I voice out
Everything that cannot be spoken
Paltry, at times,
And write
That should never be read
The deepest recesses of my mind.

The sun always shines after a dark night.

MAJOR TW (mental illnesses)

It feels oppressive lately. Blindly ticking things off a schedule, halfheartedly, just because I want to tick the entire thing, and hence check out the boxes, even if I had dome the things without much consent or interest.

These boxes that I drew for monthly tasks, daily tasks, twenty or so of them to include in my 24-hour day. So, my mental exhaustion was surprising and contradictory, considering I was the one who set those tasks out for myself. It is the 15th of December, 2019, a year is coming to an end, and I feel like so will everything else on Earth. Well, not because I’m a sociopath, but it is a strong gut feeling. I’m standing at the precipice of burnout, having bitten so much more than I can chew.

Every day I take on more tasks, not knowing when to say no when to stop. I think I can juggle everything, but it did not mean that it didn’t drive me nuts.

I have had zero creative outlets lately. And for so long, I sit down wanting to be productive and head out having done nothing. I beat myself up for my inadequacies. I should really be better than this. And yet, my mind and heart are so utterly exhausted. Lately, I have also developed body dysphoria. I cannot look at myself in the mirror without coughing out a little hate.

I used to think I was one of those people who had come to terms with being themselves and loving themselves. Well, I still think I am, but in love with a far away version of who I will be, who I have the potential to be, and not this version of me whose empty eyes gazed back every day. Maybe that is the cause of the hate, holding myself to the high standards I’ve set for myself and always, always coming up short. It makes me want to lash out at a lot of people, and at a lot of minor things. Well, lately, I have been.

But I do not feel any better. I fact, I feel like I’m drowning every day. I feel that I don’t belong. I’ve read that almost all of these symptoms are of anxiety. A friend even pointed out that it might be of depression.

Ask everyone else whom I interact with and they will surely say I’m one of the most outgoing people they have ever met. I’m good at masking; good at pretending. I do not lie, but I deceive, with slender word-plays and elaborate loopholes. Maybe all of this makes me a horrible person. That’s what I have been beating myself over every day, for very long.

Hindsight isn’t an amazing superpower to have. I don’t think I am stuck in place with regrets, though. Always jotting down plans, consequences, and places I will be in if I chose a particular course of action. And yet, you cannot keep devising plan after plan when every single thing you’ve thought would happen doesn’t, or even if it does happen, in some brutal mockery of it.

This does not mean I have stopped. I still make plans. Still, schedule, as if it is a ritual every day. But, I think I have reached a point of a standstill when I can see that not much that I do can change what’s to come.

I mean, why work when you’ll definitely not end up where you want to be? In contradiction, how could you know if you will have achieved it if you just stop trying?

Every thought contradicts itself, and the next, changes course entirely.

What am I working towards? Am I working hard enough?

That is all relative because however hard I try, there will always be someone more talented. An impostor in my own skin, these thoughts don’t leave me alone.

I have knowledge without depth. Ideas and personality formed from a culmination of all sorts of inputs I’ve got in my life. I fear I am not original. Accepting compliments for the same leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I feel like sometimes, I am not even a real person. Just a shell that manages to tick off the daily tasks.

So, I try to be the most genuine person anyone has ever met. Earlier comments about hiding parts of myself notwithstanding- I hide only the darkest parts of myself. The side that will make people pity me. The side that is so swathed in the darkness that the glimmer of hope that people speak of, there is zero hope of even encountering it.

I have a pile of books waiting beside me, yet, encountering them is the last thing I want to do. Well, I do not know what I want to do. Always stuck in a negative spiral of emotions and I fail to see the way out. Not always, no, but on days like these, when nothing seems to go right.

Maybe it is easier to say “this will pass” and look forward to a future than deliberating, as I have been doing for countless days, but ignoring and wishing these thoughts away doesn’t do much to silence them.

It's funny how well I seem to pick apart and arrange, categorize and analyze what’s going on inside, but in reality, I sit with a blank expression, scratching away conflicting thoughts trying to make some sense of them.

Small blessings, that the tear-stains on my pillow are near-invisible.

As the sun went down
The rays by her solitary window,
A tear did too
Down her cheeks,
Her body felt numb,
The heart made no sound;
The castle of her hopes
Burned to the ground.
Consumed by a void
Engulfing her soul,
The burnt down heart
Let out the only glow,
Gathering the ashes
Of the long lost heart,
She mourned her soul
Now torn apart
The reason, she claims
Was a trust misplaced
With all her woes and shattered dreams
The tearstained pearl was what she reaped

She looked out the window
Now ready to fight,
She'll build a new castle
From the ashes inside.
The eyes that glistened
Now burnt fierce,
She would go down and fight
Against all her fears,
Her heart was broken,
But not her will
The pain was intense
Enough to ****
Yet her oath, was to heal
Lighting the world
With her fiery glow, tamed,
As soft as a mother's embrace
She'd tame her demons,
The healing would take time,
The days will be better
And the sun again will shine.

What can you create
That which wouldn't be destroyed
Hearts age
And stones wither.
There's yearning for immortalisation
But nothing on earth
That would last.

