Vague**

On that very may morning , I was shaken out of sleep, there was a colossal loss which lingered deep down. Sadness hovered over me like the planets around the sun. It was not a fluke that I saw you in my sleep, and it's still not a fluke that you  kept starring and never said goodbye knowing fully well how much I've missed you.

I dreamed that you called my name; that I turned, making one of those funny faces in cinematic slow motion, which in turn made you smile. I dreamed that with one look you told me everything I had ever wanted to know. We faffed around smoking in the supernatural darkness of night floating across the tops of cities contemplating what next to do. It was such a beautiful dream till I saw the very thing that shook me out of sleep, I can remember vividly how you stared at me from across the road, as if telling me to stay. For some reason, I could have sworn you never wanted me to go, that the long stare was supposed to make me understand what you felt but couldn't express

I woke up with an overwhelming sense of nostalgia, the feel from that dazing revelation which i woke up from not only rendered me emotionless for the better part of that week but enhanced my very perception on how  we are, it made me understand how strong our connection still was, and how whatever we had still waxed . 

It’s not been upto a year since we last  met, since we went back to leading totally separate lives on different sides of the world. But the other night, I dreamed of you and I miss you, but I don’t want the you in real life, whatever that form may be. I miss the you back then, the one who dared to steal moments with me when no one was looking, who risked hurting others in order to inch closer to me. I was all you could see then, and nothing else mattered. We were reckless and even cruel to the people close to us, but we were blissfully happy, a willingness of the heart that burst thunderously on us because we finally found what we wanted for a long time – each other.

When I woke up.

I could still smell you.

Still feel where my hands had been.

Your hands against my hands.

You loved me.

I rolled over.

You weren’t there; but you were. You were in my bed, and then in my shower, then on the bus to school and all day you sat beside me until we rode the bus home together, ate dinner, and climbed back into bed where we kissed that morning; it was so real. 

Someone once said  'all the bright special things fade so fast and they never come back but i strongly believe that separation is only an illusion. 

Our day will come soonest...

Burning**

  I was sitting on the beige couch in the living room. The TV’s playing Modern Family reruns on mute. My heart beats in my chest like it’s trying to escape. I wish I could run away, myself. Disappear off the face of the earth. The dreadful conversation starts something like this:

Look, For once can't you just be merry.

I don’t understand. What do you mean?

I mean, no talk about how I give you joy and whatnot .

Just be yourself.

I was totally lost and caught off-guard, i never saw that coming, ever! That was most disturbing ... We fail to remember that Nobody’s perfect. Depression is a shape-shifting, ever-present monster. It is a monster that many battle; some slay the beast, others are swallowed whole, sacrificing life and limb to its gaping jaws, but most are stuck in an eternal stalemate, neither winning nor losing. I think I fall in this category; I've struggled with depression for years on end, often I feel like I've finally won the battle but I always face the harsh reality that I may live this way through my Life.

 My depression took the form of  a dense gray fog, obscuring all of my senses and causing me to heave and choke, unable to catch my breath. It was a python as thick as a tree, squeezing the life out of me, tightening with every move I made. It was a cancer in every one of my cells; a dull ache that couldn’t be numbed. It was every one of my worst fears realized, ready to pounce as soon as I woke every morning from  night after night of restless, soul consuming insomnia paradoxically paired with bone-deep exhaustion. It wasn’t poetic, it was dirty and lonely ,terrifying and full of tears no one could hear. It was the knowledge that the monster couldn’t get to me, that the pain would stop if I just died. But despite all of my imagery, it was not poetic. It was not lyrical. It wasn’t a heroic effort to maintain a grip on reality or sanity. It was a quest to conquer the monster and stay alive. 

I was prescribed anti-depressant after anti-depressant, each one worse than the last. They obliterated any ability to feel anything, leaving a black void that let the suicidal thoughts come screaming to the forefront of my mind, without anything to distract me. I swallowed five sleeping pills, and woke up the next morning not knowing whether to be relieved or disappointed. I was taken off the drugs after.

By far the worst part of depression wass the response from people without depression. I wanted to scream at everyone who told me to “just smile” or “try talking to someone.” Everyone was always trying to fix me. I didn’t need  fixing. I needed someone who cared enough to hold me until I could breathe. I needed someone to talk to and trust me to be able to fight this monster. Im well aware this monster may be bigger and stronger and smarter than me, but keeping it at bay is possible. I'm sure I'll live through this though** 

                             Thanks for Reading…

Dark Complexity...

