so my blue dream is not even mine now. i am just a mesh of people who hate me. their fingers are my fingers now poking my skin, endless railroads of red are built with their nails that they do not even cut before they sell me their fake love-filled eyes. their eyes are my eyes that wants to smash every reflective surface where i fall. every reflective thought is just a poison. a poison, a gossip, an untrue version of me running wild in the minds of those who look at me. they gossip about me so i gossip about myself , whisper my secrets into the air or better, into the ears of lovers who are chosen especially for their talents in indifference, vulnerability, and emotional violence. lovers who can break me – are all that i want. i need someone else to do this breaking for me because i am coward who can’t move towards the end i want, and also because my hands are busy. i have more things to do. i need my hands to tear my talents apart in the name of value, tear my feelings apart in the name of my worthlessness. i need my hands to paint again and again. paint indifferences on my insecurities that come a bit too often to the surface of my skin now, paint laugh lines on the bleeding corners of my lips, paint dreams of love, moments of hurt, grand betrayals on my otherwise lonely mind, paint humans that match the shadows in me, painting causes and assurances. i must paint. i must paint a reason- a reason why i suffer so, why this world works like how it does, why i must break as the world breaks, why i must break even for fixing this world. i must paint a face so that others don’t break at the sight of my face. i clip my nails everyday so that when i become someone’s ghost when someone suffers because of me at least my hands won’t leave them scars.
universe fireflie has tagged me in this really sweet post about ten things that make me happy. I will try to answer them to the best of my ability, but it is going to be tough. If you are aware of my writing, you would have noticed that I am more than capable of writing about sad depressing stuff. So writing about things that makes me happy is a bit weird for me. So before I make this more awkward…let’s start!!! WARNING: This is a really really long post.
In no particular order…
My Sister When I think of happiness, my sister is the first person that comes to my mind. It would be an understatement if I say that I am extremely fond of my sister. She is my favorite person in this world. I love how sweet she is, how much curiosity she has for the world, the genuine interests that we both share. Any day, anytime spent with her is bound to be filled with happiness- may it be the serene calm type of happiness or laughing out hearts out type happiness. She is crucial to my happiness. I am lucky that I happen to be the sister of my best friend. 🙂 Afterthoughts: My sister draws really well. I am so proud of her that I can’t help but promote her work here. She will probably kill me for this though. Here are the links to my sister’s work, if you are interested : WordPress, Instagram, and Youtube.
Books I love to read. I am not sure if what I read is intellectual or refined enough. But I like what I like – mostly fiction and poetry. I think reading is what led me to have love for words and even for this world. Books make me believe that there is a meaning in everything, that life is meaningful. It is the kind of assurance that life by itself has never been able to give me. I wouldn’t categorize books into a means to escape from life, but rather a new layer to life that makes me more tolerant of people and world. I love buying books, reading them, finding more books to read. Even the sight of my bookshelf, the thought of all the books that I am yet to read, even adding a new book into my “to read” list makes me feel excited. Afterthought: On that note, here is a quote from the book I am reading currently: “Running might take her forward, it could even take her home; but it couldn’t take her back–not ten minutes, ten hours, not ten years or days. And that was tough, as Hely would say. Tough: since back was the way she wanted to go, since the past was the only place she wanted to be.” ― Donna Tartt, The Little Friend
BTS I will try not to make this too long (because I know I am fully capable of turning this into a 8 hour presentation on BTS). I love BTS. I love their music, their performances, their passion, their ethics, their character, etc. I cannot possibly explain what effect they have had on my life. I would say they have deepened my passions, made me believe in the goodness in world, and made me believe in the goodness that I am capable of. My life is thousand times better with them in it. They have touched and changes millions of lives through their music, through their existence. I wish they also find the happiness that they want. I low-key love ARMY – BTS fans who have showered them with all the love they deserve and who try to protect them as much as they can. Afterthoughts: I think almost every person has one artist whose works resonates with them. BTS just happens to be that artist whose work has most effect on me. I think we should treasure that, always remember that feeling of looking at life with a person who just happens to think about life the same way we do. It is not about supremacy of one artist over other, about loving the artist that made you understand and love ourselves.
