When Darkness finds me

I can feel you. 

You don't have to shout any louder, run any faster, be any heavier or any more anything, not even lesser. I can see you from the corner of my eye and sense you with every beat of my heart, creeping towards me. 

Your grey vapours only chase me harder when I run so I chose, this time, to brave your wrath, to cross my fingers and wait for you to pass me by. 

I chose to believe the false promises I made myself and I chose to believe the false comfort every disconnected whisper offered me because I was hiding from you in plain sight. I was hiding from the person you are conjured up by the recesses in my mind not deep enough to keep me safe.

I hate that you caught up. I hate that you chose the brightest day, in a room most filled with love in a voice I cherish deeply to wrap your vapourous trail around me and inch your way up to my mind while I stood paralysed- without even a whimper in self defense.

You know your own ugliness. 

You know I will succumb to the power you have over me. You enjoy the chase and it was longer this time than ever before. I didn't miss you. Not one bit. If I could wish you away I would. I let myself believe that is all it would take but you have proved me wrong. I will congratulate you on your victory, ever the graceful loser. You have taught me from practice, I will even thank you, gratitude flowing out of the wounds you stab into me. 

I wonder if this will be my last memory of these months in the rainbow. I stand here immobilized by the crushing weight of the knowledge you bring. 

You call it the truth and I want to believe you but it is difficult to have my mind reconstruct reality to suit a whim while you are twisting your knife deeper into my heart making sure I can see you through the haze of tears I won't shed from pride.

After all that I have sacrificed- laughing little floaty bubbles and flitting through reality, my pride is all I have and if you asked nicely I'm sure I would give you that too, but not while you suffocate me and watch me bleed out so clinically. 

It won't do. I won't give you that satisfaction, not because I don't want to- for you I would give anything, but because my pride is the only oxygen I will find in the dark lonely grave you have dug for me.

I will dream of flight and wine and dancing and sleep through the worst of this. I will wake up in another season having befriended my nightmares again. Companionship more reliable than your promised smiles in the dark- I am blind.

Some days

Some days I wake up convinced I will be fine.

I'm woken up by the ring of my alarm instead of another dream of you. I'm chained to no memories- not good nor bad. My clothes- washed over and over again since you last saw them, bare no smell of you on this morning. I don't feel the phantom of your touch every time I feel the wind on my skin nor hear your sigh in every rustle of leaves.

I know for certain on days like this that I will be fine; that it will get better. I have reason to believe that with time I will find every shard of my crushed soul and glue it together transforming into somebody more breathtaking and complete than you ever knew.

On days like these I'm told there's a skip in my step and a tune to my laugh.Nobody asks about the colour of my eyes or why I won't smile. They ask instead of my childhood- whether I climbed trees and pulled pranks. I laugh in response, my love for the universe bursting out of every pore of my being- gratitude for the many gifts I have received that I haven't earned, the many opportunities that seemed gift wrapped with my name on the label. The world is perfect under the bandage I've plastered on and I feel the mile deep gashes in my soul begin the slow process of healing.

Just as I settle into my peace, a corner of my mind unlocks- I see an image of the inevitable future. A future I want with all my heart for you to have of happiness, success, joy and most of all, of peace. I see that future without me and that isn't what reminds me I will never heal, it is seeing somebody else in every dream we shared. And so I begin again, from the very bottom, tying again to forget, not hope, not believe and to stop praying to Gods who won't listen anyway.
---

I'm listening to Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd

To be ugly

When I was a child, I was a professional dancer. I don't think anybody who has seen my stiff response to music in the last few years would believe me but it's true. I was a professional jazz dancer, or something like that anyway.

I was part of a group called the <insert famous dancer whom I will not embarrass'name>'s Junior Dance Company. Stage shows, music videos and dancing with South India celebrities was part of my everyday as a 10-11 year old. We wore shiny sequinned clothes, spent endless hours every week perfecting choreography and even left school early every once in a while.

I guess I was living the dream. There was a purpose to my life, however trivial, before most people discovered there was even need for one. I didn't grow up with social media, I wonder if it even existed then, but there are pictures in a trunk somewhere of a group of 15 awkward adolescents, our faces full of make up posing with confidence that only comes from being a child.

It wasn't such a happy run though. In a world that demands perfection- manufactured or otherwise, it doesn't matter how young or innocent you are. I knew I was ugly before I even knew that was the word to describe me.
I loved dancing. Every bones in my body would thrill at the sound of music and I would dance because it was my natural reaction to music but when you're a professional dancer, that is not enough. The popular girls, the pretty ones would always get to dance in the center where they weren't tripping over cables or breathing in smoke from "smoke machines". Us uglie-s tuned out of the world, tuned into the music and filled space.

I didn't hate it. I don't remember ever realizing I was being slightest despite family and friends asking all the time why I wasn't dancing in front. Truth be told, I was glad to dance in the second row. I didn't have to remember any of the steps really.
But it was upsetting when people would walk into rehearsal asking to "audition" for something or the other and the instructors would only point to a few people. It isn't nice, knowing as a child, that you're ugly. That you- because you are too skinny, too dark, have weird hair and buck teeth, don't deserve every opportunity to shine.

I stopped dancing in the eighth standard. I can't remember if I missed it, I was too busy sailing to notice. I can't remember if I felt different for being seen for more than my scrawny adolescent body.

I wish I could still dance. I wish I could forget I'm ugly but more than anything I wish I could erase my ability to see people as ugly and pretty.    

