits.

This is profoundly accurate, as we see a great deal of brilliant yet troubled people express their thoughts and emotions through various art forms.

Jesenská later draws that if you are disappointed by an artist, a human artist, then it’s your fault alone because you’re looking at the artist as if they were a bank clerk, without realising that what distinguishes the artist from the non-artist is not what they are but what they possess.

What distinguishes an artist from a non-artist is that an artist possesses the power to even turn a single droplet of water into a poetic symbol. A non-artist knows their body, but an artist knows their soul.

A non-artist possesses what they have, but an Artist possesses even what they don’t quite have, their desires, wishes, imaginings and the power to turn this entire world into an ingredient of their creativity.

Ergo, when people claim to separate the art from the artist, they are not only in denial of their beloved artist doing any wrong, but they are also disgracing the art by depriving it of its creator.

Rationales that are often brought up for this topic are,

Sometimes the wrongdoing that the artist has committed was done a very long time ago, where it was not really considered a crime, and the artist being dead makes it okay for them to support the art.

Or sometimes the art can be timeless and outlive the artist, and the offences of the art can be ignored.

But just because an act was legally justified, it doesn’t make it morally adequate.

The reason why we feel the need to separate the art from the artist is that, at times, the moral values of the audience clash with those of the artist, which can conflict with the way people perceive the art.

This situation is usually brought up when the artist may be glorifying harmful behaviour, engaging in immoral practices or basing their political opinions on ungrounded values.

A lot that could be done by the artist may be unacceptable to the audience.

And sometimes it’s frivolous to many.

Separating the art from the artist comes with its own repercussions.

When people tend to separate the art from the artist, they often lead the artist to profit or maintain influence even after a scandal. And celebrating the work of an artist with a scandalous career can lead to overshadowing the victims whom the artist might have harmed.

But can there be a gray area throughout all this?

All of this can often seem absurd without context. If the artist is dead or alive, if the influence of the artist was really much or not, or if the harm done was large or close to nothing. All of this is required before we include the artist in this discussion.

Or it can even be about the personal interpretation of the people, where what might be intolerable to one person might just be redundant to another.

Can we engage with the art critically, acknowledging flaws without erasing its value?

Rick Rubin, in his book, “The Creative Act: A way of being”, writes that, for an artist, the audience comes last. An artist should make their art truly for themselves, and as it turns out, when you do something truly for yourself, you’re doing the best thing you possibly can for the audience.

And if someone is making their art for someone else but themselves, that’s not art, that’s commerce.

Therefore, for anyone to engage with art critically and keep its value while not agreeing with anything that the artist says, you’re not doing anything but being in denial. If what we’re talking about here is art, then engaging with it leads you to engage with the artist themselves.

So, is true separation really possible?

This question does not accommodate one answer. not one singular universal answer.

And maybe the challenge is not choosing once and for all.

Maybe it’s about being vigilant about the fact that we live with contradictions in art, morality and human nature.

Because, as Jesenská in her essay says,

“The point is not to betray something to the world, but to enrich the individual, to provide the reader with a deeper understanding. The point is the logical connection between the world of the notable and the chosen. But as long as we are not quite so perfect, as long as the statement alone does not suffice for faith and understanding, as long as we must place our fingers in the wounds, we have the right to convince ourselves the wounds exist, and that they are deep.”

How does one deal with the fear of healing when your pain has shaped your entire identity?

I didn’t realise how every moment that I spent distancing myself from everyone around me, isolating the good memories away, how bleeding through pages and aching through songs stopped being a phase and started being a personality trait.

I don’t recall the time when I walked on the thin line between being sad and going insane because that was all that I could be.

And I fell through the latter.

It was small at first. quite manageable.
But I was oblivious to the fact that everything I did or loved slowly got drenched in the heavy drops of melancholy.
Anything I wrote while unravelling the interwoven webs of complicated emotions on paper, any song I replayed over and over again until the speakers of my device cracked, even my posture or the way I perceived everything and anything, slowly became a part of my narrative of romanticising the storms around me.

Some people have hobbies, so do I, but I will have no impact on my likings whatsoever if I didn’t hold the capacity of sewing my pain into every aspect of them.

Who am I when I’m not the person who sits in her filth of rage, tears and a perspective of life that makes her see it all in black and white?

I don’t know.

Because I don’t try to figure it out. I never have.
Because I’m so used to sitting in silence with the pain I know, and that silence is almost comfortable.

It’s almost as if the parts of me that are almost rotten to the core, that almost can’t breathe, are the ones I feel almost the most connected to.
It’s almost as if I know how to exist in a room of voices that make me go insane, rather than a room full of people who try to show that they care, but all I see is pretentiousness.

It sounds crazy, it must be, but not from the way I see it, never from the way I see it.
Because where you see sombre, I see safety.
And that is because I know how the story goes.
I know how it ends, better it be sorrowful.
But I know.
It has that sense of familiarity in it that wants you to stay a little bit longer. to leave everything behind and just sit there and breathe. knowing it can get to the worst of you, but you don’t move because you already know.

Whenever I’ve tried to be better, heal, or fix myself, there always, always, lies a threat right beside it.
Who am I without it?
Who am I if not the person I’ve been loathing for years?
If I let this version go, what am I left with?
If I’m not distressed or disheartened, will I remain the person that I am now?
Will I still feel anything as intensely as I do now?

