"Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill..."

When unhealthy bacteria invades your body, your immune system retaliates by making you ill and this in turn flushes out the infection that is threatening you. Its the same with people. When you love someone and lose them, your whole world ceases to make sense and you become this weak pathetic mound of flesh, bone and blood that lingers haggardly in the shadow of your former self, the happy deluded self that had floated on a cloud of denial for so long.

So you subconsciously find a distraction, an obsession, another denial that would lessen the all-consuming pain. But it's toxic and weakens you further, wreaking havoc inside your mind and coarsing through your veins and it's all that you can think about because anything is better than the pain of having lost what you loved with the might of your soul. So you stay toxic and you ride it out, one day at a time.

And someday you'll wake up to find that neither of those things hurt as much as they used to. And you'll realize that you can laugh without being burdened by the need to please those who are concerned about you. And that you can listen to a song without memories stretching those gashes further apart. And you'll know that you will be happy again. Someday.

So till then, you wake up. You despair. And you sleep again. And hope that tomorrow will be less cruel.

Her

Lately She seems indifferent to my presence. Just sits in the corner, raking Her nails on the ground, eating maggots off the floor, casting occasional glares in my direction. I lie in my own filth, blood mixed with grime, oozing gashes and rotting flesh. I suppose She has accepted my residence in Her domain, ignoring me for the most part, except for when She needed a hit. And when she was bored.

At times when i catch my breath after long bouts of hacking, i feel Her nails on my face, digging into my flesh. And yet it feels more like a caress than pain being inflicted. I almost welcome it.

I hear nothing except for Her breathing and my own rasping lungs struggling to inhale through the burning pain in my throat. But why? For what? Who would care?

Why do i try to breathe? Why do i wake up? Why do i continue to exist?

Sometimes i hear Her hum. It sears into my brain, making it writhe. I welcome that too. I welcome anything besides numbness. Being numb was fine for a while. But then it started to feel like forever. I need to feel something, anything, to feel alive now. Even if it is agony.

Sometimes i wake up to find Her feeding on me, Her deranged eyes justifying Her lack of mercy. I feel i understand Her now. So i lie in silence and watch her feed.

The Pit has come alive, transforming into a maze from which She emerges after long periods of absence. I long for Her return whenever She leaves, sometimes slithering, sometimes skipping, sometimes crawling on all fours. Depends on Her mood, really.

She would leave looking like Herself and come back looking like i did, whenever i used to crawl up there. Somedays She would return cradling leaves in Her hands. That always makes me smile. And somedays She would return with long tales of Her exploits.

Apparently no one seems to see Her like i do. No one seems to notice that Her eyes are not mine.

Most days She would return with slumped shoulders. She'd sit beside me, coo at me like i'm an infant in her care. Her eyes remained the same, though. Demented eyes that saw me as something She had loved and lost long ago. Something that had driven Her over the brink of sanity. I cry for Her. I've realized that i am all She has now.

Whenever i beg Her to end it She would slap me, Her long nails cutting into me, Her piercing voice screaming incoherent words into my face. Took me a while to decipher her wails. "I need you. I need you."

But i wish She would understand that my release would also mean the end of all Her suffering. I wish that someday She would grasp the truth of that and do us both a favour.

And so i lie here, my veins filthy and my skin flayed. And i wait.

I Garden ...

I garden to silent the turmoil in my head

I garden to soothe the frantic quiver in my chest

I garden to calm the tremor in my limbs

I garden to repress my fickle little whims

I garden to grasp life in my own hands

I garden to feel tranquil, for a change

Wednesday's Children

A suicide prompts all sorts of reactions within our diverse and divided little society. After the most recent tragedy occurred, my feeds were brimming with status updates and shares by people who perceived the incident from multiple angles.

There is the self righteous faction that "strongly condemns" the "selfish" act and the "lack of faith" which, of course, is the ONLY viable reason a person would resort to suicide.

And then there are the "Comedians", the people who could not care less about the consequences of their remarks or how cruel they are for trivializing something that clearly hurts people associated with the deceased.

But at least the people I've classified above are clear cut. I know what they are and i expect nothing but the exact same reactions from them whenever a tragedy of this magnitude occurs.

