Undo.

I wish I could draw
But I can't.
So I will allow you
to picture this.

A heart. an anatomically correct heart.
Mine. 
Fragmented. 
Glass (its always glass.) 
Red and pink like there's liquid injected, trapped, frozen inside. 

Its not shattered. 
Just broken. 
Chunks.

And there's a seed. 
Underneath the fragments 
is a seed which grows. 
The roots, 
as they begin, 
pick up the pieces, 
and curl around them, 
grow with and around the pieces. 
The roots hold these pieces, 
all of them 
and bind them together, 
back into shape, 
perfectly. 

Thin tendrils fill the empty spaces, 
the sap acts like glue 
and the roots 
keep the fragmented heart together. 

That is what C's heart has done to mine. 
You can't extricate one from the other. 
Not without undoing them both, 
uprooting it all
and letting them fall into the earth again.

I wish I could draw
But I can't.
So I will allow you
to picture this.

He says, "broken hearts bleed art." 

Myopia

My glasses have been broken for a week. Since I have lately grown averse to lenses and my number isn't too high, I've been walking around feeling blind on campus. Myopia causes me to not be able to see a lot except whats right in front of me. I see blurred faces, most often not knowing who it is. I can make my friends out, but little else. Having broken up with the only boy I ever so intensely loved, I think its a good thing I cant see beyond whats immediately in front of me. If I think of anything further beyond from just tonight or tomorrow morning, I pretty much break down. What I see right in front of me are distractions -- work, meetings, new friends, alcohol. The weeks have been a blur. The lack of glasses, the sheer rapidness of time flying, the red, watery eyes after 4 pegs of whiskey, the weeks have been a blur. I'm glad my glasses are broken because if I could see things beyond what is immediately in front of me I'd break down.
I'd see upset, disappointed, curious faces. I'd see smirks and judgement or blind hatred. I'd see my failing grades with my failing liver and I'd see the falling out that are looming close. I'm glad my glasses are broken because if I could see things beyond what is immediately in front of me I'd break down.

Still

She felt like her brain was an overfilled water balloon which had just been pricked. Bursting in an instant, it splashed water heavily onto her lungs. Her insides began filling up with the heaviness, drowning her desperately beating heart, her throat, and her skull. Her eyes did not give away the fact that water pressed against the whites from behind, and her ears popped, yet did not let the water escape. Her head felt like it would implode from the pressure but her chest was going to beat Head to it. She breathed deeply. She remained quiet. Kai stared at her face waiting for a response. She looked straight and she just breathed till the inundation inside her subsided. Not trusting her mouth to keep in the secret which threatened to escape as vomit, she gathered control of her body and nodded gently. He smiled widely, and listed out the series of tasks that she had just agreed to carry out for him. 

Zade usually walked, not focussing on anything in particular but looking all aorund. Her eyes saw everything, but her mind registered next to nothing. 

It seemed impossible to those who surround her, how easy it was to do nothing. Zade lived in her room without ever feeling confined, she lay in bed re-watching mindless shows that she liked, without realising that the same episode had been repeated twice, and she had conversations with herself, without ever addressing herself. She spoke animatedly with imagined versions of her friends, verily in their absence. Zade decided that restraints were only physical. She decided that she could close her eyes and visualise anything, be anyone, go anywhere, be anything. She never needed to leave her bed. 

She rarely did anything she was not forced or compelled to do. She never wrote without a deadline, sang without being prompted or moved without being cajoled by her roommate. Zade liked the idea of remaining in bed, especially on weekends, when she wouldn't move for 2 whole days. She imagined her spine decaying, her legs, melting into the bedsheets like her entire back had taken root into the mattress and hardwood. Her oversized t-shirt ran into the folds of the crumpled covers and she felt small, slight, delicate. She loved nothing more. She barely lifted her tiny wrists, her only thin body part. She could never bring herself to mutilate it with the blade of a knife though the edge of a scissor would often carve the bold reminder ‘FAT’ onto her supple, smooth skin. The mere white scratches made at night usually faded out by morning. 

