[livingthroughwords]

I'm craving a smoke

and I feel lonely tonight

I took a nap in the day

so I didn't have to face my life

Sitting in front of my laptop at 2 am

I wondered if this is all there is

and then

I remembered that kiss.

I remembered how un-mundane it felt

I remembered how it felt like time stopped

I remembered how I felt whole in his arms

I remembered it was all the high I needed.

[livingthroughwords]

When you're back in my city

I pick you up from the airport. Lilies and sunflowers. Because those were the flowers you always got me.

Lunch at the canteen of a college neither of us went to. It was just in the north part of the city we both liked, and being there made us feel like college kids again.

A walk in cannaught place on a cold day - can life get any better? Last time you were here, it was hot. I had been dreaming of spending winter with you all the while.

Back at your place. Back in your arms. Two marlboros. Last time we met, you didn't smoke and neither did I.

A kiss goodbye. A hug that makes me feel centered. I think of telling you I love you. Or I loved you. Or I did fall in love with you after all. I don't know which iteration of the phrase makes sense for us. For what I feel for you.

Except, we don't.

You're back in my city, and we don't meet. You don't reach out because you know I won't bite. I pretend I don't see your social media, and it almost kills me to do nothing. You're back in delhi and i want to remove myself from my own city. Remove myself from here if i can't see you again. Remove myself if I can't see you one more time, one last time.

So I die. I die the death of holding myself from you. From protecting myself from you. Knowing that seeing you would anyway kill me.

Seeing you, loving you, being loved by you, all are my delusions anyway. Like the flowers and the lunches and the sweet, slow kisses.

It's killing me but I'll let it. I'd rather kill my own damn heart than let you do it again.

[livingthroughwords]

There are a million things I want to say to you but all I do is watch from distance. Self preservation is, after all, one of the only things I did right when it came to you. Ever since I met you and left you, I have loved and lost. I have climbed small battles, won small victories and gone from 22 to 24. Naive to sharp. Broken to bolder. And yet, you. You wouldn't leave my mind. You wouldn't leave my mind like you wouldn't leave me alone. I wish we could meet again. I wish I wouldn't be betraying myself by meeting you again. I wish I could make sense of what we had. But I'm afraid I never will. Some feelings are meant to be present, not for you to understand. And that was you. The person I was with the most present. The person who gave me only moments of highs. If only you were also the person who understood me. If only our situation was something I could grasp, perhaps it would last longer. But perhaps then, I wouldn't still be remembering it.

[livingthroughwords]

I want to leave this city. I want to leave everything and everyone I call home. Because what's the point of a place you call home when there is no one you can relate to and no one you can talk to? School friends with their boyfriends and jobs and things you always thought you were too good for. College friends with their careers and plans you always thought weren't for you. Family who cannot fully free you. Colleagues you can never get close to. Jobs that no longer fulfill you and hanging spots that make you lonelier and lonelier. Where do you go and who do you find?

[livingthroughwords]

I step into your cave with my hair on half my face. The nervousness in my breath reflects in your shaking legs. Your eyes beckon, lover or predator, I can't tell. Rush, rush, rush of emotions. Touches touches everywhere. I can't tell where you started and where I began. I fall as I'm captured in your hands. I like you, I like it. I don't want it. I don't know what it is and you're there. You're too much there. Your eyes are gone. I'm not the beautiful girl you fantasised about anymore. I'm your pleasure. For the moment that's all I am. My senses are too strong. Was that an indicator that my heart is in fact too warm? I need those breaths back where my nerves lay. I need to trace out every moment in this time. But you're annoyed. You're annoyed. You say, stop, it's annoying. And that's the first time you break something that is mine. I let it be. You let me be. And for once there is calmness—until I get greedy. Not even greedy, why can't I want the same pleasure you just got from me? And so I try. And that's the first time I regret you coming into my life. I seek pleasure but your eyes once again say goodbye. I decline. I decline not for the first time. But it's the first time you don't see me as that pretty girl. You don't see me at all. And so you don't seek, you push. You push and you know. You know you fucked up. You know it and I know it too. And that's the moment we should have never gotten to. Two seconds, all of two seconds that I disappeared before you. Irreversible damage it did to me, and I know, to you too. My silence or your apology, not sure what was worse. We packed our bags and left it as it was.

[livingthroughwords]

Except we didn't. We did pack our bags but oh the number of times we opened them again.