My confusion lies within the community that clearly understands and acknowledges the fact that a person would only be driven to end his/her life when that person is incapable of coping with whatever hell they dwell in. Those who believe that the people who succumbed to the voices in their heads that told them to end it were, in fact, battling with Mental Illnesses. These are the people i am bewildered by since most of them are sufferers and the others, sympathizers.

It's astounding that so many of the sufferers are of the same mind and yet so desperate for understanding and acceptance. How are they so alike and yet so alone when surrounded by all these people who claim to feel exactly the way they do? How are they in pain and yet incapable of extending a hand towards someone who is battling the exact same demons that they are? Why do we not bother to make the effort we reprimand others for not making?

As for the sympathizers, i know it can be extremely hard to listen to the same issues over and over again. And there comes a point where you need to distance yourself from the negativity just to feel normal again. And that's only human. But at least you have the choice to separate yourself from the doom and gloom. They don't. So if those people mean anything to you, please don't abandon them.

I see so many people struggling with Mental Illness and they are weary of keeping a lid on the despair that consumes them. Sometimes all it takes is ONE friend, ONE lover or ONE family member who understands or at least tries to. Just having one supportive human being could make all the difference. Just one. That is all.

So be that person. I know you are suffering. I know it even hurts to breathe at times. But they despair, just as you do. They need, just like you do. So extend your hand. Be that person. You could be saving a life. 

Yesterday

Until what seemed like just yesterday, she had a significantly large circle of people around her. 

Friends, family ... people. People who understood and accepted her. People who cared. People who had stuck around for years and years. But today, when she woke up, she had no one.

Suddenly everyone seems to have conformed to what society deems the norm and no one has time for someone they cannot relate to or understand anymore. No one has the patience for tales of misfortune. No one finds any appeal in a broken doll.

Used to be that when life became overwhelming, she could sleep over at a friend's and find hilarity in the situation over home cooked pasta and movie marathons.

Used to be that she could smoke a pack of cigarettes and exhale the stress away but now her immune system worked against her, which swept the option of nicotine satisfaction back into the smoky depths of years past.

Used to be that she had a strong support system but she let the demon in her out far too much and for far too long that it scared them away with it's vile presence and corrosive nature.

And she lay in her cold bed and loathed her senseless existence and wondered for the umpteenth time ... what IS the point of it all?

Season of Mists

August has always been my favourite month. The air turns crispy, leaves change their colour and the sky becomes a luminous thick blanket that makes me blink and smile whenever i look up.

When i was a kid, August meant the changing of the seasons. It meant sudden rain showers, yellow petals littering the ground and walking to school with my shoes in my hands while my "gumbootu" kept my feet dry. And it meant puddles with brown leaves floating on their surfaces and the arrival of "dhondhooni moosunn", which is still my favourite time of the year.

I was fortunate to live in a home that had a lot of space we could run around in. And birds to feed and cousins to play with during the long year-end holidays. And the best part about August was that the year was ending and the remaining days would be filled with all of the above, the most important factor being; Rain. 

So i really miss grey skies and the sudden downpours that used to be the norm this time of the year. Lately, every year is more brutally humid than the one before and the days are sticky and long.

Maybe it was the fact that i was seeing everything through the eyes of a child that i was oblivious to the evils of the world but it really was a better time.

 I miss those vibrant Augusts that faded into stormy Decembers. I really, really do.

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you." F.N.

I once read somewhere that it is both a blessing and a curse to feel everything too deeply. So is overthinking. But overthinking keeps you safe. Perhaps not as safe as you would prefer to be. But safer because you broke it down, picked at it, held it up to the light and contemplated it's every angle and curve and crack, therefore knowing all the things and ways it could go wrong, so you can be prepared. But then, there is mulling over the past or what could be, which is, for lack of a better word; impairing.

Most days you find yourself curled up like a fetus in the warm coccoon of your bed, detesting daylight, human interaction/conversation and making an effort of any kind. Thinking, thinking, thinking and feeling. Regretting, backtracking, despairing and your head imploding. Every second is a trial and The Pit becomes your home. She strips you bare and you scream and scream but it's just too damn hard to try anymore.