But why am I afraid of losing someone whom I claim to resent and have tried to hurt multiple times?

The panic of not being interesting enough, or worthy enough, or even being me haunts my days and nights as I lie sleepless, staring into the abyss, having no one to share all this with, but knowing that I always understand.
And the fear of losing someone who understands during the process of healing is terrifying.
even more when you’re the only one that does, when the most dreadful parts of you are the ones ready to hold you when you collapse.
There is still a part of me that wants to know what it feels like to not be hurt.
But the sadness within me, which had made me what I am, what if all this goes away with everything that comes with healing?

What if all of it is thrown away? And if it does, I will have no one to push the blame to this time, instead of me.

Is it all in my head?

I’m growing each day, but somehow it still feels like my life has come to a halt, where each dull moment plays on loop with the brightness dimmed and sounds off. Driving me to insanity each time I do something that scares me about the girl that I’m becoming.

It’s like I’m fading, disappearing into the shadows of my own movie. Not knowing when this all started. Maybe when childhood friends started to feel like intruders. Maybe when, instead of picking up my pink glitter pen, I got stuck in the oblivion of black ink, trapped inside the pages of my journal.

But it’s not as if all of it stopped. It’s still rolling. The movie continues. Just not following the script I once used to daydream about.

Suddenly, the innocence started to slip away. All the silly things that used to define me, hair clips, pink nail paint, flower headbands, running in the park till sunset and my mother calls for me from the balcony of our home.

All of it.

Just disappeared.

Faded.

There was no final scene. There was no funeral. There was no goodbye. If only someone had told me that the last time I played like a true child would be my last time, I would want to stay in that moment forever, refusing to leave because it was all too precious. All too golden.

And now, everything that used to define me is stuck somewhere in my brain in the box named nostalgia. Nostalgia is brought by the smell of my old house, the faces of the people I spent my first decade with. Everything that was once too dear to detach from now is just an old memory. Just a memory.

All the friendships that faded, but nothing filled that empty space. But the truth is, if I ever get the chance to speak to anyone whom I called my best friend in 1st grade, I won’t. I would not want the prized memory that I have of that person to be scraped away by the person they are today, because the ghost of teenage years haunts them just as well as it haunts me.

Who am I then? I’m not the innocent child I was 5 years ago; I’m not the person I wanted myself to be 5 years ago.

I’m just there. I don’t know who I’m meant to be, I’m not sure of what’s coming next, I barely remember the past that I cherish, and I barely know the future that I’m deathly terrified of.

And as much as it’s tiring to lose parts of yourself without knowing what comes next, it’s also exciting. Terrifying, but exciting. I don’t feel the excitement right now, but to my core, I know I would not want to be stuck in the memories; I would not want to be the person who lives in her stories.

It feels as if I’m strolling in a hallway, hitting and trying on every door that comes my way, very unsure of which doors close on my face or which ones I close myself.

Somehow, all of this has affected me more than I know of. Being the side character in my own movie, while I watch from the back row, when everyone feels so sure, so certain of who they are, who they want to become, who they love and where they are going.

And I, being the one in front of the camera that is still rolling, but not sure of who’s directing anymore.

I still can’t memorise the script in my head. Forgetting crucial parts, burning out during the peak scene, or even not showing up to set because I don’t feel like stuttering all over again in front of the people who are so assured of who they are, when I can’t even recognise the person I see in the mirror.

I force myself to reply in group chats; I no longer speak in. The classes where I feel invisible or rooms where I’m the most noticed, and not in a pleasant way.

Everyone seems to know how to be the main character in their own life, and here I am giving my greatest scenes to the pettiest actors because I can’t get myself out of bed without feeling terrified of the day I’m gonna live, terrified of the uncertainty that drives me crazy because what if.

We have all found ourselves in situations where society expresses its expectations of what girlhood requires us to do.

Girlhood rings a different tune in everyone’s head.

But this is what a common standard sounds like:

Be soft, but not weak.

Be smart, but not intimidating.

Be pretty, but pretend not to care.

When did all of it become so complicated? When did girlhood start sounding like a set of rules for a woman to follow, or that she isn’t one of us, instead of echoes of laughter, support and endless care for one another?

Growing up does a lot of things, including stealing from us.

Stealing the uncertainty, not the one I feel now, the one that gave me space instead of worry. The spontaneous mindset and having no care in the world about how many calories you intake in a day to look presentable, but not show that you care because you don’t want to sound conceited.

Aside from all that, I still feel fortunate to be able to resonate with a community that knows what all of this feels like.

And maybe, it’s about time we accept that girlhood isn’t about staying in one space that you felt the most comfortable in forever. It’s about evolving. It’s about growing uncertainty, not the one that drives you crazy, but the one that gives adrenaline rushes.

Maybe the point is not to mourn the person you were or the innocence that you held within. Maybe it’s to hold that version of yourself as you move forward.

And if I’m still in the movie, who knows, I’ll still be able to write the ending. An ending that I want, that I wish to have, and the one that will make all of this worth it.

Maybe I don’t need to rewind, maybe I could just begin, action, and cut all over again, because it’s my movie that I’m in.

The laughter during dinner, the rush in the classrooms, and the daily banter about how bad your day went to those whom you trusted the most slowly fade away into a fog of oblivion, where you don’t feel hurt but empty.

