The Unforgettable Desire

Imagine an attention deprived 14yo girl getting not only attention but also love and care for being sick. A girl who knew everyone in the school before her illness, a girl who was known in the entire school after. Attention, though enjoyable, can also be scary. From wanting to be seen to living in the fear of being watched, a lot can change for a teenager through her illness. For the most part, having known suffering, having seen suffering, despite her tantrum-throwing self, she learns to be grateful for a life that she earlier despised. It doesn’t help when everyone around her, beginning from her doctors in the ICU to strangers on the road, call her strong. What has she done to survive an illness? Will power, her doctors said. She wondered, really? Maybe. She was just a kid who got her kicks from scoring 100 in Math and wanting to be 'the' topper in class 10 boards. It was the only form of recognition she knew, till she was sick. And the verdict of being strong, of never wan...

One would think I’ll be guilty for being happy ever since the lockdown began. I am not. At all. This is the happiest I have been in last couple of years (conferences/seminars/fests don’t count here – they are my ultimate happy places). My theory is that I am taking comfort in the fact that world is slowing down, so I don’t have to feel bad about being slow at getting my life back together. I kept rushing so much that I crashed, and now I am okay with not having everything at once, not skipping steps. In December 2018, I wrote a poem to remind myself that I am ‘just’ 24, I have the rest of my life in front of me. So, I can take ‘crashing’ in consideration, look back at my life, and evaluate why I crashed, instead of simply living with the guilt of ‘failing’. Failing at a life that I dreamt of as a kid. When I turned 25, I switched off my phone by midnight. I didn’t need the excitement of my birthday. I couldn’t bear the idea of pretending to be someone I am not, not on my birthda...

I say, ‘I have survived a lot on my own, I can do it alone for the rest of my life.’ I wait for, ‘I know you can do it alone. I am saying, you don’t have to. I am staying right here.’ No, not just the words. I wonder, is it too much to ask? I know the answer, 'You haven't asked.' I heard Jerry Pinto tell an aspiring writer, ‘Make a pact with the universe, nobody needs to know about it.’ He advised another, ‘Read one hour every day and start writing today. I’ll see you in ten years in a literary fest.’ I smiled standing on the side. I spoke to him after everyone got their books signed. I didn’t tell him about writing. I said, ‘I have been through cancer, sexual abuses, and mostly, emotional abuse. I look at them as facts. I wrote about them, I tried to, I keep trying. It’s like I am the performer and narrator at once. I have always been that, just more aware and conscious about it since a couple of years.’ He nodded in affirmation. I didn’t hear, ‘You should get y...

There’s a question that every reader has had for the author, ‘Is this real, is this your story?’ It comes when the story is sold as a fiction and people find themselves in it. I used to believe that it’s an irrelevant question, or something to feed the thirst for gossip. I like to think now that the question is a cry for help – people want the hope that whatever they’re going through will pass, as it did in fiction; that things will make sense in the end. They need to know that it was real, to find some comfort. This year, oddly enough, many people have reached out to me, asking about ways to express ‘better’. Sometimes they asked for tips to communicate better. Two things I am terrible at. They like to read my blog and posts. Some have also mentioned that they are jealous that I can write during/about my poor mental and emotional health while they struggle to utter a word. There are a few pages left, I am not ready for it to end. The act of writing is cruel. It makes you pa...

You write or share a post about depression. A couple of people ask, Are you alright? Yes, you say. You add a few more lines just to assure them. You find it difficult to lie even to a stranger until they ask, How are you? The answer is a lie you’ve excelled at. It often makes you wonder that you certainly need help but you cannot accept it from most people. You need to have a history with them, a history free of hurt, a history full of belief and faith. You need to know that they understand what it is that you’re going through, you need to know that they have done their research before providing help. Many people, family and friends, have offered help. You are grateful. But you have no patience to explain them what you’re going through. You perform a one hour stand up act, making them laugh at your experiences, lessons and inability to move on. You say it in a way that they are dumbstruck. All they ask in the end is, Are you sure you aren’t feeling this because you have read too...

