Gratitude

My head became a volcano waiting to erupt. I cannot fathom the pain but I also can't stop thinking about the peace that follows the eruption.

No matter what I do I will never find peace here, everyone will keep trying to fit me in a mold - their mold as they wish me to be. My existence never mattered and it doesn't seem to matter in any future I choose.. I'll always be about them, for them.

I'm no longer looking for an escape but an eternal silence. I don't crave death in a way that'll punish others.. but in a way where you're home after working hard and now you can just lie on your mother's lap and have the most peaceful sleep.

Death is that cradle I wish I would've received when i was young so I wouldn't starve for love.

- From Love, To Love

I want this one moment. It's... It's what I want in a relationship which might explain why I'm single now. Ha, Ha. It's, uh... it's kind of hard to... It's that thing when you're with someone and you love them and they know it and they love you and you know it.. but it's a party... and you're both talking to other people and you're laughing and shining and you look across the room and catch each other's eye but... but not because you're possessive or it's precisely sexual but because that is your person in this life. And it's funny and sad, but only because this life will end and it's this secret world that exists right there in public, unnoticed, that no one else knows about. It's sort of like how they say that other dimensions exist all around us, but we don't have the ability to perceive them. That's... that's what I want out of a relationship. Or just life, I guess. Love.

- Greta Gerwig, Frances Ha (2012)

Your shackles felt like home and so now I can't move on. This freedom feels bittersweet, even though I have all the power to do anything I want to, I have no idea what I should do. Freedom is the walk alone at night, the breeze does set my soul free but I have no one who would keep me warm.

The only time I felt warmth was when your distrust would suffocate me, so I called it Love. Now every other kind of love, even the right one makes me feel unworthy. I've learnt to breathe without your qualms choking the life out of me but I'm still failing at love. How many tries do you get until they shun you out completely? Would you still call it a game when your life's at stake?

Looking in your eyes now, I still think I should've stayed back so I could fix things between us. I hate how you look so blue in your pictures. Funny how spending every second with you would be the death of me and I'm still trying to breathe life into you. I don't know what's more devastating, to know that I loved you more than I have ever loved myself or to know that I'd do it all over again if I had the chance to.

Every song I listen to reminds me of you, every person I meet I compare them with you. The rubble of moments spent with you is holding me together. You're no longer a memory that haunts but a ghost that resides in me. I regret saying "I would never love anyone as much as I love you" because all of it is turning true. I no longer want you but I can't help looking for your fragments that would complete me.

I loved you through the deepest trench of my soul, so deep that my lungs forgot how to breathe air still I chose to cave in. Now that I've resurfaced and learnt to breathe again I don't know if I ever would dive that deep in love anew. It's not that I forgot the map, just that I know if I did follow through I'll never find myself again.

- Reason to Attack

I have started to feel a lot of emotions these days. Every time I hear something that hurts me, my heart wells up and tears find a way through my eyes. I guess that's an appropriate response to being hurt. Somehow this feels like a win and a loss at the same time. For the longest time I couldn't express an ounce of emotion, couldn't cry even if my soul was torn apart and now that I am able to, it just feels like I am standing in the middle of the battlefield with no weapons or shield whatsoever. Everyone around me holds enough power to turn me into dust, yet I am hoping, wishing, trusting them not to kill me with a single blow even if it does maim me, I will make do.

Holding a wall around always felt safe and easier but it was also tiresome and filled with loneliness. I always found a way to use my words to cold out people. I am yet to learn how to live with my guard down. I craved human connection so desperately that I forgot it comes with a great deal of pain and I don't think I am capable enough to even feel that pain.

Keeping myself safe is the only way I've loved myself but if this is love then every shackle placed on humankind would be considered solicitude. I had this prolonged resentment inside me, my only desire was to rain this fire on everyone who hurt me and destroy their very existence - was it my kindness that I didn't even try to disrupt their peace even when they crushed my soul or was it self-hatred that I let this fury rot me all along?

- Am I the villain in your story?

Once F. Scott Fitzgerald said that, "the loneliest moment in a person's life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart and all they can do is stare blankly" well it's true, there can't be a more lonely moment than the one where you can't even pick yourself up or give yourself any kind of hope.

Loneliness has its way of creeping into our lives in ways we don't often talk about, in ways we are afraid to acknowledge. How when you are enjoying your solitude, all cozy under your blanket watching your favourite movie, loneliness very subtly whispers.. "what if this is it? this is all you get, the only person who gets to love you is you, that it only gets this good and nothing better." How when the crowd is singing on your birthday you don't really know what to do and how during the holidays there are uncomfortable silences on your dinner table, what if you never find someone who would understand these awkward interactions and look at you with an assuring smile.