When we grow out of the places or people that we once called home, that we once fantasised about going on trips after graduation, the same friends who you facetimed during 3 A.M., seeking validation over the contemplation of your life that you’ve been doing.

We are left with nothing but grief.

grief for something that isn’t dead, but something that just isn’t anymore.

And it’s nothing dramatic; it’s aching silently because you have no one to turn to, and despite growing yourself, your friendship hasn’t.

It’s peaceful, but not the kind we know of. The kind that fills your empty morning with the thoughts of being completely left alone and still craving the connection you never received.

The kind of peace that you never wanted but long needed.

The echoes of bliss ram over your mind; you miss them, but you know you cannot turn back because it wouldn’t be fair. not to them, not to you.

we have all been here. and it fucking sucks.

But it’s not just the friends; it’s the versions of me as well.

I don’t resonate with the person I was 2 years ago. She didn’t deserve it. She has an unsaid apology to her name, but I, in no way, am the same person anymore.

A house is not a home, and the house I’m living in right now has no home under its shade. Every classroom that felt like a hug, every group chat that felt like a belonging, and a version of myself that felt so sure of everything, all lay rotten in the web-covered cardboard boxes of golden memories that I turned dull.

It is never a lucid moment. It’s complicated. It’s a feeling of distance, but still sitting beside each other. It’s the growing silence that lingers, but this time, a series of giggles doesn’t follow.

They are the same friends who I once thought understood, but now they feel like strangers. strangers, I don’t feel like talking to.

I don’t know what changed. Maybe I did, maybe they did, maybe all did. But it’s a subtle but painful shift from a familiar pathway to a really, really complicated one. The one that doesn’t feel like the back of my hands.

Everyone whom I gave love to deserved it. Even to my worst enemies, I will never undermine the time I spent when we were not strangers. Because everything isn’t supposed to last forever. It really isn’t.

But familiar paths do sound very tempting.

I’ve accepted and let go without bitterness, but there will always be one piece of my heart that will feel the need to go back.

And it’s okay.

Some homes aren’t supposed to provide shelter forever, but remembering that they once did is crucial.

Outgrowing your best friendships isn’t your incapability of holding a human relationship; it’s your ability to let go and grieve in peace.

The peace that you long needed.

So, how do you mourn someone alive?

You thank them for the shelter. You walk away with quiet grief. And then you learn to build again.

I’ve been hopeless and tired, but never looked for love in a romantic place. It always came from friends or nowhere at all. I watched all those movies and read the books, but never imagined that I would ever be deserving of that type of love or a big romantic gesture.

And it didn’t bother me. I had enough love in me; I didn’t need someone. How could you ever imagine something that big for yourself when you’ve never even had an experience close to it?

Until last year, when I made a couple of mistakes and thought that a “love” of 2 weeks and an infatuation could fix a life that took me years to ruin.

spoiler: it didn’t

I never imagined myself the clingy type; in fact, I couldn’t even imagine myself in love at all. It made me throw up. And then I found myself writing a letter as tall as my height.

I never imagined myself doing the “i love you more” wars, never thought that I would ever be the one getting flowers or ever being adored. And now the lilies you made me with paper are the favourite part of my room.

I never imagined this. never even wished for this. not because I didn’t want it, but because I never thought I was deserving of it. yet here I am, with everything and more.

Love means so much to me. it used to be a word I threw around everywhere because, honestly, i love everything. but it wasn’t LOVE love; I’ve never LOVED love anyone or anything as I love you.

I didn’t know how to.

But with you, it was easy.

When someone asks me how we met, I get to tell them the most fascinating red string theory ever. All those years, you were right there, at every party, at every hangout, your number just a click away, saved in my phone. I saw you; I met you, but I never truly MET you. And I guess that’s why you always get something in your life when you’re really ready to have it in your life.

If I’m going to be honest, if I were told all those years ago that this is who I’m going to be writing a love article about at 2:27 AM, I would’ve laughed in their face and walked away. It seemed that impossible.

And I didn’t even know when it started. probably when you chose to give me company while I studied all day on call, maybe when you let me win in a game when you don’t let anyone win, or when you laughed at my joke when everyone was silent.

It seemed more than friends to me, and I thought something that I never believed would ever cross my mind. So, for the first time in my life, I made the right decisions, cut the right strings, and stayed up till 4 am talking to you that night.

I had thought I was in “love” before, but it was nothing even compared to what I feel for you. It wasn’t planned; none of it was. It just happened, and I thought I was going to regret it, but for the first time, I didn’t.

Till the time you happened, my idea of love had been scraped and torn apart.

I thought love was supposed to hurt; it was supposed to be this stinging feeling in my chest and my stomach being in a pit every time I talked. I tried to romanticize that; I wrote poems and essays about what love is supposed to feel like, and I thought it was that. but now those poems fit you more than they did anyone else.

I was lost at the idea of love when it came to me disguised as a very poor hoax of infatuation and desire.

All those times when I made everything insufferable, you still chose to stay. All those times when I needed space, you stepped away. It was patient and understanding, and I was getting the idea of what love actually is.

So much so that when I hear the word “love”, all I can think of is you.

You and the way you make me feel loved, safe, adored, cared for, laugh, and so much more.

All I can ever think of is our night on the terrace, and the city was so bright, and yet nothing really ever shines brighter than your eyes. We stood there, nervous and shy, too scared to make a move, and when our lips touched, it was like a firework had been let loose. All my problems, all my worries, the entire world, had shut down for those few minutes.

