Dust.

I like the way dust comes in imperceptibly and settles on all things stationary, indiscriminately. Its good in a way because when I return to my shelf, i pick up a book or a box, and from that thin or clustered layer of dust remember that it has been too long since I last remembered. It is a good reminder to remember things more often, things of use, and at some point, that had been of importance. Dust is an underrated aid of nature. I hope that someday you will come into the room that used to be ours and see me sitting on the bed, leaning against the window, the way I always do, and when you touch me, you will be met by that tiny, grainy, browned layer of dust and remember how often you forget to remember me. You will remember how long I have been waiting on my shelf, waiting to be remembered, to be used, to be of importance. And maybe, you will realise that I am no longer required and maybe I will remember that I am no longer supposed to be waiting.

Trudging

I started this post hoping to let loose the voices my head, to allow them to scream as they scream in my head all day but they scream too fast for me to be able to type it all down. They scream of my worthlessness, and despondency, and hopelessness, and the fact that I must question why I am alive, and burdening nice human beings who seem to adore me despite the fact that I'm just an expensive disappointment. I'm like that pair of Steve Maddens you bought at full price, and now they only decorate your shelf because they skin your ankles every time you put them on. My mind screams in its hollowness wondering why people like me. It also wonders why they don't. I had a list of bullet points for every time I felt like this, inadequate, lacking, stupid, a list to remind me why I have friends but I seem to have lost it and I can't remember a single reason. Its tearing me apart from the inside. Before I implode, my mind screams, reverberates the way I sit or lie down, the folds and globs of fat that eat up my torso like a slimy monster, just rolls and tools of goo and pudge that line my material being which make it impossible to ever look into a mirror without hiding myself under oversized t-sirts and tiny shorts.

We trudge through the day with a myriad of thoughts, hopeless one second, the next without a fuck, the third so cocky and arrogant, the fourth, uncaring, the fifth so cold, the sixth, wanting to be invisible, the eighth ruminating the purpose of life, the ninth, the first, the second, the third all with underlying plea begging for it to shut up. To shut up. Just shut up.

Its not just Mondays and its not just stress days. Its us. Everyday. And it is so hard to find the right words. like real writers who make you feel, who make us realise that we are not the only ones. To read those words that fully explain that shitty feeling that we couldn't explain to anyone and the relief that floods when you realise that you are not the only one. I am tired of trudging through life every day with voices in my head. I feel sometimes that I am merely an emotional being. A vase, a jar, an empty vessel with used tissue paper, and scribbled ink notes, and just random doodles, emotions, nothing else. Sometimes I think I'm not because even when I am not feeling, and not thinking and just drifting off to sleep, he thinks something is wrong with me, perhaps I was crying. My silence maybe is savouring with its eyes closed his hands caressing my hair, and his lips on my forehead and his book between my shoulder blades. The ecstasy I am devouring, the ecstasy devouring me. Thats how I trudge through the day, my mortal, emotional being, in the safety of his arms ignoring the rest of the trudging life, stopped, paused, hidden, ruling a castle of blankets and fleeting hearts. And sometimes, the mind would even shut up.

Delusional

I believe love is a delusion, as much as is religion. They are fantasies and fallacies we make up in out heads because we need something to believe in. It is that strange human tendency to attach meaning to things and as fickle as it sounds, I find it silly for the most part. I am a hypocrite. Because as much as I think it stupid, I am all for creating delusions to make yourself happy. If love is a delusion, if it is painful and unrequited or sacrificial, unreal, temporary, inconstant, impractical, if it be a delusion, believe and live and revel in it so long as it makes you happy. Fight the world if you will, and make it worth it while it lasts. I am much against impracticality but I suppose there are some things even my detached self needs to hold on to. Being detached is an illusion, as is being attached. Being in control is an infantile belief. There is no control in the universe, at least not in human hands. The mind makes up things and explanations, and if it makes you happy, believe. Stay in that cave of innocence and don't come out because outside is chaos. Outside is confusing. It is questioning everything you know, mistrust and disbelief in whatever you hear. Live you delusions for as long as you wish. Dreams and fiction. Thats what I always say. Thats what I believe. That is my escape. Dreams and fiction. It is all I wish to live in, is dreams and fiction. The melody for my soul and solace for my mind is dreams and fiction. Where I believe as I please in goodness and happy endings, and murders and witchcraft, and blood and flying carpets. I believe existence is strange, the reason questionable but I need an escape from this empty, material, doubtable, unbelievable reality. Escape into dreams and fiction. Clouds and words. Skies and pages. Dreams and fiction. All I need to do s return to my mind, where everything is real and nothing must be. Where I sometimes believe in silly, fickle, impractical love, and always, in magic.