You see your people repulsed by your inability to adapt to the norm. You see them look at you and not recognise what you have become. You see them recoil when you spit and hiss profanity and realise how loathesome you have become. You see it all but screaming is the only release that soothes you anymore.

And then one day your heart loses control over itself and you find yourself awake at midnight in a room filled with lights that burn into your cornea and a withered man lying infront of you, his every breath audible and matching the hectic beat of your own monitor. You question your existence and contemplate your mortality for the umpteethnth time. How easy it would be to just escalate it and let it explode. They tell you it's years of trauma taking its toll and absent chemicals in your brain, instead of an abysmal hand compressing your chest and an abysmal voice whispering misery in your ear every waking minute of every waking hour. So you swallow their diagnosis along with their pills and you wait for the magical switch to turn on inside you.

Until one day you realise that if you stare long enough and hard enough at the shadows in the darkness of your room, you see them take shape, breathe and even move. And you know that they had been staring at you for much longer, perhaps days, months, years or even decades. And all the logic and common sense you acquired along the yellow brick road is threatened and you seriously doubt your sanity.

You see the shadows in mirrors, in quiet corners and even in the blinding daylight. You hear them whisper your name over the sound of deafening traffic, like static but darker. And you lie awake till dawn because the shrill whistle of the tune you murmured the previous night echoes in the heated depths of your ears. Suddenly you find yourself inhaling soot, slapped, being bathed in gunk and waking up after a night's sleep without any recollection of how it was possible.

Even She has ceased her vicious scraping and stares at you from across the grimy floor, Her arms crossed and head bent. Mildly amused. Abundantly curious. Smirking at the tall tale about brains and chemicals. And you wonder whether she is right. But then you feel the crippling inability to breathe and you know that she isn't.

The shadows vanish though the echoes remain. You remain armed with ammunition, carvings around your neck and writings below your chest. And you breathe. And you pray. And you doubt the incomprehensible reality of it all. And when you feel that familiar constriction in your chest and the unwelcome pounding of your heartbeat, you question why.

There is no light at the end of the tunnel because the shadows are blocking it out. So you just have to keep walking untill you reach it, though when that may be, no one knows. But you don't really have a choice now, do you, with your frail heart and absent chemicals? Haha.

Gut

Sometimes, we do the shit we do solely for the pleasures they entail, however brief they may be, despite the fact that our guts writhe in indignance and vehement protest. Being a mere mortal, i, too, indulge in that self destructive behaviour more often than I care to admit. 

And just like every single person who dives headfirst into dark churning waters, all the while knowing the demons that lurk within and the ones that might manifest, I make up excuses and ignore my gut feeling and that annoying little voice in my head that rears it's head and snorts in disdain at my complete and utter stupidity.

And I only have myself to blame when shit blows up in my face and consumes me in it's inferno. When the dust settles, i am left on the floor, writhing in agony, cold and desolate.

Gut feelings are not meant to be ignored. Nor to be pushed aside to fester within your mental space until one day the incessant gnawing tears at your resolve and consumes you whole.

Listen to it. I implore you. It is almost always right, smug bastard that it is.

Story Telling

Рюкзак ( Rucksack) ; A story of mine that got published in "DhiYouth Magazine", one of our local magazines. Navigating the site is a bitch so i hope the read is worth it.

http://issuu.com/dhiyouth/docs/dymag_march_2014

Idle in March

It is my inherent belief that we must always be working to achieve something in order to justify our existence on this planet. If we are not engrossed in some task or the other, our lives seem meaningless... the days seem long and the nights, empty. 

It is a proven fact that lethargy destroys the mind, body and soul. And so we put ourselves through trial after trial, forever driven to accomplish the things beyond our reach. We are never satisfied and it is never enough... atleast until we reach the point of finding it all to be overwhelming, draining and worst of all, monotonous. 

We then start wishing that we could be satisfied with being idle and desiring nothing more than to throw caution to the wind and quit our jobs and all our obligations. 

To be nameless and faceless and spend our days lying on a beach somewhere, with good tunes in our ears and the sand nestled beneath our toes. 