I have always been in fight-or-flight mode my entire life. Yet when I’m in those arms, it’s the safest I’ve felt in forever.

Every single moment is so magical when it’s with you, every whispered “I love you” at 3 am, making playlists, you explaining football to me, and me explaining why this artist wrote that song and why I love sitcoms and sooooooooooo many movies.

But my favourite one will have to be sitting inside a tunnel in a park after an exhausting day, and I was sitting there with my head on your shoulder, and you were struggling because you’re too tall to fit in a tunnel. And that was the fastest I’ve ever melted into someone who just felt like home.

It’s hard to believe that it’s me you’re talking about when you say something as cheesy and sweet as “my pretty girl”; that can’t possibly be me.

And no matter how hard it is to believe that this is my reality, it’s still true, and I’m the most grateful because you make me the happiest I’ve ever been.

Even though I never wished for this, it’s still the best thing that has ever happened to me.

So now, whenever I get the chance, I make a wish. And I can be superstitious, but I don’t want to take any chances with this again.

So much so that I wait for the clock to turn, and I always wish for you at 11:11.

I sit in my room, the lights are off, the air pierces my skin, and the floor is cold, but I don’t feel anything because I was in this exact position yesterday and many nights before that.

It’s in the unsent letter to you in my diary, and it’s in every line I write. No matter how hard I try to get out of my head, it doesn’t work.

The walls in my room have seen me beg for all of it to change, for all of it to fall into the right pieces. I thought love could fix me, but it just made me realise I’m not worth it either.

There was a time when I started begging for help, only to get a “What have we ever done to you that you wrecked yourself and our lives like this?”

You say you support everything I do until it’s something you don’t support. I broke down in your arms that night, and you said that I could change, and it would be better for all of us. I tried, I truly tried, but it’s not who I am.

You said you can’t stand to watch me cry a minute more, so you do the noble thing and tell me I’m a failure and you wish you had never had me because your life would be so much better without me.

I feel like the dust on top of a box full of memories, a museum of almosts, a dried-up lily, a woman with all the rotten figs, and someone who could’ve been so much more if I weren’t sabotaged by my own convictions.

I dream about the time when I’m on my deathbed, and my blood is on your hands, because that’s the only way for you to know that you made me who I am, and that’s a bed you made.

And if loving me meant the disappointment dripping off your eyes as you trace the scars on my body and telling me I’m the reason for all of this wreck, I really wish you loved me less.

I have no memories of my parents and me from my childhood. No good memories at least.

I was not the quiet kid; I was the loudest in the room, the kind who had “I made her sit in a different row from her friends, and she still wouldn’t stop talking” written on her report card in 2nd grade.

I felt guilty of everything, even if it wasn’t my fault. I was the most talkative in the room until my parents were in the room.

Now, I feel like the dumbest in the room, so scared to talk to anybody. After all, I’m lame, and some people bullied me when I was 10. And I have made my entire personality based on that.

I have a father, alive and well, and I hope it stays that way. But an emotionally absent and physically present father can really mess up a child.

No memories of him attending any school performances, PTMs, or even taking me to the park. And I shouldn’t be upset about this. He was always working. We have so much now because he worked then, but who am I if not selfish, so yes, I’m upset that all those times when I needed a father, you acted like a bank to me.

Yes, you work hard for me, but I didn’t need an ATM, I needed someone to pick me up from school other than my mom, take me to the park and talk to me about the dance competition that I won in 2nd grade.

All the memory that I have from my mother is her being extremely depressed, and me writing “I don’t want you as my mother” on the back of my notebook after I cried in the bathroom in 1st grade because I thought she loved my brother more than me. I still think she does.

And every time my father chose to stay detached from my life, and my mother commented on my body to the point I had an eating disorder, I lost something in me, my will to have them in my life anymore.

It sucks to see all the loving family photos and stories of everyone I know, because when I get home, disappointment and dissatisfaction are waiting for me to lecture me about how I’m ruining my life and theirs.

When they got to know about my mental health issues, my dad really tried to be there, and it felt so fucking strange because you can’t abandon someone for 15 fucking years and then act like you did everything right and all of this came out of the blue.

And when my mom found out, she started telling me how I’m ruining the entire energy of the house and that I’m the reason she feels depressed.

They both have sacrificed so much for me. even my childhood.

I could try to fix everything, but it won’t work because I have tried. and then tried once again.

I changed my entire self to become someone better only so I could hear, “I’m proud of you” at the receiving end of it, but I never got it. So I came back to my loser self again, and now they talk about the great daughter I was that they never once praised, and they want her back.

I can’t bring her back. Because my attempt failed physically, but there is still a piece of me that died. And it was the girl who did everything to make someone proud. I know that day will never come, and I’ve made my peace with it.

I once gifted my mother a card for her birthday, and my brother made her something as well. Both of our gifts lied on the same table, his got praised, mine got glanced at. He got a hug, I got a sympathetic look.

But that was enough. I lived with it. Until I had yet another fight with her the same week, and I was so angry I tore apart that card in front of her.

She didn’t even flinch.

And I have made my peace with it.

I don’t know what the purpose of this article was.

But I just wanted to say that while my parents are alive and well, I haven’t wished them any Mother’s/Father’s day for almost 5 years now. not to their faces.

