In Hindsight

[peripheralism]

Not Satisfied: The Movie

Life isn’t ideal. 

It’s like that really nice ice-cream you buy fresh from your favourite shop, but then get caught up attempting to take an aesthetic picture of it for your Instagram story, and now it’s all melted and running down your arm in this delicious, sticky mess. And now you’re confused between enjoying what you have or throwing it in the dustbin and going back home to wash the remnants off your body.

Wow, that metaphor wasn’t supposed to be that morbid. 

What I’m trying to say is that things hardly go as planned. Even if you keep a firm grip of life by the wrist, constantly shackled to a strict calendar, things are not always going to go your way.

Is that okay? 

My question back would be, what’s the benchmark for “okay”? 

“Okay” can be my friend Liana, working her ass off to try and provide for herself and her brother, but having the joy of staying alone and calling all the shots in her life. “Okay” can be my friend Dhruti, staying at home and close to the people she loves but is regretfully quitting her job because she doesn’t feel like it’s sustainable anymore. “Okay” can be me, having the privilege of a Netflix account and some grass to keep me company on this fine Saturday evening, but feeling the odd void of loneliness that a partner would usually fill. 

“Okay” can range between driving down the streets of Dubai, bright city lights making your eyes squint as you look up at the skyscrapers and having the joy of filling your lungs with oxygen every second. 

I guess I’m okay either way. 

[peripheralism]

Questions & Answers...kind of

Why does everything feel so bland after tragedy?  It’s like the colour has suddenly disappeared and you’re left as this sunken version of your previously full self. 

I sound like a badly written John Green book. 

It’s more like the song that was stuck in your head from an hour ago (which is still playing in a continuous loop) meant something before but the words and meaning just...don’t make sense anymore. Nothing really does. Funny, it’s like my brain is on auto-pilot. 

Why am I so goddamn humble? I’m looking at life through lenses of possibility and opportunities and so much fucking abundance. I’m rarely like this. I signed up for therapy yesterday, for fuck’s sake. My brain is clearly programmed to not appreciate my blessings. 

What is the point? Everything’s the point. Literally everything. Family, friends, the people you love and support. Even the people you occasionally stalk on social media because they’re great content creators.  Double-tap. They deserve a like. Everyone deserves all the likes. Except the people that fucked you over. I get positivity and peace and all that crap, but screw them. I may be humble but I’m still a petty fuck. 

Why is the weather so shitty?  It’s only shitty if you refuse to change your mind about the rain. Warmth is the best (and only) feeling I’ve known but I highly doubt the pumpkin I repotted is going to grow in never-ending sunshine.  Also, mentally inserting that middle school quote about sunshine and hurricane we all used to caption our pictures with. 

Systems don’t make sense anymore. Constructs seem meaningless. I don’t want to be a bi-something, size XS/S/M/whateverthefuck, NRI/not really, female specimen anymore. I want to be nothing. I, in fact, am nothing. 

That sounded an awful lot like a revelation after a psychedelic. Could tragedy induce the same effects as psychedelics? I could write a thesis on this...if I decide to do Masters (which is, again, a system that I’m losing faith in by the second). 

I’m feeling humble. And grateful. And sad. I think looking at your baby pictures is super humbling...and slightly narcissistic. I don’t mind being anything right now, though. Call me what you want to.

Welcome to my brain dump. 

[peripheralism]

this is not envy

My sister is great at what she does. She’s like a guitarist that strums until their fingers are raw and bleeding, except her choice of weapon is needle and thread. Her fingers tremble an awful lot (she got that from my mum) but she gets better with each stitch and I’ve never seen her wear a thimble.

She attends the best fashion college around so it’s needless to say that she’s super skilled (point to a fabric or print and she’ll already have its backstory). She’s always been like that - knowing and determined. Siri was stubborn enough to see her dream through, even if that meant sacrificing a good college in another city. But no, she waited for great. She worked for excellence. Siri does not settle.

I share that trait with her. Why do something if you’re half-assing it? Why sit at your laptop all day, only to step away unsatisfied with the end result? I am going to work tirelessly until it’s exactly how I want it to be. The annoyance that nags when something isn’t perfect should always pay off, right?