Loneliness is that shiver down your spine, when you watch all your friends move on in their life and you stand there hoping you'll be able to make it someday, even though you have no clue what you're gonna make. Loneliness is that anxious feeling, when you fear losing 'the one' who understands your soul better than you do, knowing you'll never be able to open up the same way again.

How do we forget that love is the beginning of loneliness, the minute your heart makes room for someone is when you also make home for loneliness and when your chest fills up at the sight of them the same way your heart fills up breathing in the night sky, your doomed to fill your life with same darkness. The more profound hold that person has, will always impact the intensity of the loneliness they leave behind and yet this is one mistake we're willing to make again and again with hopes that one day you'll find someone who will end this feeling of loneliness.

We fear oblivion so much that we fail to remember, death comes with the forsaken blanket and no amount of tossing and turning within your memories will make you feel less lonely.

- Loneliness is my hiding place

As you grow up, do you forget your way back home? or do you build a new home? and if that's what adulting is then I think I have a lot to learn about. I don't think I even understand what adulting is, when you're so used to being told what has to be done all your life you tend to run things on autopilot. How do you find your way back home when you don't even know which way led you out of there?

I feel like I have this Midas touch but instead of turning things into gold, I spread the plague of sadness every time someone comes close to me. I've been sailing on chaos and holding myself from slipping into the ocean of mistakes and wrongdoings, if only I could let myself submerge into it I'd be able to set myself free.

My heart turned cold and my brain has been dead for a while now. I've made deals with the devil for too long and now I hold the ashes of my potential. I wish I could've mourned them enough so they wouldn't engrave in my soul and hold me back from being myself.

- Grief is my child

I am a little angry at the world tonight and a little angry with myself. Was I always this confused? 'cause I don't remember how I made it this far, what inspired my soul, my thoughts and how I found the will power to do it all. I feel like I have carried this rage inside me forever with no place to express it and now it is slowly burning me from inside out. This agony resides in me knowing how I've burnt because all I could ever offer was this wrath, every single human I touched turned into ashes.

I am a little angry at the world tonight because I tasted betrayal and a little angry with myself for expecting it to be sweet. It wasn't the kind where someone pulls a rug off your feet or stabs you in the back, this was the kind where you trust someone with your vulnerability and watch them unfold their reality. Now I know what the witches in Salem must've felt when they shared their deepest secrets with their confidante only for them to be tied to a tree and burnt alive. This is what betrayal feels like, having your every single cell fall off in the fire while you look at the person you trusted them with, now aware that they are the reason you are down to dust because they couldn't accept your divergence.

I am a little angry at the world tonight for taking away everything that could have been mine and I'm angry with myself for never being able to let it go. They say a storm is sent your way so you can grow through it and once it passes, you become your true self. Yet I fell in love with the destruction and built my home inside the chaos of that very storm, now I don't know how to find comfort in peace. My heart keeps injecting sorrows in my veins like it's the only sustenance I'll ever need and the only way I feel reborn is when I drown myself in my feelings.

- I'm angry with myself (an excerpt from my incomplete dairy)

"so... what do you do when you're anxious?" he asked curiously, his eyes following her every move.

She took a deep breath and smiled, she didn't have to think of an answer, she knew it, she did it but talking about it to another human being was too much of a risk. It was like giving them power over something even you don't have any control on.

"it's not something I would want you to know"

"why?" he cried impatiently.

"it's too much, I hate being vulnerable around people. You know it's like.. they kinda take advantage of vulnerability and you're left heartbroken yet you can't do anything about it because you dug your own grave", she smiled as if talking about it didn't hurt her enough.

"okay.. so you wanna gatekeep", he remarked grinning

She laughed standing at the edge of the bed he was sitting on "interesting choice of words."

He pulled her close and held her gently, "how about you open just a crack of your window and let me take a peek so I'd know how to take better care of you" his voice was calm and faint almost like how you talked to a frightened child.

"so you wanna take care of me.." she said in a hushed tone, looked away towards the window like she was deliberating whether it was a good thing or not.

He kept admiring her - how the lines on her forehead wrinkled when she thought too hard, how her eyes moved from one object to another, how her breathing changed it's pace.

She took a long breath before saying, "so here goes nothing.." met his eyes and said smiling, "so when there are countless thoughts running in my head that won't let me sleep and my chest feels like it's carrying the weight of the world, I like to think" she halted and she looked down "of you"

"I mean it's not in a way that you would come and save me or anything. It's like I lay down and think you're next to me. I look towards my right, close my eyes and imagine you lying by my side. You look at me and smile. That's it, that does the work." she continued hesitatingly.