And this was just another year that went by, but everything felt extra real.

So I wrote about it.

For so long, I have made myself believe that this is what I’m destined for. A death from my own hands. Maybe that’s because I always need things so under my control that I can’t even die from anything other than my ruin.

17 September 2025 ( from my diary)

5 days before

I came back home from a really shitty day at school, and it was raining. I got off the bus, dropped my bag and danced for an hour in the park. People stared at me and told me i’ll get sick. but i was already sick of everything going on in my life so this didn’t matter. i broke my glass bottle when i dropped the bag and my mother was angry cause i came home late, but it was the happiest i felt after a very long while.

that same evening

I was happy. I was really happy. at least I tried to be. but nothing lasts forever if not this misery that i live in. someone please take me out of this. this isn’t what I asked for. I try to speak, and words leave my mouth like bullets from a gun. How come I always find myself in this damned washroom floor with eyes red and hands trembling. It’s not fair.

When I read back my entries from so long ago, it felt strange. so strange as if someone played the tape of the memories I’ve been trying to bury alive for so long. As if the daggers disguised were resurfacing again.

This was not the first time I felt this way. This was not something new to me, but it was different.

When all those other times I talked about killing myself, I know I wouldn’t actually do it; they were just thoughts. But this time they weren’t just thoughts, they were loud noises in my head, empty noises, so empty the void was jealous of them.

I tried ignoring them, but a teenager could only do so much. I started starving myself, didn’t like what I saw in the mirror, didn’t like what I saw on paper when I tried to decipher the voices into words.

I wasn’t feeling like myself, I hadn’t in months. I got triggered at the smallest things, got panic attacks way too often, and couldn’t get out of bed even when I tried to. The weight of never being enough and the wait for my spark to return was getting to me.

My eyes went so gloomy I couldn’t see if the sun was out or it was the same stormy night from everyday. I couldn’t even hide it anymore, the thing I have been so good at since the day I can remember. I crossed the road without checking once, and I put clean dishes in the sink so my mother would think I had eaten, not that she cared.

It was a normal day, the same day I have been living for the past 3 months. But it wasn’t. This time, it was an empty house and an opportunity. An opportunity to end it all. Something I had been wishing to do forever.

I was lying on the cold, hard floor, having another one of my panic attacks. Only this time, there was a mirror in front of me. My face was swelled and my eyes were red; there were stains from tears, scars on my body, and my hair was a mess.

My grandparents had come to visit that month, the entire family was out of the house, and I finally came to a conclusion about the decision I had been trying to make for so long. I was going to do it. I was tired of feeling like a coward who couldn’t even end it let alone fix it.

I went to the kitchen and picked up the sharpest knife I could find. I knew my usual scissors won’t do it.

I placed the knife above every other scar that was already on my hand. But this time I wanted it to be deep; this time it should’ve got the job done. I aggressively tried to dissect my skin, and I could see the blood come, but it wasn’t much to declare that it had worked. I broke down in the kitchen, thinking I failed at this as well.

I wasn’t dead, but that’s what it felt like. It was just another thing I wanted to happen but didn’t get.

I washed the knife and went to bed. It was just 7 PM, but if I was ready for my life to be over, ending the day there didn’t sound so bad.

The next day I woke up, and everything was the same, except it wasn’t. My family didn’t know what happened the day before. My grandparents thought I was still their innocent granddaughter, and that knife sat there knowing something nobody else knew.

But that was 10 months ago.

And I can’t say if I’m a different person, but a lot happened. Some things happened that I wish I were dead for, some things that happened that made me thank that knife for not working.

It’s not something that I regret that happened, but it’s something I’m glad didn’t work out.

22 September 2025

I’ll find a new place to be from

Somewhere that I’ll call home.

Where I’d feel like I belong, in a room full of an unfamiliar scent

A room full of alleys where every road bent.

A room full of stories, we don’t know where they went.

But I’d follow the scent through the alleys that bent to find the stories that went, and I’d find a place I’ll call home.

If I even knew what that meant.

If I even knew what it meant to call a place my home. A place full of memories that is engraved onto the curve of each toy I’ve picked up since I turned two.

a place whose walls speak in a different language, a language full of warmth.

Whose shelf life of memories and recollections never expires.

If I even knew what it meant to call a place my home.

Where every blank page feeds off the inks I bleed, and every blanket sings a different tune of comfort as the seasons change.

But I’ll find a new place to call my home.

A place where my desk yearns for the presence of mine and my books will long for the touch of my fingers on each page of theirs as they turn.

And my headphones sing a melody only I can recognise, a rhythm only I can fathom.

A place where people won’t scream at each other at every other minor inconvenience.

A place where I’d feel like I belong.

A place that I’d call home.

And if I don’t find the place that I’ll call home,

I’ll make that place.

I’ll make my surroundings feel so much at home that no one else will ever feel the need to find it anywhere else.

How many times have you felt like your voice only mattered when you reached a certain age? like you started to speak a different language that now everyone understands. Like, you don’t need to translate everything to everyone anymore? Or how many times do you feel like your knowledge of the world or anything that you perceive is still not taken seriously because the age you are hasn’t reached a certain number yet? When all that you are is reduced to a particular number, the number of years you’ve spent living.

How many times have you had, “You haven’t seen enough of life yet,” as a reply to something you shared that was so sacred to yourself?