"You'll block me after this," you said. I have no memory of what I replied. I wish I had cried. I wish I had cried so I would've felt the pain right there and then. I wish I would've cried and cursed you right then. Because then, it would've been over.

"My mind feels so fucked right now," I said as I my head lay on your chest. "I know," you said. Did you? Did you? If you did, did you care? Did you care that it was you who fucked me up? Ofcourse you didn't, because you never stopped.

[livingthroughwords]

I step into your cave with my hair on half my face. The nervousness in my breath reflects in your shaking legs. Your eyes beckon, lover or predator, I can't tell. Rush, rush, rush of emotions. Touches touches everywhere. I can't tell where you started and where I began. I fall as I'm captured in your hands. I like you, I like it. I don't want it. I don't know what it is and you're there. You're too much there. Your eyes are gone. I'm not the beautiful girl you fantasised about anymore. I'm your pleasure. For the moment that's all I am. My senses are too strong. Was that an indicator that my heart is in fact too warm? I need those breaths back where my nerves lay. I need to trace out every moment in this time. But you're annoyed. You're annoyed. You say, stop, it's annoying. And that's the first time you break something that is mine. I let it be. You let me be. And for once there is calmness—until I get greedy. Not even greedy, why can't I want the same pleasure you just got from me? And so I try. And that's the first time I regret you coming into my life. I seek pleasure but your eyes once again say goodbye. I decline. I decline not for the first time. But it's the first time you don't see me as that pretty girl. You don't see me at all. And so you don't seek, you push. You push and you know. You know you fucked up. You know it and I know it too. And that's the moment we should have never gotten to. Two seconds, all of two seconds that I disappeared before you. Irreversible damage it did to me, and I know, to you too. My silence or your apology, not sure what was worse. We packed our bags and left it as it was.

[livingthroughwords]

Heartbreak? Can I call it that? I'll give myself permission to do so, because if I don't find the words to describe it to make it feel more settled, my heart might burst from this pain. I'm sorry I kept repeating. Because of the hurt I caused you. I couldn't do it. At the end, I couldn't explain to you what is wrong, what went wrong, why I'm crying and the extreme lengths I'm going to. And that's the answer right there. Because you cannot see my pain, cannot see and provide what I need from you, I had to leave you. I had to leave you. I had to leave you. I repeat like a mantra.

[creatingnikki]

Dear the love of my life,

Once again I attempt writing to you. But this time with a more grown up and different perspective. And yet with all this perspective, the words are harder to come out now. Everything feels too much, a lot of it hopeless, a lot of it doomed. But with the little hope and faith I find, I write this to you. To you who I know is out there. To you who is figuring his life out.

Where are you now? Bangalore? London? Mumbai? Toronto? Badlapur? New Mexico? Seoul? Delhi, perhaps? Wherever you are, I send you the kind of energy you need the most right now. As of 23rd August, 2022, my love, what is it that you need? Is it the warmth of someone's sincerity? Is it a miracle to fix a very sticky situation at work or home? Is it strength that your body needs? Is it strength that your mind needs? A good, comfort meal? Peace? Whatever it is, I ask the universe to send it to you — kindly, timely, consistently, and abundantly.

The person I am right now is seeking something so intensely to a point that I have started to stray away from my values and beliefs. To a point that I have started to treat breadcrumbs like a gracious feast prepared specially for me. But if I love bread so much and there are supply chain issues, shouldn't I be strategic and figure out ways to fix them? Quarter by quarter but fix them? That starts now.

As I sit in Third Wave Café sipping on a very milky, very sweet iced coffee with a flower bouquet I curated for my friend who is sitting across me writing a letter to his to-be fiancé, as I feel cold due to the air conditioner for the first time in Bangalore, as I think about everything that's happened in the last five months, I now know this.

This is not the life I want. This is not the life I am going to continue to let myself live. From now on I am going to make decisions that protect me, that provide me with the best, that bring me peace, and that give me power. For I am going to bloom into the person that has always been inside me, waiting politely for me to recognize how precious I am. And I truly hope that you too are able to make the decisions that honor the divine in you and pacify the undivine.

We will meet. We have met. We exist. Soon. Always. Other than this, I have no declarations of love to make. I have no expectations to articulate. We will build and we will nurture and we will love exactly how it is precious to us. And we laugh and laugh and laugh.

