All of Nothing

Every time I return, it is so much more in my face all  that I had unsuccessfully tried to escape. It feels like everything comes back in focus, crystal clear. The suffering is more potent. The reality is more stark. What 'could not be' is more gigantic. None of this is surprising knowing the depths of emotional derangement in which I was immersed during my last visit. Since finding that deep new abyss of thick, slow-moving soot that pulls one into an eternal and evolving suffering, I haven't been the same. Even after my departure last time, the insurmountable pull and the multifaceted inadequacy have plagued my days, especially my morning drives. But being here, in flesh, in real time, is powered by the perceived proximity of loss and defeat. It feels like the curtains of mist are cleared, the fog lifts and the grey clouds of sorrow which I could feel on those drives are in focus, right in front of my face.  I know it is the association and memories that I unearthed. It i...

The silence of anxiety has no space to breathe. The weight of worries constricts the throat, freezes the tongue, paralyzes several senses and holds you on pause. It’s in this state, that sadness tries to break free as tears but it fails. If anxiety were only hinging on worry, it likely would be a one-dimension problem to solve. But it has so many facets. Trauma, melancholy, self-harm, self-hate, regret, fear and pain. Several times, it sits in the lap of slow-steeping depression that fuels it to spike to a paralysis. I deal with it as I have dealt with everything that has been thrown forcefully in my face. With broken pieces of my strength that tell me I am stronger than my anxiety, powerful than my depression, courageous than my fears. Accepting emotional pain as a normal part of my life in my younger years was not easy. Or wise. I think I got addicted to it because in that pain lived the memories of whom and what I loved the most. It became a lifestyle that I flaunted with preten...

I sit here brimming with anxiety, a defeated anger, fear and immense sadness. My core feels vast as a barren land with no streaks of happiness, sharp and numb cyclical pain, tears ready but too exhausted to shed themselves. So many questions, never enough answers. The questions and answers merge to become a dull noise. In the forefront is a realization and a desire. A realization of the wrongs, a desire to not continue realizing or feeling or knowing.  Revisits to troubled pasts are always traumatizing. A troubled past brings pain of a different kind than a lost past. And I am tired of choosing, so they all come as they are, when they want. I have no defenses anymore. I let my guard down and allowed myself into my heart. I let the walls dissolve, the compartments crumble, the curtains burn. And there they all were, staring right at each other. All those dark waters of sorrow and pain. All those faces with mascaras running in black tear trails. I let go of the ways that would freeze...

An independent kind of loneliness is liberating. I faintly remember brief phases of my life where I experienced such liberation. I think that’s called being alone without being empty. Growing up, I mostly felt sufficient and happy just by myself. I may have had an unidentified need for validation and appreciation when I was young. But my self-worth was what I thought of myself and not what others thought of me. The attention I received for doing well in school or for being friendly and fun, felt nice but was never required. Or maybe I did require it to be happy; I just didn’t realize that I needed it because I was surrounded by it, surrounded by friends, surrounded by admirers, surrounded by the noise of life and its wonders at the time. Until I faced my first big emotional storm that taught me what destruction felt like, I didn’t experience emptiness and its deafening silence amidst the noisy chaos. I used to find tragic sadness beautiful and inspirational and although I was attract...

Time has been the strangest thing I have known, only second to love. It is a little less crazy than love but a lot more powerful. Time proverbially is the best healer but it is also the ugliest messenger. The atrocity of time is best manifested as the comfort of memories of the past followed by prolonged realizations of the present reality. More often than not, time doesn’t knock you down directly when it’s flowing, it does so via the hands of consequences. In the moment, no matter how good or bad things are, time just exists. Actions are felt while they occur, time is felt retrospectively. Perspective is a glorified, seemingly-harmless term used for such excruciating realizations that only time can provide. Similar to the contradictory nature of time, love is also two-faced. Complex and simple. Simple as a kiss, a hug, a tear, an embrace, a sacrifice. Complex when coupled with time and emotions that cling to love almost seamlessly. Love and time together are likely the most powerful u...

Delhi has always been my city, my sanctuary, where I always belonged. It brought me a lot of joy and a lot of pain but it has never brought me a sense of detachment. Until now. No matter how convoluted my life felt and how many heartaches and mind warps this city gave me, I felt it was mine. This time around, the city felt strange and distant. Changed for the worse, trying to be something it has never been. Pretending to be something it is not. My visit to Delhi this time was for an extended duration. And what I intended to be a warm embrace turned into a long cold stare. I felt I have not known this city. As if it didn’t caress me at my lowest, as if it didn’t cheer me on at my accomplishments, as if it didn’t watch me give everything I had to my goals and loves, as if I wasn’t its black sheep child. I don’t know where did the familiarity dissipate and how the connection got distorted. I have been away for a long time but every time I appeared, Delhi and I got along without fail. Ev...