How many times have you felt as if your voice matters not based on what it says, but what it sounds like?

To some, you’re “too young” to feel such a way,

To others, you’re “too old” to do so.

It’s never enough, never really good enough.

Nothing enrages me more than an adult telling me that I haven’t seen the “real” life to feel such a way.

I don’t understand how people even bother to measure the way a person feels, whether their age has hit double digits or not.

And maybe sometimes they’re right.

But does that mean the life of mine that I have seen means nothing? Every conversation, every interaction, every word unsaid, every letter unsent, means absolutely nothing because my face isn’t wrinkled, or my frontal lobe has developed or not, or whether I got my hair grey because I lived enough, or did I stand under the sun too long?

Is the being of my existence not enough for the world to validate the way my emotions function?

“You don’t know what the real world is.”

Everyone has a different definition of what their “real world” would be.

You haven’t lived in the world I grew up in, and I haven’t lived in yours. But you won’t see me complaining about your opinions about your world. Because it has nothing to do with me.

Maybe people are right when they tell me this stuff.

But does that mean that these feelings, these mere feelings that are all that I’ve ever known, are not enough for you to realise that I have a life too?

A life where all I know is to rearrange each memory into sentences, finding each emotion in the tunes of my favourite song, and writing in my diary till my hands fall off.

Or when I witnessed my parents put themselves through the worst of the worst to bring me up? Or when I heard my brother’s muffled cries? Or when I gaze at my own scars through the mirror, but not directly at them, never directly at them?

This is the life I live, and when I say something in it with my own voice, don’t tell me to tone it down because it makes your ears bleed to have someone else feel heard.

Maybe that’s why I’ve been desperately writing my pain away, because I don’t want it to die. Maybe that’s why I’ve been swirling each conversation into poems and filling up every page with the moments I feed off of.

Because some things cannot be said but written.

All that I am, all that I think of, all that I feel, is all that I can’t let die to the grave with me.

I want these feelings to live, to be seen, even when I’m nowhere to be seen.

The idea of my existence being completely banished from the face of the earth terrifies me.

Maybe that’s why I want my words to live more than myself. I couldn’t care less about this body of mine than the thoughts I possess.

Every time I write is a crucial part of me that has actually learned how to live.

To live profoundly, freely, free to think, free to write, free to create.

Create all that I’ve seen and learned and touched into essays and poems or anything that a thousand years from now, someone would find and relate deeply to, and feel understood by.

That’s why artists live to create. To create the art that will survive because they won’t.

My first love was nothing like what people envision. My first love didn’t abide by my door, all dressed up, like they do in the movies. My first love didn’t yell Billy Joel with me during late-night car drives to nowhere.

No, my first love was never a person; it was the movies that showed how first loves walked up to the door, gazed at you and called you beautiful, the kind they’ve never witnessed before.

My first love was the songs that described how first loves felt like shrieking Ribs by Lorde through the car’s roof as you pass by a tunnel at midnight.

It was the printed ink that showed me what first loves felt like, that you were the only two alive at the break of dawn, and someone’s son confessed of being bewitched his body and soul by someone’s daughter.

And my true love was when I discovered pouring my heart out into ink and paper, into manuscripts that someday will burn in the flames of what they could’ve been but weren’t.

𖦹

Being left alone on swings as a child and realising that no one wanted to play with you as a little kid is when one becomes conscious of the fact that stories hold what people couldn’t.

Now, it feels much safer to picture myself as a movie character in a Greta Gerwig coming-of-age movie than to interact with the people around me, because the reflection that I see of myself in Lady Bird is probably why I’ve been mocked my entire life.

It felt much safer to make pages of my journal my best friend rather than explaining to my mother why I’ve not been eating, sleeping, or spending way too much time in my room with the door locked.

The sense of a warm hug that I felt as a child after visiting the theatres, and the smell of popcorn reached my nostrils, or when my fingers are stained with black gel ink after I just wrote my inner monologue in my leather-bound diary, or when I stayed up till the sunrise just to know how a book meets its end page is still all the same.

The sense of security I felt every time I plugged in my earphones and listened to the lyrics of a Wallows song that described how I was feeling at that exact moment, It felt like a secret whispered through Bluetooth connections because the song and me were the only ones aware why those lyrics are the reason I cried mid-car ride while looking out of the window.

𖦹

It felt easy to fall in love with the rolling tapes because each scene of Portrait of a Lady on Fire taught me what yearning was, even before I learned the name.

It felt easy to fall in love with the paperbacks because each line of Jane Eyre taught me that I could move from windswept moors to candlelit halls, and it could still feel as real as my own skin.

It felt easy to fall in love with ink and paper because writing never made me feel belittled for living in my stories that I’d never fully lived but fully loved.

It felt easy to fall in love with tunes because each Taylor Swift lyric that I decode makes me express my emotions in a language that I thought I couldn’t speak.

𖦹

Your first loves shape you in a way that will leave a scar, if it ever does.

When you learn to love this early, you learn to romanticise everything and anything around you.

From the pain that came after realising that you are not the only one hurting, to the joy that crept in when you finally comprehended the fact that the little kid that you were, whom no one wanted to play with, now has people in life that you can call home.

And when the beautiful ideals and impossible standards of love are set in front of you by perfectionists on paper and screen.

And when art makes you realise that it made you believe in love more deeply than others around you ever could.