Someday we are going to wake up in an alternate reality where horrible life is NOT a competition. In that reality when someone expresses how terrible their life is, the response is an empathetic nod rather than ‘Oh, my life is more terrible.’ Someday we are going to realise that it’s absolutely okay to have a time in which life seems and feels good. It's absolutely okay to not accept the misery 'as what life is' or 'normal' and want better for ourselves. We might have a lot of time to kill till that day comes, so I am going to share an experience. Once upon a time I wanted to die, from the ages of eight to thirteen. To make you understand my commitment to the act of dying, let me mention that I used to believe then that if I ask god something from my heart, then he'll consider fulfilling it. I prayed to die on my bad days. I prayed to die on my good days including birthdays. Because, why will anyone listen to a prayer that’s forgotten when the situat...

I won’t claim to know the symptom that dissociation is to many mental health conditions. I won’t be speaking about any mental health conditions; I have a very limited Google-baba knowledge about them. I have never felt comfortable calling myself depressed because I haven’t been medically diagnosed. I take depression seriously because it is as scary a word as cancer for a misinformed or selectively aware person or a person with limited awareness. When I began telling people that I cannot recognize my reflection in the mirror, most of them heard it as a metaphor. I was talking in real life figurative terms, they weren’t literal. I was terrified every time I looked into a mirror or took a selfie or got clicked in general. The image that I saw outside wasn’t the image I had in my head. It was not even the image that people showed me or at least the one their choice of words did. I was unable to relate any comment on my body or face or hair for that matter. I began seeing the...

A lot has been said about loneliness. A lot has been said about the difference between being lonely and being alone. I was raised in a ‘learn to be alone’ way that implied the idea of being self-sufficient. Given my childhood and teenage was dominated by my dedication to friendship, I was often asked, ‘Will any of your friends do what you do for them?’ It was based on the assumption of requiring reciprocation. I am not sure if I said it out loud, I might have, that, ‘I am not doing it for them, I am doing it because I need to do it for myself.’ A few months ago, during a conversation I asked a man if he was married. He laughed and mentioned that he is sixty nine years old. I simply added, ‘and…?’ Then he clarified that he is married and has many grand children. I understood his amusement, but I didn’t understand what age had to do with the question. A person can be widowed or divorced or homosexual or asexual or just single. Being sixty nine doesn’t say anything about his/her m...

It is the year when breathing became a conscious act. It is the year in which one July evening I failed to feel my body for more than 30 minutes. In those minutes, the knowledge of my existence was terrifying. It was then that I knew I had to slow down, I didn’t know how to. I like the rush, you see, the rush of waking up to something new every day. Monotony, I don’t know how to live with that. Eventually, I got bored of staying in bed on days when I couldn’t get up. It is the year when I began seeing my life in terms of 365 days. Before 2018, a new year only meant writing the wrong date for at least one month. This year, however, has been about having symptoms of depersonalisation and derealisation, anxiety attacks, and shattered emotional and mental strength. It has been about accepting that things aren’t okay within. It is the year of losing people, relationships, and self. It has been about feeling empty and not being okay with it. It has been about drowning in a sea of ...

Last Monday five people asked me, “How was your (first/solo) trip?” I found it terribly difficult to answer them. The more I tried to answer, the more it felt wrong. I told every single one of them, “I need time to process the weekend, let me put the experience in words before I talk about it.” It wasn’t acceptable, beyond doubt. They wanted the excitement, the stories of adventure, the amaze-feels of going alone to another place and also, the mishaps, if any. I felt none of that, precisely because I wasn’t on a soul-searching-through-bungee-jumping-trip. I managed to say, “it was perhaps a much needed break to realize that I am not stuck, I am subconsciously choosing to remain stuck.” They responded that that’s the charm of travelling. I wondered if I could call it travelling at all. Going to another place to sleep in all day – does that really count as travelling? The most common emotion that I felt in the four nights-three days’ trip was anger. I felt that I was divided in...

In a world where mental health is being acknowledged, Where people are willing to hear stories, Hoping it will help the storyteller to live that day, Sleep that night, wake up the next morning, Without the thought of killing himself/herself; In a world where people are trying to understand, The beginnings of anxiety or depression, And ways to cope with it, My mind shouts, “Screw you.” For as far as my memory allows, I remember the desire in my 8-year-old heart, I remember the desire to die. It wasn’t a desire that came in the pre-teen years, When I began believing no one understands me in this world. It was a desire that I truly wished to be true, So I asked my then believed ‘god’, To give me end stage brain cancer, On the days that I cried as well as when I laughed. When I was diagnosed with initial stage of cancer, I began believing that there is perhaps someone out there, Who heard my voice and responded wisely, To my unthoughtful, pe...