Music My love for music is equivalent to my love of books. Maybe I love music a bit more than books. Each song that I love or like is an experience in itself, those few minutes makes me forget myself and sometimes remind who I am and who I was. I can listen to the same song many many times and only to love it more. I do not have a favorite genre or anything. I think it solely depends on the song. Afterthoughts: -Even though I try to explore as many songs as possible in as many language as possible, but most of the time I am not aware of the “popular” stuff. You might even think I am living under a rock. Now, I do not believe that popular songs are bad or good. I am not a person who is against mainstream music. It is just that I am so caught up in the things that I like that I do not get time to even look at other stuff. I sort of live in my own bubble. – BTS gets its own separate point here, because my love for them is on a whole new level. Their music is awesome. But they are so much more than their music. Stanning BTS is a way of life.
Writing I think I am a person who has zero confidence in herself. I do not think I am especially gifted in anything. I am not particularly intelligent or beautiful or funny or creative. And I take writing in the same spirit. I do not think I am exceptional at writing, but I love writing. I love the fact that I can write average good stuff some days. I love the 2000 lines of drafts that will never make to a post. When I write, I love how much clearer and focused my head is. I love my writing more when someone else find comfort in my words. I agree that writing with a regular job is difficult and bit pressurizing but writing gives me such joy, that I don’t think I can possibly quit writing. Afterthoughts: I once heard about a rule that one cannot estimate themselves correctly. So I am probably worse or better than what I think I am. I hope my writing is better than what I think it is.
Internet There were so many things to list here, so I collectively grouped them as “internet”. But then who doesn’t love internet. It is sort of basic thing that a lot of us take for granted. Having access to so much content, so much information makes me happy. I love the hour that I uselessly spend on looking at memes, the hours I spend playing and upgrading stuff on games that will take me nowhere in life, the hour I spend on watching videos, all the silly hilarious stuff that I retweet at 2 am, binge reading everything about MBTI on Quora, reading random articles that I will end up forgetting anyways. Though it is just a stream of easy to consume media, but still it does make us happy in some ways. And that happiness is significant in itself. Afterthoughts: I am aware everything is not picture perfect on internet. Internet depresses us also. But with I have learnt to leave online spaces that make me feel bad about myself uselessly. I am not good with interacting with people online, that is one thing that I cannot enjoy. It is not about whether these people are friends or strangers. I just have a feeling that I have nothing to say that the other person would be interested to know about. (That’s the reason that I silently like your posts rather than leaving the comment you deserve.) I don’t like to stay online for long also. The moment I finish doing what I had in my mind, I switch off my data. Because I just can’t handle all the notifications. I like the dear old SMS to communicate rather than the new efficient apps with awesome features.
Series/Movies/Stories Watching series and movies is another joy to me, something that I spend a lot of my time on. Every thing I have watched, every character that I have watched is equivalent to a life that I have lived briefly. I don’t do binge watch though. I like some time to think over everything. That is the pace I am comfortable – to watch something and reflect on it, think about it, to anticipate what is yet to come for the whole day. I think that feeling the story grow in you as you go about your everyday life is an essential part of the whole experience, a part that adds more importance to what I am watching. Afterthoughts: Again as with music, I have no idea of the popular stuff. I just see what I end up finding. I do have list of stuff to see but that is based on word-of-mouth suggestion from people who like the same things as me. I do not have a favorite movie or series or book. Naming favorites is too tough for me. For each story, each actor, each director etc. has their own charm. That would be like comparing apples to oranges.
Everything emotional/sentimental/sort of spiritual I do not look like an emotional person, but I am. I am an INFJ with Cancer zodiac, what else can you expect but an over-sentimental person. I like anything that seeks to explore or talk about these sentiment, anything that values human emotions and shows how complicated and simple it can be. Similarly, I have same feeling about works related to spirituality. I enjoy the company of people who genuinely have something to talk on these topics. I am not into talking about people but talking about ideas. Not the ideas that change the world, but ideas that helps me understand why we feel the way we feel, ideas that give me insight into the tiny limited world. Afterthought: I think I am not one of those people who can or want to change the world. My mind never wanders into that direction. All I think about is my understanding of world and how to perfect that understanding. Sometimes I think I am a narcissist and self-absorbed person because of that.