𖦹

It’s always fun and games until you get the picture that you never had the privilege of receiving the love back from your first love.

It’s never that straightforward to find real-life human connections that meet the level of understanding art gave you.

It’s never that easy to fill the growing gap between the storybook that set the standard so high that reality couldn’t reach.

𖦹

But it’s okay, because loving art taught me to love. People around me couldn’t.

It’s okay because I know that just because my first love was that one scene in 10 Things I Hate About You, where Heath Ledger sings Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, or when Mitski in Townie says, “I want love that falls as fast as a body from the balcony”, I might be deprived of the love that I’m given. Still, I’ll never be empty of the love that sits in me because when all your life there hasn’t been anyone on the receiving end of your love when you pour it out, you get used to it.

So no, my first love was never a person all along

And always a story untold, recited through the hymns of someone else’s guitar that sang the melody of my own short story long.

And always fiction, maybe that’s why I await someone who feels like my favourite chapter, the pages where I belong.

And always writing, where every word is a place I click, and every story is a way to keep love going strong.

And always cinema, maybe that’s why I’m waiting for my favourite scene to come along.

“If you don’t meet your own soul before you meet another, you’ll end up building a home in theirs, forgetting you ever had your own.”

I think about this quote very often.

And it’s true. If we don’t learn to sit in silence with our own selves, the chaos in a room full of people will never not get louder and louder until you forget the sound of your own pulse.

If living with your own soul makes you uncomfortable, know you’re not ready to entertain another’s.

In this era of hustle culture and 9–5 jobs, we often forget to take time out for our own selves.

And by time alone, I don’t mean bubble bath or an 18-step skin care routine, I mean sitting at the same table as your grief, happiness and distress, and having a conversation with them, a conversation with your past selves, with different versions of yourselves that have been.

Knowing that you’re more than just a number, whether on social media or on paper. Knowing what triggers you or what soothes you is not something you discover when someone else confronts you. It happens when you look at the mirror and it smiles at the familiarity.

It happens when the running ink speaks for the tears in your eyes, and you learn to bleed on paper rather than in person.

And when someone else gets there before you and you haven’t caught on, you learn yourself through someone else.

The shrill joy of slowly learning yourself through the activities you do alone can never compare to the hollow sense of individuality you get through someone else.

When you get to know yourself through someone else, you learn to talk their language and forget your own.

You become a carbon piece of someone they wish you were. Someone they imagined a version of in their mind, and now that version exists because you see the life through their lens.

And when that lens is removed, the world is so blurry that we forget how to function like we used to because we don’t know the person we were before them.

And that’s how we tend to build a home in someone else’s soul, forgetting our own.

For me, writing paved the way for me to know my soul. I’m not there yet, I really am not. Yet each step feels rewarding.

I’ve never felt more understood by anything other than writing. Each piece I write gets me one step closer to knowing myself.

Every word I spell out on paper is each message left on read, that one text unsent, that one last conversation I didn’t know was the last, each moment where I wish I could go back, each sigh I heaved after not saying what I should’ve said.

The gap gets closer each time.

Writing is not just a way for me to express myself. It’s a form of art that reflects a person on paper. It’s letters put together on paper, so the one who reads them doesn’t feel alone in their struggles.

So, before you let someone else find the key to your soul and swallow it, find it yourself.

Is it possible to yearn for an ache without a name? not for a lost love, but for something that never fully existed the way you imagined.

That time when one single moment, or a person, is your first thought the moment you wake up, or the second you lie down, but you know that it was never cared for by anyone the way you cared for it.

When you know that it was never truly yours, but you still feel the loss of something of what could have been.

But, is it still a loss if it was never truly mine?

Or was it never truly mine when I turned every instant second into a mirage of “something special”? Or when I spent each interval of my day analysing and recounting the times when I thought it was something rare, something that mattered. only to be punched in the gut by the truth of reality that anything I felt was not as extraordinary as I had pictured it to be.

The sting that came with the realisation that something I have been holding as a treasure for so long has been a pebble to them all along.

That something I measured in oceans, they did in handfuls.

I’m waiting for the moment when the unreserved, abundant and filling-their-cup-to-the-brim love I carry doesn’t collapse with someone else’s inability to hold it without feeling overwhelmed or suffocated.

I’m exhausted by scaling back what I feel just to fit into someone else’s container, which isn’t built to carry what I have to say without spilling it all over.

But it’s not their fault. It’s not someone else’s problem that what I do makes them overwhelmed. However, it is something I dread, as I find it difficult to be around somebody without making them feel like they are trapped.

The ache of knowing that you may never find anyone who matches the emotional capacity that you carry. knowing that you may never find someone that doesn’t make you feel “too much” or “too little” but just good enough, the quiet defiance that you’re exactly enough.

And the moment when you finally realise, by being put in a situation that makes you, that the loneliness that comes with being given unequal care by a person that you thought could, is no better than being left stranded in an unfamiliar street with no way out.

Moving on or getting over something feels so effortless for others, and in my case, it’s me replaying the small moments where it felt like the world paused, where I felt as if my memories were safer than reality ever could be or When living through my collection of recalls felt more like the back of my hand than the back of my hand ever could.

It keeps me stuck in a situation. Stuck, like not being able to leave my bed in the morning despite all those tries. Stuck, like feeling uneasy in my skin when I try to scratch it off as if something is crawling on the inside.