Zade rarely ever did anything unprompted. Did the ocean ever move if it weren't for the wind and the gravity pulling it in directions? She just wanted to remain but it was obligations and orders that made her rise up and crash, pull back or swell. Her head would often feel like it consisted of just air. Just air, that processes nothing, registers nothing. Those days she would focus on her gentle movement, registering only the slight chill that slapped her across the face and soaked into her arms and legs. She would look at her fingers fluttering across the keyboard in feather-like movements, how gently her hair kissed her skin, how she raised and rested her tiny wrists and her tiny ankles. She was lighter than a bird, having soaked all her weight into the mattress below. Like a frail, fragile bird she would think of her bones, how easily they should snap if she should try. She should try. But she was never one for pain. She could only hope that her face come in contact with a leather ball at 120kmph to her the crunch of her teeth, her hidden under chub jaw, and see the dark purple bruise under her cheekbone, finally having something defining about her average face. She could only hope that some monster grab her and in a swift movement, snap her ankle, or a bullet in a heroic leap, marr her beautiful shoulder, saving her lover’s chest. She could close her eyes every night and in that weightlessness, feel the curve in her lower back, atrophy slowly. She would close her eyes and be anyone, go anywhere, be anything. Her hips seemed to mirror the movements her mind made and so they bore they weight and soreness from her dreams. The sad truth was that the weak muscle in her ample hips were only ever sore from her constant sitting, nothing more. 

Zade never moved more that she absolutely had to, or did more than what was required. But her restraints were only physical and her mind moved through dimensions of its own.

consequences.

Words that we put out into the world have a butterfly effect. If I say something, the reader to listener will invariable be affected by it. Especially if it is a behaviour, or a prediction or an expectation of them. What I have said will change the original outcome. For example, I wrote about the Hedonistic Treadmill. Now a person who is sad reads it. It does not perhaps change their outlook, or help them immediately in any way. Maybe it gives them some unrealised, deep-seated hope. Maybe it doesn't. But when they return from their sadness will be affected. Maybe it would have taken them longer, originally, to be less sad. Maybe reading it helped. But maybe it didn't. We don't even know what or when the original outcome were to occur so I'm just playing around here. We told my friend we predicted that he would drop out of college this semester. Telling him this, I think, is a mistake. Because now I will not get to see the original, natural course of events. Now that this prediction has been revealed to him, the decision of him dropping out will be effected, with or without his conscious knowledge. I will never know what would have otherwise happened. This is why I like imagining parallel universes. it has binaries. 1 or 0. Yes or No. It happened or It didn't happen. Maybe there is a parallel universe in which he did drop out. If course, that is a branch in the universe where I came to this University and befriended him. I know that there is a parallel universe where I haven't met this guy I love. I know there is a universe where I didn't voice the toxic words out. I know there is a universe where we are still happy right now. And I know theres a universe where he's reading this and smiling right now.

Treadmills

I'm certain I've written about the idea of the Hedonistic Treadmill before this because I felt an urgency to spread that logical hope in the world. After listening to a conversation about people's spiritual beliefs caused by that Freudian late-night, lying down, uninhibited chat, I was reminded of why the idea of the Hedonistic Treadmill resonated with me in the first place.

People always equated life with a rat race. For those less competitive and more spiritual, there were paths that everyone walks on. These ideas always made me uncomfortable because I could physically feel my friends, racing ahead, in academics, in life, as kids, doing all that was important. I was so far behind, ambling in that rat race having not yet figured out what we were running for. I was uncomfortable with the idea because in my head, my friends had sped past me, but in my life, they were always there, right next to me, urging me on. Paths. Paths seemed strange again because of the difference in pace. Also, the ridiculous amounts of time paths collided, separated, were parallel, and for each person with a thousand people, and for the thousand another thousand each and it all became a very neurotic map in my head like connections of veins but far more crossed and absolutely retarded. So clearly, I was very uncomfortable with the dissonance of the visuals in my head. As I became more articulate and imaginative, I developed the ideas and finally concluded with picturing treadmills. Hundreds and hundreds of treadmills lined up against a glass window. Everyone on a treadmill, next to each other, on different speeds, with different views and varying focus. But everyone next to each other. It wasn't a race. We weren't competing. We just picked our own speed and walked, jogged, ran, sprinted, took what we wanted and flew with it. My brain was at peace. This is why I could so easily meld the Hedonistic Treadmill into my mind. Because as far as I was concerned, we were already on treadmills. Might as well have ours, keep on going, at our own speeds, varying according to our own ups and downs. But we kept on moving. The treadmills didn't stop until we died.

Maybe one of these days I'll write alternate, sic-fi about someone who found the off-button to their treadmill, or found a way to jump off. But the idea's mine so don't steal it. It was just relieving knowing that even if I wanted to take it slow and my best friend just wanted to run with it, she'd still always be next to me. That made me happy. That still makes me happy.