And so I wished and I received. The price: a knee injury that has no intention of healing anytime soon. So I lie here, day in and day out, staring up at my vacant ceiling. Contemplating. Despairing. 

Longing to be back on my feet and out in the world, grinding myself to the bone, just to feel something within me again. 

"Lord, what fools these mortals be..."

There are over 7 billion people in this world and more than half of us are desolate and confined within our mental prisons. And all of us are searching for that one person to fill the void within our souls, searching for that missing piece in one another, to complete the puzzles that are our mundane little lives. 

We fall flat on our faces, we get our hearts broken, we lose ourselves in the process and we face consequences that break us and leave us in pieces. And yet somehow, for some unfathomable reason, we are relentless in this quest, almost as if it is a masochistic tendency that is embedded in our very souls. We cannot stop, no matter how cruel and brutal the process is, this damned thing called 'love'. 

We take chances. Oh, so many chances, afraid to spend our lives engulfed by that all consuming and loathed feeling: regret. Afraid to be one of those unfortunates who spend the last years of their lives  confined to a chair, immobile and lost in reveries of what could have been. 

It is bewildering that humanity is engineered to enter and exit this world alone and yet how completely and utterly impossible it is for us to live on our own. Ironic, don't you think? 

I am by nature someone who covets privacy, constantly seeking 'alone time' from the chaos around me. Finding contentment in solitude whenever my schedule allows me to, escaping from the white noise of everyday life. 

But even I cannot comprehend spending my entire life alone. It scares the shit out of me, to be honest, to go through this hell by myself with no family to support me, no friends to guide me and no lover to accompany me. Death is inevitable, and we are all condemned to accept this grim fact. But to die without loved ones beside us is ... incomprehensible. 

It's strange, this desperate need, this almost carnivorous craving we have, to feed off one another in order to seek happiness within ourselves. Strange, yes. Strange and pathetic.

Human nature sure is a contradictory and ambivalent little bitch. 

Money, money, money.

What a fucked up world this is.

Us existing, us coping in our selective realities, desperate for our versions to be acknowledged, appreciated and respected. It's no suprise that everyone flocks to Facebook or Instagram to post pictures of stolen moments of happiness, moments that last no longer than the time it takes to upload said pictures onto our timelines. Acknowledgement is a powerful thing. 

Those born into privilege are handed respect and recognition on a silver platter, studded with diamonds to boot. No toil or trials required. And the rest of us... what we slave for, what we sacrifice for, what we work ourselves to the bone for, they acquire with ease simply because of the power their surnames command.

Then there are the rest of us. Some of who feed their empty souls with blind faith in an omnipotent entity that would grant them eternal paradise in return for earthly devotion and worship  

And then there are us. We exist simply because we fear death and the unknown. We linger in this collective reality, merely 'ghosts in meat skeletons' forever driven by ambition and the ultimate weakness of mankind; Desire. 

The desire to posses wealth. The desire to possess luxury. The desire to possess power and all the earthly presumptions that entails. 

"Money makes the world go around." I learned the undeniable & infallible truth of this saying from a very young age. Money really does control the existence of humanity. It controls the very rotation of our shitty little planet. 

Hard work and integrity is for fools such as I. We delude ourselves into believing that our resilience and perseverance defines who we are when at the end of the day, these obtuse notions count for nothing. 

The world is run by the privileged and has been since the dawn of civilization. We are but the designated masses catering to their every whim and whine. 

Us in our glass houses, a stone's throw away from one another, forever in servitude to the fucktards lounging high up in their ivory towers of ignorance and condescension.  

"Norman" - a short story.

Norman lived in a lovely little cottage by the seashore. It was perfect, with a backyard and a white picket fence and all. He had a garden in his backyard ... or perhaps the garden had him. Rows and rows of buttercups decorated the length of it and he worked hard to keep them healthy, tending to them day and night. Buttercups were hard to come by. 

There was also a circlet of tiny daisies at the very core of this garden, a drop of white that he barely noticed in the sea of gold and green. Passerby's would stop and admire the buttercups that stood proud and tall. They would then notice the center; the daisies that gave the garden it's warm and quaint touch. They would come to realize that without the white, the glare of gold would be too garish for their eyes.  