Lacking

Will it be a legitimate excuse if tomorrow morning my friend hands my Professor a note that says, "Please excuse e for not doing my homework. I died a little when I saw it. I died a little when I saw my grades and I died a little when I realised my own inadequacy. It was in this state of helpless deadness that I neglected to do my homework. Please feel free to come to my funeral and bury with my lifeless body all the Economics homework which I neglected to do so I can complete it in the state I did all my other assignments- cold, flaccid, uninspired deadness." I am trying so hard to care right now. To care about the fact that I am flunking half of my classes. To care about the fact that I haven't actually attended any of my classes. To care about the fact that my deadlines are lingering scarily close, as close as my proverbial knife to my wrist and so hard to care about the fact that my efforts so far have been C+. All I care about this time is that all the work I have done this semester has been done with the cautiousness, and almost fear of an adult poking a presumably dead lizard with a long stick in an attempt to throw it away. What I care about is that last semester I had learned to use my brain,a in creativity in ways that I had not believed myself capable of. Last semester for me had been a revelation. This semester, it seems that my brain has become much like my laptop. I try to open a new window, and I have to wait 5 minutes for a response. Every time I attempt save new thing it crashes from the overload and the sleepless nights, for both of us, and the saving, and researching, and erasing of the multiplicity of documents in the small memory of my seven desktops with motivating quotes and wild music on each of them that spurs me to stay up all night. I felt inspired and proud as I managed to do my assignments in such a planned and timely manner, but my efforts are C+. Why even bother? In the midst of this existential crisis that I seem to have every month, I wonder once again, What is the purpose of my uninspired, uncreative life where I am learning things for the sake of learning? "I want to sit in a random class just to learn" as my friend put it so eloquently. the curiosity, the thirst they introduced me to in the first semester has been squashed under the plethora of formalities and necessities and I am struggling to keep my head above water. Intimidated by the achievements and ambitions of everyone else, I am dying slowly trying to figure out what I even want! I want to be inspired again! I want to think again and come up with those wonderful thoughts that made me feel smart and insightful but unfortunately I am just B- in Critical Thinking. I want to write, eloquently, in the way that every other girl in my college seems to write. I want a sense of uniqueness or at least an identity of my own which seems to merging and melting into Tumblr and cuteness! God! This is to me. Emotional rants and slam poetry and aww and cooing and puppies is not me! Is it? Am I sure? Am I sure of who 'me'' is? Maybe Im life every other girl. Maybe I am all facade and nothing else. I don't even know my own facade anymore. My mask has been painted over with smiles and rainbows and unicorns and I don't know what to who I am. Should facts help me then? Removed from the world inside my own mind, I should try to find solace in facts and figures and numbers and the convergent thinking that leads to the one answer that teachers require. But I'm still drowning. I feel like a part of me is lacking. A part of me is trying to wake up and make the rest of me care but my insides are black and blank and hollow. The spark has died out. maybe I should paint, and pray that spark, the will to live, and the creativity, the raison de etre returns.

Birthdays

This post is for a certain someone who won't be turning 19 tonight because he decided that being an adult was not for him. His behaviour was so 'grown up' but he was so childish. So stubborn! So set in his ways that it tore us apart. Or maybe it was the fact that I was the same way. He won't be turning 19 tonight because he'll be with the stars, high (which he was last year as well :p) and smiling at my chocolate covered face. I used to love birthdays. Even when the very people who should be celebrating didn't. I loved birthdays not because I was happy for them but because I was happy for me. I celebrated birthdays because I am happy that they were born, and I was grateful that I met them and I was overjoyed that they make my life what it is. I remembered his because it was the first one I probably ever learnt. I miss him. so much. everyday. Its been 11 months since you've been gone, but you always had a habit of disappearing, didn't you? Is that why I still keep expecting you to show up? Well, being born, and dying are the two most important things about being, and having been. So I guess, now 'birth'day is obsolete. I will celebrate next month your death day because I'm pretty sure you prefer that to the social construct of attending college. Not that you would care much anyway. But you're gone. And I bet you're up to your old tricks up in heaven. I expect to see fireworks and starbursts and lightning and smoke in the sky tonight. Is firdaus even in the same time zone as us? Me. Not 'us' anymore. But love, Im still thinking about the way I did every year on your birthday when you had been missing. You were the first person I stayed up till 12 with. When you were in Goa and called me up all day because it was your birthday and you missed my voice and you flew back the next day and that was the last day we met. Love, I hope you remember it, because I do today. And I hope I will always. Goodnight. Happy almost birthday.

-April 14th, 2016