The silence between them started to creep her so she defended further, "Please don't think I expect anything from you. It was not meant to startle you or put you on spot. I can take care of myself very well on my own."

She was still looking down too afraid to read his truth. He caressed her cheeks and held her chin up so he could meet her eyes, he wanted her to know that he means every word he was about to say.

"this hesitance, I get it.. but you do know that you breathe life into me? the least I can do is stay to your right and smile when you feel that all the lines in your world are blurred and there is no space left in between the sky and earth because it was taken by your heart so your soul feels crushed in the midst of this chaos.. I will be there for you, next to you if that will help you untangle the knot of chaos that has found a home in you. I am not going anywhere, not now, not ever."

That!! that conversation would have been great for her, but it was as real as the monsters under her bed - it only existed in her mind. So she laid there staring at the ceiling wondering if there was ever a possibility that he would follow her in the state of unreality that she created so fondly.

There was no point to it though, she knew it well that her romanticism has broken her heart more times than he ever will. Only if there was a way to measure the love you have for someone then she'd know what to do about her heart that fills up every time their eyes meet.

He was like morning dew bound to disappear as the sun rose, something so fresh, so hopeful would leave the minute her darkness fades. It was as difficult to accept as her realisation that love for her is the rope she ties around her neck hoping it would not strangle her to death even if her feet deserts the ground beneath her.

Unfortunately she had to grin and bear it because she couldn't bare it all to him. He wouldn't know an ounce of truth and she will move on as if he never existed.

- 2 am conversations (an excerpt from my incomplete dairy)

12 year old me would think I'm so cool rn / acc to a Japanese myth our current face is the face of the one we loved the most in our previous life / if i was a character in a book I'd be considered hot and rebellious / strangers fall in love with us all the time / there are children out there who look up to you and aspire to be you /

- reasons to love ourselves, when it's too difficult to simply love our flaws

During the long rainy days when I sit on the grass and the blades cut my finger I can't help but think that I'm used to hurting myself. I keep putting myself in situations that devastates me. I let you in knowing well you're just a mesmerizing lie.

I knew you were never good enough for me and I still let you stay, now you hold the piece of glass that fits the scar in my heart. I kept thinking time would toughen me, the strides of clocks will heal my wounds yet here I am begging you to not toss me around like your used cup of coffee.

At first I hid myself in a castle, made the walls thicker everytime I was hurt but now I've become the impenetrable castle that wouldn't ingress an ounce of water, that wouldn't shake with the worst explosions, that will haunt long after all it's ghosts have left.

I fell for you, smiling, the same way Lucifer fell from the gates of heaven knowing well he was heading towards he'll and still didn't look back.

I wish I had known you were just an old wound recreating itself and now everytime I talk to you I realise how less loved I am. Will I ever be capable of receiving love or even giving it back if I was loved right? I wonder if I will ever recognise the right kind of love 'cause how would I know something I never tasted.

How do I not drown in your memories when all of your potential only exists in my dreams? Were you capable of becoming that or was I mindlessly dreaming?

- Sonnets, William Shakespeare

Just one thing everybody wants, There in the bars and through the smokescreen of the crowded restaurants. It's love. Yes, all we're looking for is love from someone else

A rush, A glance, A touch, A dance, to look in somebody′s eyes, to light up the skies, to open the world and send them reeling

A voice that says, I′ll be here and you'll be alright. I don′t care if I know just where I will go, 'cause all that I need′s this crazy feeling

A rat-tat-tat on my heart... Think I want it to stay

- City of Stars (La La Land)

Every so often I wonder, if you could retain all your memories, if you had known the consequences of your decision and if you could go back in time and live your life again.. would you still make the same choices or would you choose me?

And if I wasn't this broken, that your single touch could give me the warmth of thousand splendid suns, would I still choose you?

- an excerpt from the letter I'll never send

So here I am loving you all over again and letting it destroy me, knowing well that every single piece of me is gonna live with you forever even if I could not.

- an excerpt from the letter I'll never send

You can't destroy someone who is already devastated

- the reason why I never send those letters

Holding your picture in my hand, I laughed repeating your words "I will love you forever.." and my laugh echoed the mental asylum

- an excerpt from the letter I'll never send

- the reason why I never send those letters

I've not posted my face here, so sweetie how do you know I'm khoobsurat? ❤️

That's the thing about reality - you can't love it and it can't leave you

- an excerpt from the letter I'll never send