Fear

I wonder what it is like to live in fear, to bind yourself  to that devil and make it you. How do you cope with every day knowing no decision you make fearlessly is even worthy of discussion? How do you cope with being so scared of your own thoughts that you won;t say them out loud?

I want to pity you. 

I want to teach you to be brave. I want you to love every thought of yours like I do. To be brave for the person you are. To encourage your honesty. To teach you the exhilaration in fighting a battle you believe in. The independence in believing in your decisions.

I loaned you my wings to fly but you lost them in your paralyzing fear. Now I don’t fly either and you’re sorry.

You sacrificed me to your fears and in my mind I’m now dead. In yours my throat is slit a million times with every apology you don’t mean. 

I want to wish you unhappiness but I can’t. I don’t know what is more foolish, your fear of everything or my all consuming love for a weakling. Your fears have shattered my world as much as my bravery has alienated me from everybody. I spent my whole life waiting and now I don't have wings. 

I wish I could live without hope, it would be less painful if I didn't hope you would gather your courage and find my wings.

Of parks, bubbles and the life you deny yourself

There should be a word for it, somebody should make it up, the word to use when you can sell sorrow for companionship.

We live in an ugly world. What we see around us- the greed, the selfishness, the need to protect nobody but oneself- doesn't help cover the aesthetic flaws of the broken pavements with hungry crying children on it. We are so numb to every human suffering we see that, now, one feels worse for the dead rat being torn apart by a hungry crow than an old woman too old to lie on a bed, crying into her own naked shoulder begging for a morsel to eat.

We grow less patient and more numb with every day living the busy lives we do. We feel protected by the bubble we build locking out anybody who doesn't seem right. There is a sadistic joy in differentiating between the us and them; the them can be anybody- that boy who won't take the nail paint off his little finger, the woman on the train who can't contain her excitement about a new day. But that bubble gets empty. The people you surround yourself with echo the hollowness you build into your life and so you reach out, you let one hand slip out of the bubble and your wandering nervous hand has many takers. The ears in that hand are filled suddenly by those stories you chose to ignore, those wails you tuned out of.

Everybody has a sad story and suddenly everybody wants to tell you what it is. You pat yourself on the back for building a life free of such suffering and yet you watch doing nothing while that somebody will tell you of the horrors he suffers. You will watch every gesture he makes, listen to every changing tone in his voice, you analyse, critically, the truth of his story- the value it will bring to your next drinking session. You let your cold heart thaw and take in his suffering putting the colour back in your cheeks while beginning to realise that to this man, his suffering is his ticket into your bubble; a space you know you will not share with anybody who is not an echo of you.

You hand slips back into the bubble. Some disinfectant and a walk into a park with children who can count out money but can't do arithmetic drains out that story you heard, there is a babble of discontent that is so loud, it drowns out any truth you learnt. You laugh at the prospect of a person as broken as him finding his way into your everyday until you realise just how broken you are. You realise you traded your pain with him. You suffered his agonies as much as he suffered yours and your bubble is not safe anymore, fragile and easily shattered by the tears you fill it with.
------

I'm listening to Jee Le Zaraa

Magic bus

In a comforting world there would be a midnight bus; A bus for the broken, lonely and dispirited. The bus would have no destination it would invite neither conversation nor silence. Nobody would compete, not for the happiest nor saddest, nor bravest stories. We would drive around and around knowing we are united among strangers; That heart break and sadness are not lonely, inescapable little cages.

I would like to think that it would be a magic bus. An open top bust that will let you see the stars through your tears, magical because no matter where you are it will always feel 12 degrees Celsius  You could wear a sweater , hold yourself, maybe cry into your sleeve and believe what you will.

I would wear my hair down, find the darkest spot and wrap my oldest shawl around me. I'd snuggle into my shoes and cry as though it were raining. I'd carry some music, the kind of music I'm too scared to listen to on a regular day because of the truth in the writer's sadness. Maybe I'd whisper along. I would love my sadness on this magic bus, I would know it's a part of who I am. I wouldn't need to find excuses then and we would all drive round and around for hours until we stopped counting. I wouldn't carry a phone, or maybe the magic bus would jam all signals.

Airports are much like my magic bus. Everything is temporary- A collection of strangers who don't belong, so much left incomplete.

Another Life

In another life, we would still be friends.

We would sit on a terrace talking into the night of an escape into a better world; one where we would live free, stay giddy, be happy. We would make up lands where brave heroes would fight for honor and truth would keep the world safe. We would tell each other the darkest whispers of our crooked minds, keep our promises to each other.

In that life we would sit together and laugh at the failures that my life is and wonder at the occasional victory, making up stories of the world we could conquer. We would live our lives and share our heartbreaks. In that life I would see you and know you still. In that life, I would be less bitter, feel less betrayed, be in less of a hurry to distrust. I would believe that friendships must last forever, that anything that can change you must be special. 

But we aren't friends and the long uncomfortable silences between us is filled, layer by layer, by the ruins of every universe we ever dreamed of. In the life we live, as I pack my bags to leave again, I can't tell you of my plans, we can't make a joke of my fears and I not allowed to wish anything for you. In the world we live in I smile and pretend you don't exist, knowing that to you I truly don't.

I hope that one day it will be possible again for me to think of you without feeling betrayed by myself, to trust you as I would a stranger. I hope that your dreams will come true that your heart be less broken that you be less bitter from the lessons life forced on you. I hope for you the happiness we dreamed. I will always miss the person you were and I hope with all my heart that true happiness finds you, that someday, when I hear of you from someone who knew us, what I will see is not the worlds we destroyed but a space in time we could be ourselves.