Stuck, like talking about the same situation over and over again to the point where I don’t even remember what happened and what I made up just to make it a bit interesting the 17th time I was telling it.

Stuck, like knowing it's over, like knowing that you’re over the person. But again, being hyper-aware of the whole situation in every interaction you have with a person.

What does one do when you’re over the person but not the place they put you in?

What does one do when the tape is stuck mid-way, when the tale is cut through mid-sentence, and the prologue doesn’t even have a period to its end because some loves die screaming as half-formed in the mind?

I hope I find the answers one day

and once I do

I will put a stop at the end of this

I had a conversation with a friend the other day, “I’m better off alone”, he said, after just losing a friend.

I asked him that does losing one friend is all it takes for him to become a loner?, To which he replied that nobody really stays, and for him to put in efforts in any of his friendships and relationships scares him because he learned not to put in efforts the hard way.

Is this really what love is supposed to be? letting yourself believe that if one person’s cup overflowed from the water you gave, you’re going to stop drinking water?

If one person doesn’t reciprocate the affection you feel towards them, are you going to stop feeling affection for anyone?

Love doesn’t stop existing even when we let ourselves believe that it doesn’t exist.

He later said that now he has left it all to fate to make everything better and that putting in efforts doesn’t really pay off the way you want it to.

It’s true that nobody really stays, but to pass it all down to fate? Oh boy.

Fate is not an ATM for you to put in your misery card and have a lifetime of happiness come out.

Love around us exists because we exist. All a human being is capable of is to love wholeheartedly, because even when you’re gone, it’s not the money that stays, it’s the love you gave.

And when you find someone you actually like, you do something to keep them around.

“Exactly what I used to believe in until now,” And it’s the fact that this sentence bothered me was because of the ‘until now’.

Soulmates don’t exist; fate doesn’t let you end up with whoever you want, but efforts do. If you don’t put in effort in your relationships and friendships, then surviving a single fight together will be a challenge for you.

And if they still leave, maybe that’s all the closure you need. Maybe it didn’t sit right with them, maybe the chemistry wasn’t right or literally anything.

But after all of it is over, at least you won’t be filled with the regret of not doing what you should’ve done.

And all of this is not your fault, but it’s not theirs either. People grow apart, fall out of love, and maybe even start to dislike each other, but that’s what humans do. And it’s okay.

“So, I shouldn’t hate her for this, right?”

Right.

Because if someone was once such a great friend to you, if you had loved them at some point, nothing that happens ever can make you hate such a person in your life.

They are still the person they were when with you, and that person doesn’t deserve to be treated like this in your conscious mind.

Then the conversation shifted to people claiming that we only love once.

To which he said that he hasn’t really ever loved someone, just liked a few people.

“I fall in love 5 times a day.”

It was the only sensible thing that I could say.

Love is a broad spectrum that moves from loving a person with your entity to smelling your coffee again and again because you love the smell of it.

Love is a word so personal to each person, with a different definition given to it by them, that it was never supposed to be ruined by social media.

When I say that I fall in love 5 times a day, I don’t mean people, or maybe people. Or maybe the shop in front of my house, maybe the new album I discovered or the necklace I wear every day like a sacred oath.

Your love doesn’t have to be associated with a single person.

“I want to change my perspective so I can start loving freely without framing myself as a cheater,” he states. Which is such an absurd thought, but again, not entirely so, because everyone has felt this way at times.

Loving multiple things at the same time doesn’t make you a cheater; loving different romantic interests at other times doesn’t make you a cheater.

Love is not a whole pizza with limited pieces to share; it’s an infinite loop of pizzas, and anyone who wants it, needs it, gets it.

And I’d really like a pizza.

“I used to think love is a mere feeling, nothing intense,” But feelings are the most intense thing in the world, aren’t they?

Love is not special because it’s everywhere; love is everywhere because it’s special.

“If love ever finds me, I really hope it’s special so I can differentiate.”

But maybe, we sometimes cannot differentiate this intense feeling because it has already found us, and it never really left?

Love is not something we should be scared of. Committing yourself to your intense feelings is getting to know yourself on a deeper level.

Love isn’t always romantic; sometimes it’s platonic. I fall in love with my friends all over again when they do something that’s truly them.

Or maybe love just sits in your morning coffee, waiting for you to stir the cup, meet your lips and explore your body later.

Another way to know love is to understand that the love we give always comes back to us, and sometimes, leaving parts of ourselves in others is all that love is about.

It doesn’t mean you’re losing yourself; it means that others are finding themselves through you.

So, love love.

Be chalant.

Give a damn.

Sometimes a pizza with the topping of a little romantica is all you ever need.

(or maybe just have an actual pizza that works too.)

witnessing it vacate, scrutinising as I drowned.

Swings were the place where I sat when everyone left,

Rings on my finger were what I anxiously toyed with, as my thoughts wove.

Quiet, went the conversa-tions as I moved through their revelations.

Exposed, Unarmed, Unguarded were what I deemed,

When I finally realised the days of my juvenescence were not what they seemed.

Done, was the damage, because I attained it long delayed,

Gone were the people who had done the deed, So were the memories I can't repeat.

Staying were the feelings of hatred and distress,

Towards nobody but myself.

Compassion is what I feel for the kid on the swings,

because I still see her late at night, fiddling with her rings.