Closures are painful portals of new beginnings. They tumble you in the spin cycle of the emotional washing machine and wring you into this battered yet somewhat new existence. Closures are tough, unpredictable and often ugly. When done right, they can be be helpful for emotional growth and healing. When done wrong, they lead to wreckage and devastation. When missed, they become powerful anomalies.  The closure that evades time sits and becomes powerful in its tiny form. It condenses so much energy and emotion in its little space that it goes undetected until it's approached. It has now become massive and as all of its mass exerts this fiery pull on everything that exists in my emotional realm, I burn in its ever-expansive zone of influence. It gains energy, momentum and destroys what it contained in its tiny form, way before it was touched.  The pain it brings feels right. I mourned what was destroyed long time ago and I grieve again. But grief is even more unpredictable than ...

  It has been 8 years (minus 1 day) since I wrote my last post. What a strange coincidence that I was pushed into finding my blog on this day eight years later. Eight is a critical number for me for many reasons. My life can be defined most simply as highs of highs and lows of lows. I rarely find anything in the middle, anything mediocre, anything that doesn’t come with extremes. Maybe it is not my life really, it is how I am, how I view it and what I have made of it. Eight is also, what they call, indicative of infinity because of how it’s written and when rotated 90 degrees represents the mathematical infinity symbol. I think that’s how I see my life now. Infinite pain, infinite hopelessness, infinite darkness, infinite wreckage. One could argue I must see the possibilities of infinite hope, infinite beauty and wonder, infinite love, infinite happiness. But we all know that all those highs are followed by devastating lows. And lows are the events that stick to me irreversibly. I...

I have often wondered why weekends are so disturbing. I think it’s all the accumulated anxiety, stress, fear and pain which melt and blend together to become creeping and slithering restlessness. I still remember the nights when I laid in my bed listening to my music and felt my heart get heavier and my breathing get difficult. I also remember that a lot of those nights were preceded by evenings of writing pages and pages of ink and tears, describing what still remain inexplicable after many many years. I am so amazed at and almost jealous of this restless heavy heart feeling. It has managed to stay pretty damn stable. It sits on my soul as a rock. I have always tried to blame it on things, people, events but have known for a while now that it’s me and not anything else. Not to say that all those things are not somehow related to or haven’t contributed to the sea of worries that I choose to drown myself into. Every time I feel it can’t get worse, it kicks me in the rear and shows me...

I don't think I need to preface this post by saying that I have been meaning to write and blah blah because by now I think the only thing which is certain about my blog is its inconsistency and uncertainty. I changed the template, look and info on my blog today for the first time since I joined and blogger tells me that I joined in 2006. I wonder why did I stick with the old theme for so long. I guess because change is scary, change is uncomfortable but change is constant. My life has changed so much since 2006, I think it was time for my blog to change. It's funny how reading your old posts can actually make you cringe. I am still proud of everything I wrote, I still own it but as I read through pages and pages of gloom, I realized how things have changed so many times in so many ways in last decade. Gloom has evolved, baby! And has been evolving. Gloom to chaos, chaos to anger, anger to fake determination, fake determination to real discomfort, real discomfort to real preten...

I have been thinking to write for months now. Despite the fact that I lose a lot of time browsing the internet and shopping or reading random things, I just could not push myself into posting something here. I like to say I didn't have time and I had to read scientific research related papers and do lab work and all this is partially true too but not to the extent that I could not find half hour in half year to write when I was absolutely in the mood of "my kind of writing" almost 5 days a week! Not to mention, I had straight up 2 weeks of laying in bed with chicken pox when I could have made up for not keeping up with my blog. Nevertheless, I don't see my writing and myself as two different entities. These writings and hence the blog are a part of me and such an integral part that there is no sense of it being any different than what I am. I am what I write. Before I start spitting my random thoughts, let me thank a friend of a friend who facebook-messaged me and so...

I realize it has been a while, almost a year since I posted anything on my blog. It is kind of sad, sad in its own deep somber way. I love to write, matter of fact I wanted to be an author/novelist at some point of my life. Like one of those miserably powerful desires but strongly passive aspirations, it just diluted to the realms of unreality. Not that it was hard to pursue but when I conceived that idea, I wasn't ready for a change. Maybe there were too many changes spontaneously occurring and I didn't want to add to them. Changes scare me. Continuity scares me more. I promised myself that I will write a post exactly after one year when I accidentally stumbled upon my blog and realized that the date was precisely one year old. The promise made in the lab was proven to be fragile by the end of 4 hours. My loyalty to this hobby appears to be questionable but it is like a matured addiction which recognizes you quickly even after many years. I came home, switched on my laptop and...

As I post some useless messages on Facebook tonight, I realize that the emptiness inside me doesn't get filled in. It just gets tired after wandering inside me for one whole day. It exhausts itself and goes to sleep but it leaves a miserable discomfort to watch me over till it surfaces again. All this happens in a house of pain. As I fanatically try to run out and reach for the door, i realize that the touch of my hand on the door opens a dungeon of what I hate the most - chaos. As I fall through it, for a while I go numb. Too numb to regret that I should have never touched the door. It feels as if billions of needles poke through my body and embed in me. Eventually, I fall in a fire which burns me in an unbearable agony and since I know my emptiness will take over sooner or later, I start yearning for it. I wait for it to take over. Take over me. Take over my agony. And then I realize I am my agony. Absorbed in these thoughts as I go on a nicotine- caffeine break, I try to distrac...