Norman, however, had long forgotten that he had planted them. Rarely remembered to tend to them. Barely noticed them. They had flourished solely from the nutrition they consumed from the ground beneath and the sunshine they bathed in at daylight. 

One fine day Norman came across an exotic blue flower in a desolate moor. It was wild, untamed and magnificent to behold and he felt the desire to posses it, to make it the crowning glory of his beautiful golden garden. So he brought it home, pulled out the daisies like he would pull out weeds, and threw them over the fence without hesitation or a second thought. He then planted the blue flower at the very center where the daisies used to be and coveted it, like a miser would his gold. 

It became his one obsession, what his life revolved around, the only thing he lived for. 

So much so that he completely failed to comprehend that from the moment the exotic blue flower dug it's roots into the ground, the buttercups around it started to wither and die, row by row, circle by circle and disappear one by one, while the blue flower continued to bloom and grow more glorious to behold. Almost as if it fed off the life force of the buttercups, until there were no more. And one day, when he woke up at dawn and looked out of his window, the garden was a barren mound of earth devoid of life. The solitary blue flower stood tall and defiant but there were no remnants of the splendor his garden had once possessed.

He then noticed the sea of white on the other side of his fence and looked over to see that the daisies he had thrown away had taken root and grown in abundance. They danced in the breeze, wild and carefree and he longed to reach over and touch them, to once again possess them, for he saw the beauty of their simplicity now.

Years went by and Norman tried in vain to return his garden to it's former splendor but everything he planted would wither as soon as their roots touched the soil, almost as if the blue flower had poisoned the very essence of the earth itself. Yet he could not bring himself to uproot it. It was all he had now.

He loathed himself for his impetuousness, for his negligence and cruelty. Above all he loathed himself for his cowardice, for he knew he could not go on without the flower. His cottage no longer held any warmth for him and he derived no contentment from the sunsets. His life had proved to be a monument to the oldest of cliches.

It was a cold dawn when Norman felt his chest constrict and he staggered outside to slump down by his beloved blue flower. He lay on the dry earth and reached over to caress it one last time when the flower changed it's hue to a vindictive maroon. Sensing the life draining from Norman's body, it mutated into a mass of writhing flesh and razor sharp teeth and clenched it's jaw-like body around his neck. Norman felt the teeth sink and puncture his veins as he convulsed and the breath left his body.

The mutation devoured every last bone and every little bit of flesh as his blood lay splattered all over the soil, until Norman ceased to exist altogether. Sated now, it mutated back to it's former semblance, more glorious and vibrant than ever.

And waited patiently for the inevitable.

True Story

"Stories you read when you're the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you'll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit." 

- Neil Gaiman -

Skeletons in the Box

Yes. It's something about my face ... & perhaps my demeanor as well, that prompts people to spill their souls out to me. From their favorite color to the filthiest skeletons in their closets.  

Being a confidante is both humbling and flattering. But ... a Pensieve to hold the secrets of the world, I certainly am not. At times I feel as if my head is Pandora's Box itself, (minus the fact that this mythical artifact is one which all of humanity covets) brimming over with all the confessions of friends and acquaintances past and current, coiled around one another in the grime within my skull. The oozing pores of their tentacles gripping firmly onto the surface of my brain... the pressure, unbearable at times. 

Should I choose to open my "Box", even to a sliver... chaos, pestilence & plague shall spill forth from it and the world around me & all that is within the space of that vicinity shall be plunged into pandemonium & destruction.

Much like Pandora's Box, itself, really.   

It is a tremendous amount of responsibility people entrust upon me when they show me their inner demons & share all the grievances & guilt that haunt them. Tremendous. Keeping these secrets to myself when I know what the consequences of my silence are, is at times unbearable. 

But betraying confidences, especially that of a true friend or a loved one, is the height of deception. The few occasions on which I disclosed certain information to aid someone have resulted in severed ties. One, I regret... the other, never have and never will. And so I keep the evils within me now... and I rot inside.

Something about my face, really... unassuming, innocent, trustworthy ... I suppose. A blessing & a curse.