महक

Just a twenty one year old girl who writes.

[iamlongingtofeelathome]

he says—no begs—why are you mad bro?

and i can’t deal with these kind of people. they do not understand the principle. it’s not what you did. it’s how you did it.

महक // fact: if the roles were reversed, you’d lose your mind.

[iamlongingtofeelathome]

i will never admit to anyone how desperately i want to be loved. i don’t think i can stress enough about it. how i want someone to hold my wrists, kiss my palms and smile at me. want me. i want to be wanted.

महक // and i don’t know how long poetry and songs will substitute for it.

[iamlongingtofeelathome]

It’s been a fortnight since I’ve done the unspeakable. They’ve removed the visible parts off of me and announced me fit as if they didn’t just rip me apart and stitch me back roughly. But every day since, I’ve started to notice that life is a series of thousands of miracles.

महक // it just took two body altering events to finally notice

[iamlongingtofeelathome]

In order to survive, deal with this terrible horrendous disease, I’ve made a lot of choices. Choices that allowed me the time and energy so I could tend to myself. I’ve given up chances. Lost opportunities. Avoided living some once in a lifetime experiences. Just because when everyone around me was living it up, I was in a battle with my own body. My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.

महक // graveyard of living too

[iamlongingtofeelathome]

If I can ever voice my most burning desire it would be that I just want a humble, murderously simple thing; for a person be glad when I walk into the room.

महक // pick me as a second first choice

[iamlongingtofeelathome]

Love. Kills.

महक // longing for love hope

[iamlongingtofeelathome]

A third person perspective of me:

This girl is soft at heart, sensitive, in a multitude of ways sensual and so creative it something’s can take your breath away. She is both the vast, dark woods and the glorious light of a full moon. Yet she is also the one who is always angry at all the thousand tiny ways she’d been hurt in her life.

महक // and lonely

[iamlongingtofeelathome]

To live in a city wickedly known as the råpe capital of the country, I shouldn’t walk home alone. I shouldn’t be out past 7. And yet . . . sometimes, in a perverse, twisted kind of a way, I half-like placing myself in danger. I see it as giving the universe (or whoever/whatever) a chance to strike me down. If I was caught off-guard it could potentially be one bash over the head with my tormentor’s weapon of choice. One stab, maybe. Then the game would be over. Mini punishments such as these (like also not “allowing myself to smoke at the moment) are to give karma a helping hand so it doesn’t need to concern itself with conjuring up some terrible fate from its own imagination.

महक // because I deserve it, right?

[iamlongingtofeelathome]

I hate admitting this. The truth is that no one who truly knows me likes me. The only people who love me don’t know the real me.

महक // faces i put on

[iamlongingtofeelathome]

Am I enough? This is perhaps the most difficult question I wrestle with. Is this sick version of me—this person I never planned to be—enough?

Do I matter? Is there meaning in my life when it’s not the life I wanted or planned for myself?

These aren’t easy questions to answer. My illness has affected many aspects of my life. It’s true. I’m not who I was 5 or 10 years ago. And I’m not who I thought I was going to be today.

But I’m still here, living every day, learning and growing, loving those around me.

I have to stop thinking that my value is based solely on what I can or cannot do, and realize that my value is inherent in just being who I am and who I continue to strive to be.

महक // I’m mahak and this is my story –iv

[iamlongingtofeelathome]

Sometimes I wonder if the people in my life — those who try so hard to love and support me through all of this — ever just get tired of me.

Heck, I get tired of all of this. They have to be.

I haven’t been as reliable as I was before my illness. I flake out and turn down opportunities, because sometimes I just can’t handle it. That unreliability has to get old for them, too.

But I understand the need to be connected to others—because I don’t want to try to fight my pain alone. I need to trust that the people around me, who I know love and support me, are in it for the long haul. I need them to be.

I think I have to accept that there really is only so much I can do. I can try to live a healthy lifestyle and do what I can to work with my symptoms to have a full life.

I also need to trust that the doctors and medical professionals I work with do have my best interest at heart and that we can continue to work together to figure out exactly what’s going on inside my body.

महक // I’m mahak and this is my story –iii

[iamlongingtofeelathome]

“Look at you!”

“What about me?”

“Ever since you came back, you were like this fragile china doll. I just wanted to pick you up and put you in bubble wrap.”

I laughed. “You did?”

“You just seemed kind of lost, unsure about yourself. Now it’s like you’re a different person.”

“How so?”

“You’re just … so alive now. You seem so strong and capable, like you’re ready to take on the world.”

I sighed.

महक // maybe survival tactics look different on everyone.

[iamlongingtofeelathome]

He sometimes looks like a kid, and I love seeing him so animated. His excitement is contagious and soon I am on my feet and we were doing a ridiculous impromptu dance around the room and laughing like children. I felt wild and free, like a stringless kite. My heart was soaring, and in that moment, it was like I had finally broken free from the shackles of my past. I had stepped out of the shadow.

महक // and into the light

[iamlongingtofeelathome]

He sometimes looks like a kid, and I love seeing him so animated. His excitement is contagious and soon I am on my feet and we were doing a ridiculous impromptu dance around the room and laughing like children. I felt wild and free, like a stringless kite. My heart was soaring, and in that moment, it was like I had finally broken free from the shackles of my past. I had stepped out of the shadow.

महक // and into the light

[iamlongingtofeelathome]

When you’re sick all the time, it’s difficult to get things done. Sometimes, it takes all of my energy just to get through the day —to do the bare minimum —like get out of bed and take a shower, do laundry, or put the dishes away.

Sometimes, I can’t even do that.

My fatigue has had a profound effect on my sense of value as a productive member of my household and society.

I’ve always defined myself by the productiveness of my activities. It makes me anxious if I waste a day lying down—which is unhealthy because every day shouldn’t feel like a war with myself.

And so, my deep fear is that what if I’m unknowingly maybe using chronic illness to disguise the sick rot of laziness within myself.

Because if I really wanted to work, wouldn’t I just make myself do it? I would just try harder and find a way. Right?

People on the outside seem to wonder the same thing. My family has even said things to me like “I think you’d feel better if you just got a little more physical activity” or “I if you can just stop locking yourself in your room.”

When any kind of physical activity, causes my symptoms to spike uncontrollably, it’s hard to hear these requests that lack empathy.

Deep down, I know that I’m not lazy. I know that I do as much as I can — what my body allows me to do — and that my whole life is a balancing act of trying to be productive, but not overdo it and pay with exacerbated symptoms later.

I’m just an expert tightrope walker.

महक // I’m mahak and this is my story –ii

[iamlongingtofeelathome]

It’s been 12 years since a slew of still unexplained symptoms invaded my life. It’s been 6 years since I woke up with a dull ache that hasn’t ever gone away.

In recent months, I’ve become increasingly sick — all of my symptoms attacking at once and new symptoms appearing what seems like daily sometimes.

For now, my doctors have settled on new daily persistent techniques and tentative prescriptions. My team of doctors are still running tests. We’re both still searching for answers and cures.

At 23 years old—twenty-four in two months—I have spent half of my life chronically ill. I can’t remember what it was like before—to not feel some combination of these symptoms on any given day.

I live in a state that’s equal parts cautious optimism and hopelessness.

महक // I’m mahak and this is my story –i

[iamlongingtofeelathome]

He sometimes looks like a kid, and I love seeing him so animated. His excitement is contagious and soon I am on my feet and we were doing a ridiculous impromptu dance around the room and laughing like children. I felt wild and free, like a stringless kite. My heart was soaring, and in that moment, it was like I had finally broken free from the shackles of my past. I had stepped out of the shadow.

महक // and into the light