  I don’t want to be this person. No one does. No one wants to admit that they are unable to move past something which happened so long ago that not even the most hopeless romantic would justify it. I know when I’m being pathetic, and letting something eat me from inside like a rotten tooth, and I don’t like it any more than I’m sure other people like to be around it. I know that people are holding their breath, waiting for me to make a scene. I know that everyone thinks I should have gotten over it. I hate being him, but its who I am.

  Part of me wants to ask you to let me go, even though I know how ridiculous that is. I'm almost always livid towards everything around me. If I really think about it, I understand that you are not intentionally stringing me along or periodically giving me false hope for something we might have in the future. You’re probably no longer a part of my life, and you don’t even acknowledge me. As much as it pains me to admit, you likely don’t think about me. Your days probably turn into months without ever fondly looking back on the time we spent all day talking with our fingers laced. Those memories don’t exist for you — or, at least, not in a way you have to acknowledge. You can store them away for a rainy day when you want to think about something sweet and forgotten. I have to live with these memories, constantly and reminding me that they are everywhere I go.

  I know that it’s not your fault. But I want to let go. I want to walk away from what we had and make every day a conscious step towards something more positive, something where I don’t factor someone into my life who no longer cares about me. I want to be brave in a way I always used to be, but haven’t been for some time. I want to return to the me who laughs at everything the loudest and is always up to try something new. I miss me, and at times have almost forgotten who I am. Part of me believes that the moment I truly let you go will be the moment I get me back — that you are, in a way, crowding my life and preventing me from living fully. But I know that it’s not a step you can take for me.

  I love you more now than I ever did, I think. And I know that part of this must be because I cannot have you (at least I think so), and things are always heightened with desire and longing. But I don’t know how to pretend that I don’t still burn for you the way I did when I was allowed to express it, if not more intensely.

  Please know that If I stop reaching out. If i stop making a fool of myself. If i stop being this person that I never wanted to be. I am working every day on making my life something beautiful and fresh and interesting, something that has nothing to do with you. I hold nothing against you — even if I wish I could, even if that would make everything so much easier — but I know I can’t be around you. I’m working up the courage to phase you out of my life (and my mind) completely, so that one day, I’d just run into you at a supermarket and have a nice little chat about what we’ve been up to, then go about my day as if nothing happened. But right now, I know that I couldn’t. I know that seeing you unexpectedly would destroy me. One day, I will get there, though. I’ll be me again, and I’ll have forgotten this brief interlude of sorrow. I hope you meet me when I’m that person, so you can forget who I am today.

History **

  There’s a strange feeling that sometimes overcomes us when we’re reaching out to someone, this feeling of acute embarrassment. “Are we bothering them?” we ask ourselves, and almost wanting to apologize for even sending a message in the first place. It’s as though our very presence in their lives is a nuisance, and our efforts to connect as friends or lovers is one that only complicates things for them. We want to say, “I’m sorry that I want to talk to you, it’s weird and I should probably stop.

   The thing is, you can feel when you’re bothering someone. It’s not difficult to tell when you are the one who is always reaching out, always initiating contact, always starting the conversation. You realize in a way that is at once terribly humiliating and almost masochistically sweet that you are the one chasing after them. When they grant you with their reciprocity, with their attention — nothing feels better. But most times you are left sending a message that you immediately regret, because you know that it only puts one more tally-mark in the “you need them, and not they need you” column.

  There are few things more painful than feeling like you’re constantly going out of your way for someone who is, at best, mildly amused by your affection. It’s hard to explain the feeling of disappointment exactly, but it’s mostly directed towards yourself. You can tell when you send them a good-morning text message, or call them, or take the time to do something for them that you know they’ll barely appreciate — this isn’t going to be reciprocated. This isn’t going to be really appreciated. Blimey, it may not even be noticed. But you can’t stop yourself. It’s just a sad, universal truth that there are people we love a lot who don’t really love us back. Whether platonic or romantic (or even, sadly enough, familial) there are always going to be these uneven relationships in which one person is constantly left feeling as though their emotions and their desires are mild irritants that trigger abrupt reactions.