Love, Nikki

[livingthroughwords]

High school never ends

Do you remember how in school you'd be sitting on the second or third bench, not quite the nerd seat but not far from it, and a few benches down, a girl and a boy would be sitting, not quite the back- benchers but not far from it? That boy would be the new boy in class you've been crushing on since the moment you saw him, and that girl would be the popular girl in class who would be pretty, smart, and nice. You'd crave for the boy's attention and the girl's validation, but you would get neither because why would they even think about it, too busy giving it to each other.

But what if it's not just high school? What if this happens in college? In the language class you attend on weekends? In your office at your first job? And your second job? What if every phase of life is just like high school?

What if all we're surrounded by are multi-verses of high schools? Different furniture, different buildings, more wrinkles, less innocence. What if high school doesn't haunt you because it just never ends? But what does haunt you are the same set ups, the same cliques, and your unchanging role in them?

What if life is high school and there's no graduation?

[livingthroughwords]

Your first love breaks your heart.

Your first situationship breaks your brain.

[livingthroughwords]

마음이 아파요.

[livingthroughwords]

I feel like I'm 12 again. We were 11 when all my friends started developing crushes and had a boy or two who liked them. And i thought 7th grade, 7th grade would be my time. 7th grade became 12th grade and by then i had lost all hope of having a boyfriend and also lost the desire for it. College was it. College was supposed to provide me with everything I had missed out on. It was supposed to transform me into a blossomed flower with beautiful bees and plants and birds around it. College was supposed to be it. But what I had were a year and a half of feeling not good enough, not smart enough, not pretty enough, however being lucky enough to find a place within a kind-hearted and hilarious group of girls. And then COVID hit of course. Life started back, mine did too. Painstakingly slow, I felt like I had started living again. Men were still nowhere to be seen. And it took too long for me to realise I'll have to seek them out. Hence, dating apps. Somehow every person who's a chronic social media user has delved into them at some point. Dating apps weren't exciting for me. They felt like a supermarket with items I couldn't read the labels of. I had no idea what the products would be like once I used them, and so I didn't even pick them up. Until I did once or twice. Until, I bought an item, took it home and tasted it once. It went bad very quickly. What else do you expect from a cheap store-bought product? The problem is now more than ever, I want more. I want that same taste, only made of organic ingredients with longer shelf life and sold not in a supermarket. I feel like I'm 12 again, because I was 12 when I last felt this particular sense of boredom and loneliness. There's a huge difference between being 12 and 22. Or maybe not. If they can both feel so lonely. If both my best friend at 12 and my mother at 22 can say you look sad these days and I have to lie, both times.

[livingthroughwords]

I don't like him but I like the way i feel with him. I don't care for his mind but i care for his care and his touch. It's new and exciting and nerve wrecking. It's complicated for no reason. It's modern, drastically modern. There's desire oh gosh so much desire. There isn't understanding, there is absolutely no love. Because it's too early. It's too early for all of it. It's too early to write about it. Yet, I do write about it and so do you because each one of us are messy and do not know what the right way is to deal with ourselves and others.

So I'll wait for my friend to write her book on intimacies that are like racecars. And while I do that, I won't seek them out for myself because they're exhilarating yet tiring.

Or atleast that's what I tell myself.

[livingthroughwords]

My stressed-filled brain cannot handle your logic or your lucidness

My anxiety shivers from your serene steadiness

I think of time that hasn't come yet

The time of now isn't something I comprehend

I want to breathe deeply and not exhale

I want to hold on to that feeling where my lungs are in the air

I want to not eat and not watch and not think and not do

I want to be

I want to be

I just want to be

[livingthroughwords]

Winters are for

Drinking chai for the fourth time

Rewatching your comfiest show 

Feeling melancholic

Taylor's Swift's saddest, coldest songs (back to december, 'tis the damn season)

Endless conversations with your bestie who is more than that word could ever encompass

Trying to cheer others up

Accepting your sadness

Getting back to reading

Bopping your head to Last Christmas in malls as you look for the perfect coat

Hoping for love in the next winter

Finding warmth in the thought of the new year

Chocolate

Letting things be  

[livingthroughwords]

Need more books to talk about the pain of the younger child when the older one moves away and the younger one is left all alone dealing with the shit at home wanting to escape but knowing if she does, the family will be left alone.

[livingthroughwords]

Every person I meet bores me

I feel every person who meets me abhores me.