Well..it has been a long time since I actually updated thiS blog. I used to have two lines of writings- one which never moved out of the domain of my diaries and the other which was posted and updated online. If I trace back, the roots of this habit seem to be emerging from childhood days when I just wanted to verbalize my emotions. With time and circumstances changing for worse for me, the habit became a need. And when needs serve their primary purposes well, they become habits and in severe cases like mine, obsessions. I have always been an extremist. So, i have a tendency to overdo everything, good or bad. That's because one loses a sense of proportion when he starts doing something which in turn is meant to serve a bigger purpose of triggering something off which has no relation anyhow with the first "something". From being a teenage angry, dissatisfied and rebellious girl, i transcended to a grown - up adult but my needs and habits of scribbling never faltered. Reaso...

It has been so cold since you’ve gone; All the days have I mourned Torn into pieces, Smoked into ashes I start thinking where did we start from…? Moving around in the dark lanes, Contorting in my terrible pain, I saw you on the road across And heard you saying my name. You offered your hand, I held it still not assured And you sensed my sorrow and tried to cure I held you tighter, still unsure Not realizing where was I heading for. You became my habit, I became yours Weaknesses broke, pain absorbed, Ocean of tears flowed and froze You held me again to reveal what had been obscured. I fell in love before I could realize I hindered myself to get in the stride; But before I slept every night I saw you always through my smile. Days passed, time flew I dreamt of just me and you I moved on to an unknown destination, But the pieces inside pierced me through. A piece of life and the peace of death Entangled together, I could not separate. You locked the pain with kisse...

Burning inside me your pieces are smoked, Thoughts of togetherness now corrode. Give me a piece of these ashes, I’ll take it away to blow. Reasons beyond your wishful thinking, Leave your deeds somewhere stinking. Hold my hand again you may, But it won’t relieve your painful suffering. Laugh at yourself, you are a slave A slave of distrust and broken faith Your masters beat you to dismay; And you surrender to their whims everyday. But I ain’t a slave, I aint a fool Ain’t gonna be an object of play Not in love, not in disgust; Not gonna let you have your way. Slash these lies into pieces so many Make your doubts further uncanny Smell the deceit, kill your fantasy I am gonna be the author of your morbid story.

IF I EVER THOUGHT... If I ever thought I will be at peace I was so wrong simply If I ever thought You are the one who’ll protect I was so wrong ‘cos you couldn’t even hold me. Promises once again are broken Lies rise up with impunity Again you prove to disprove my belief Again you stomp my dignity. Fury rises and pain strangles Again my emotions cripple me My trust over you, you yourself shattered Leaving me again with misery. Claim you may to have loved me, But courage you lacked to save your identity Strength you lost to fight the blames And could bear all the fingers pointed at you ‘n’ me.. Horror reached its zenith Unanswered questions ate my belief As you return with your claim of love again Do you think the questions are relieved..? If I ever thought I can embrace bliss and pain shall leave I was so wrong simply ‘cos pain has kissed my life once and forever And peace is cursed by agony…

THE SAGA OF A BROKEN VOW You came and knocked at my heart Unanswered it went, ‘cos dead it was. Rose up to life ,breathing some peace But scared I remained, huddled with grief. Pretended to be dead , it didn’t respond Habit grew in fondness, Fondness in love.. But scared i remained, at every turn. Pieces of me fell again ‘cos this confession they couldn’t explain Hatred for self grew so strong, ‘cos I refused to accept a beginning so strange. Blamed for clinging to solace; I wondered how could I find life again As I discovered a new reason to exist, From confessing my love I couldn’t refrain. I knew I won’t kiss away the pain But all the doubts faded away.. I learnt to live in some misty hope But again…., scared I remained.. I found love when I never expected And it grew with everyday. Pain and chaos didn’t die though, But they started to disintegrate. I dreaded to lose this new place I knew my hopes will surely break.. Haunted I was to be struck by misfortune ‘cos I knew I will repen...

With insecurity I live; Scary realities break my myths; With a lost head and a bleeding heart, Every breath demands its bit! Absurdities and miseries have blended so well Craving for death increases its strength When thousands of needles prick my soul I don’t understand which one should I keep,which one to throw… The dark won’t help, The light can’t see Each day comes to suck my peace.. All this happens just ‘cos.. My wrongs overweigh me! I’m not what you think I just can’t be! So bury your expectations Which keep on suffocating me…

With all those silent tears With all that bitter pain When I rise my head to see I observe nothing has changed. The same indifferent eyes I observe The same distances I share The same hollow misunderstandings Which break me over and over. Moments may hold their significance But life seems to have lost its way.. Time follows its own pace But each moment gasps to find its space. The mystery of pain is still the same It remains as unknown and as strange And each disturbing wave when creeps and crawls; Leaves me with yet another strange pain. What crawls inside has engulfed my life Suffocating me but doesn’t let me die.. As a fierce storm it destructs As a scary promise it reverts It makes me run and hide, And shut my eyes in fear But again appears in front. A long time,a long way The same words,the same pain. I may scribble over for years May falll short of tears But the same strange unknown misery Will never change.