   There are going to be friends we go out of our way for who never quite acknowledge us in return, who will never be there to listen to our problems, who wont cancel outing with others just to see you, and those who will never drive out in the middle of the night to pick us up when we’re in trouble — no matter how much we do these things for them. There certainly are going to be lovers with whom we long to construct an entire relationship, but with whom we will always feel stuck at the frustrating “beginner phase” where no exchanges go beyond the superficial. It just happens.

   The most difficult thing, it seems, is being able to admit when your love is going nowhere. Speaking personally, I have watched as more than one friendship proved themselves to be entirely one-sided, when my attempts to connect with the person (even on social media apps like sending BBM), were proving increasingly pathetic. I was just way more into them than they were into me, and there is always a certain amount of pain in admitting that. You don’t want to confront this person and tell them, “Well hello, look at all of these nice things I do and efforts I make for you, and you don’t do any of these things in return,” because it is a sad thing to do.

   It’s sad because the heart is hard to translate, It has a language of its own, which you can't always understand or interpret accurately. The truth is as much as you feel entitled to ah lot, actually they don’t owe you their friendship or their love. They don’t owe you the same kind of relationship you desire from them. You can’t insist, through repeated action, that someone is now indebted to you because you have proven that you are worth something indelible. We make the choice to keep giving our attention and love to someone who has clearly demonstrated that they don’t want it, and it is always their choice to make if they one day decide they want to start reciprocating.

   But to break the cycle and force yourself to stop initiating contact, to stop making effort, and to stop caring about their response — that is much harder. That means admitting that you have lost a battle you didn’t even want to acknowledge you were fighting. But when we’re trying to get someone to love us back, it’s always a battle. And it’s one we’re almost always guaranteed to lose.

Strength & Goodbyes**

I am unsure of how to begin this letter. Most of our conversations are never words, rather actions: a smile between note-taking; looking at each other over cups, your coffee clutched in jittery hands and my earl grey whispering steam; a tug at the corner of your shirt to pull you back from the oncoming traffic while walking. The few words we do exchange are formal. Hello. How’s Your Day Been Going. What Time Is It. To the world we are strangers accidentally drawn to each other by an inexplicable gravitational pull that keeps us joined at the hip, yet completely autonomous.

Perhaps I should replace “are” with “were” because our silent exchanges only ever occurred in the past tense. Now you are far away, too far to touch, to feel. I too, am far; too far to read the Braille of your face, or to analyze the clenching and unclenching of your tired fingers to know what you are thinking.  I compromise with pictures constructed from pixels; each click of the mouse to move to the next is indistinguishable from the ticking of the clock behind me. Each click is a second becomes a minute becomes a couple of minutes becomes an hour of playing mind games with the photo gallery of a social network. One clue here, another clue there. Go on, piece together the happenings of our days like a fucking jigsaw.  Press your face close enough to the screen and everything blurs together. Pull back and it’s still blurry and why am i crying, stop crying. Stop.

Tell me, what does it take for you to recognize all that is not right for you? What can I do, to the fullest of my pathetic human ability, to save you? Save you from the people you think you need to fall asleep, the ones who you think cleared your lungs of the tar of your ill-wishes and silent curses? I sit in bed, still as death, save for my mouth forming the words Those Who Are Good To You Are Not Always Good For You.
Oh, there you are again, on the other end of this invisible wire, the lines that run from the galaxies down to our city, connecting us as friends and used up minutes. And here I am, chanting my HU's to your deaf ears, the listening vessels that are ringing with a voice you think is better than a hymn. Because Hymns Never Lead Me To Salvation, I know you want to tell me. Neither Did This, I want to say back. But you are cracked and chipped and you think this false hymn is your seal, the last stop on the road to fixing yourself. It is not the last stop. It can’t be. Love can only go so far.

Alas, Best Friend, I came here with the unfamiliarity of words. This bulky, unwelcome present is yours to keep. May this present never collect dust. May you keep polishing this present, that is, my prayers and advice till they’ve been worn down to create a groove where your heart fits perfectly. They say ' One smile starts a friendship, One word, end a fight , One look, save a relationship and finally one person, change our lives. i know you changed me likewise i did you too , but in the end it objectively comes to this Bye.