In all my imperfections
Let me be your favourite monster
The poison served
In a silver platter
The bleeding eye akin
To the brain most consider not
There's the crack next to yours
That this snake can slither in
Found under ozymandias's head
In a nowhere land
Where lie none
So take my word.

I will wait
For you to scramble
And dig around
The shallow stream
Of your being
And tell you
One last time
To maybe, wait,
Take a minute
To soak up that water
And grow into the
Majestic mighty
You were meant to
And, maybe realise
To look beyond
The vision
That your eyes
Can offer
Into mine
The fingerprints etched
Over my soul.

Something's brewing
In that mind of yours
The words I yearn
A medley of spices
Off they go into the urn
Bottled and saved
For "future use"

I wait with my eyes
Open to slits
Like the Cresent outside
For the minute the doors are closed
And the lights shut off
Finally bathing me in darkness
And invite my old friend in
And cry with him for hours
Beside me
While he whispers
" Nobody loves you"
And
"You're ugly"
So I make myself much more
Puffy eyes
And dead cheeks
Waiting yet again
For that reunion
Day after day
Alone in my bubble
Of hate and pain
And feel at home.

You're the air around me,
And here I am,
Gasping.

Unprompted lies
They hide a face
That lies beneath
A marked crusade
Porcelain dolls
With plastic smiles
Taught to be the person
That the man dictates.
Taught to talk
A rose in bloom
Rotting from the inside
From soul's disuse.
Taught to hide
To portray
The painting
Stripped of its depth
Diluted
By turpentine
Made to stink
(Cross that last;
her opinions don't matter)
A perfume
To suit the possessor
To enhance his theme.
Late at night though
When he's asleep
With another,
She writes
He could silence her mouth
But never her words.

I tend to make stories
Out of everything,
Passing glances
From a pair of eyes
Across cars
While standing at the toll.
The crook of a neck
Bent to search
A fallen coin
At the store line
Among impatient taps
Of feet.
Across the sunset
And about the light that travels
Millions of miles
Just to land on
Your hands
Shielding your eyes
From the glare.
Of pain and happiness
I weave stories
Despite meeting none
Satisfactorily.
I wish to add
Vivid words
To match
The vivid lines
In your palms.
I nod at songs
Written ages ago
In sync with another century
Rather than my own.
I don't want to speak
And break this pregnant silence.
So I'll just look into
Those soulful eyes
And craft tales
To satisfy
My need
To romanticise.

You know you'll just be okay
When you work
Till your while being
Shivers with exhaustion
And your eyes cloud
With salty perspiration
And you push yourself
For that one last lap
And keep pushing
Till another- and yet another
I know
You won't fall.
The places where you tripped
Is your terrain now.
With all these lessons
You've learned in your way
You know
That you'll just be okay.

A few days back,
when I could at last take a breath
away from my rigorous schedule,
Amma told me a story.
It wasn't something she usually says,
concerning studies or achieving great things,
or getting into a good college.
She said,
"There is a man,
who lives pretty close
to your paati's house.
While he was going to work,
he saw a crow's chick
fallen below a tree;
fallen from it's nest
just after hatching.
This man,
trying to rescue that poor thing,
took it home and nursed it.
Unfortunately the chick
died after a day or two.
Now,
everytime he gets out of his house,
all the crows in the locality
surround him
and try to peck his brains out,
because they probably think
he killed their chick.
Even people
who want to do good
to others are mistaken nowadays.
Maybe it would have been better for him
to leave the chick to die
under the tree itself;
he wouldn't have to be scared
to get out of the house then."
Listening to this,
I thought maybe
humanity has become so corrupted,
that they've lost the trust
of even animals.

A ****** of crows,
A conspiracy of ravens.
Ended up painting maliciousness
On creatures mute.

Smile as though
The splendour
Of the moon
Is your competition.

So we lied
To ourselves
All along,
The impostors
In our lives.

When the days turn longer
And nights unbearably short
In the middle of winter, even,
And slogging weights
Pull down the neck
Threatening to choke
Given one second
To pull back and breathe,
Then the limit of
A thousand beings
Is surpassed to something beyond
Aspirations and goals,
Something beyond a dutiful soul
To a being
Living life
To make it
What it should be;
Great.

What if this story
Of ours goes down in history
As a change of times
For once
The love of self
Triumphs fairytales.

Tell me how much privacy you really have.

Because, making your account private, deleting your PFP, and restricting or blocking unwanted accounts don't seem to stop the creeps.

Sometimes, I feel violated because of certain comments. And the thing is, I haven't asked anyone to text me nor have I made any advances. I'm here to post poetry, write from my heart and maybe put it out there for you to read, if you'd want to.

That's all. Nothing that would warrant unnecessary DMs.

This hapenned to my cousin. Well, almost to every girl/ woman I know.

Maybe it's our fault posting? Or maybe we shouldn't even have social media accounts.

But my mom had calls to her private number. Tell me, how does one find it? How do s one get rid of these roaches?

I know there's no fault of mine. But I can't help but feel there is some part here.

Maybe being closed off and cold might help, I wonder. It doesn't.

Then what will?

Wax melts
Heated and moulded
To a shape
Of your desire
Only to dissolve
Under heat.

I'm the future
Of my past
And the past
To my future
And neatly wrapped
In the present.