Lazing around/Sleeping I don’t react well to stress. So I am always looking forward to a good sleep or a day without schedules or deadline. A day that I can waste away makes me happy. Even though lazing around for me again means books/music/series etc. Even when it is not busy it is still a busy life.
Being Busy As much as I like lazing around, I like being busy more. Because of my sense of being less than average and constant feeling of not being good enough. I don’t handle free time well. I feel that no one needs me, the world will work without me also. That I have nothing to offer to world. It is a very sad feeling. So I try to do my work properly, try to do by best in everything. I like the days that I have work myself to point of losing all my energy. So that I can enjoy all the things I love (everything mentioned above) without guilt. Afterthought: It is not that I cannot sit still or introspect without driving myself to the point of sadness. I like introspection a lot. But having days and weeks of time for just introspection makes me feel like a useless person.
Things that almost made to this list but didn’t (and why):
Food I used to enjoy eating a lot. I still love good food. But I can’t eat or enjoy it as I used to. Something has changed in me, maybe I am growing old. Now I don’t have that much craze for it.
Friends I don’t think I am good at friendship. I loved my friends while I was with them. But then apart from the brief time of companionship, there nothing much left of those time now. My expectation from friendship I think is a bit too much. I think in the long run friendships don’t give me happiness.
Now everything tastes like my oft-repeated past. This bitter turn of events has brought new meaning to my pain that I didn’t ask for. This morning I even look like someone who needs help.
I guess I may have looked that way for a long time in everyone’s eyes but mine. In my eyes, I was doing better, good enough to be not noticed and singled out.
I smiled enough to keep people from seeing all the mess I carried in me. But lately, strangers hand me books to keep my sad mind busy.
Books that tell me that it is not too late, that one at a time I can make something out of the soil that won’t leave my skin, the soil that I am buried under.
I want to believe in this nonsense more than anyone can imagine. But my heart is not the same now as it was years ago. It no longer believes the words that feel good and hurt later.
We could never see each other properly
because we busy working hard,
trying day and night
to become something the other wants.
Or at least something that can’t be rejected on face
or fall short of this friendship
that we could never be sure of.
We worked equally hard
to ignore when we saw a crack in each other’s mask,
to ignore the words spoken out of character.
Somewhere we were too hollow, too materialistic, too demanding.
And we knew it was wrong.
We knew we had no right to demand.
We knew we were cruel and we knew we would be forgiven.
If not now, then someday.
Is it possible to love someone in spite of being so wrong?
Is it possible to use such pure words for a transaction gone wrong?
I am stacked with all that belongs to you
and nothing that you have feels yours.
It is as if you were busy finding things
that didn’t look like you
and hoped that if you surrounded yourself
with all kinds of right
then your fault that people talk about
could find a mirror to fix its face.
Or maybe
you just wanted to welcome everyone in this mess,
like you welcomed me,
and leave us in this ocean of objects and words
of overwhelming meaning and beauty.
So that after an absence of million years
that ticking clock forgot to register,
when you come back to find us
and ask us how we take our tea,
we could see your meaningless broken smile
as the only hand that can save us from
losing our sense of self,
losing the idea of what we are
that we had barely put together a downfall ago.
They recreated his room
with reverence
to his life
and his passions.
Paid attention to each small details
that can bring back who he was.
They debated over whether he would have
had photos of certain people
in the room where he wrote
or better, have crumpled paper
that got stepped over.
But to be honest
they had no idea of who he was
whatever they recreated,
was not him.
Maybe his poems were just pieces of him
that he either rejoiced
or loathed.
I believe there must be parts of him
that he was not aware of,
parts of him that he never got to pen,
which he was too busy to ignore.
What if his life was not worth the show?
What if he could only be himself
outside that room?
it rains in my heart 