My sister and I think on the same wavelength. We’re workaholics. We throw ourselves into projects and stay holed up until we know it’s turned out exactly how we want it to be.

The only difference is my sister knows what “it” is. I’m almost certain she has a vision board, either physically present on her laptop or a virtually floating in that constantly busy mind of hers. She can chart out the stepping stones it takes to build her eventual brand. We were drinking one day and I suggested she be hired by a big fashion corporate when she graduates. She scoffed at me - scoffed!

“No way.”  

Something churned in my stomach and that’s when I realised where I deferred - Siri wasn’t a yes (wo)man. Siri chose wisely, Siri chose carefully, Siri was picky with the things she allowed to step into her life. She consciously walked away from the multi-national corporate monotony that consumes us the second we get a degree and I wanted to be Siri so badly at that moment, even if that meant going through four years of fashion hell.

I acknowledge a joy in going out and grasping onto everything that comes your way until you find purpose. I did that...the universe knows I’m still doing that.

But there’s also so much joy in knowing and working towards what you want.

I hope I experience the latter of those joys one of these days.

[peripheralism]

“SM” and honesty

I’ve been deathly afraid of being honest. A part of me still regards Instagram as a platform where I’m supposed to show the world (or my 600 odd followers) who I am. 

That’s precisely the problem - I don’t know who I am.  But I think you do...based on when, where and how you know me. You’ve already created an idea of what you think I am in your head. All of us love doing that - make up personalities for the people we decide to virtually follow. 

My juniors who I thought were all fluff are sitting in front of their laptops, head brimming with knowledge and are frantically wondering what’s about to happen to their future. My counterparts from college who are smart, intellectual beings love to talk about the world and politics. They were also awfully loud when they drank, secretly smoke cigarettes and were some of the meanest people around. My friends from school, the ones who I thought I knew everything about, are growing up and living their lives. They’re lashing out at me, missing me and forgetting me all at the same time. 

Social media has a tendency to forget a person is multi-faceted. 

I know it’s wrong and stupid to judge someone purely based on what they show online, but I caught myself doing it today. 

Why is that? 

Why does my brain think it’s okay? 

[peripheralism]

Maybe I Need Therapy

Loneliness is an uncomfortable term. Being alone, however, is fucking wonderful.

I have recently received unwarranted insight on my personal life by, well, myself. Spiraling in and out of the stupid things I do when intoxicated, holing up in my bed until I melt into the seams of my bed sheet, staring at a wall trying to sum up what my life has currently come to. 

I am confused. 

The crickets are chirping (quite literally). I am both simultaneously happy and unhappy with the state of mind that I am knee deep in, slowly yet surely drowning in this state of “WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?” 

The second an opportunity touches me, I run away from it. When I spend nights like these pining over that one moment when everything is crystal clear again, I can’t seem to stop chasing an idea. Is that so bad? 

Am I unnaturally expressive to a point where I stop feeling once my brain goes into overload? I imagine. And think. And smile. And think some more. But I never execute. Why? 

My brain is constantly on overdrive. I have lists piling up, dawning on me like a realization that my future is never happening. I’m too busy catching up with my past, making amends with my past, trying to fucking fix my past that I can’t seem to make this stick. 

I feel like I’m floating. I’m feeling, I’m emoting and I am floating in this sucky abyss. Not knowing what I want to do, not knowing what I did but definitely hyper aware of what people want me to do. 

I’m so exhausted, emotionally drained, and suffocated from all that has potential. Where do I start? 

Can someone help?    

[peripheralism]

paradise / war zone

I will always go back to my bed-

Our bed.

These mattresses, the blanket we stayed swaddled in, your sweater stuck to the side of my body even though you were at arm’s reach. Your smile when the sun shone once again, rousing us from our solitude together.

My shirt that was awkwardly hung on my chest, you kissing my breast as we slept. Your hands that always found mine in the dark, no matter how ugly or how cruel we were to the other. The way you took control of my body, the way you let me feel all the right types of joy even when none of us deserved it.

This bed was our temple. These lengths of fabric know, they remember – regardless of how much I try to wash your memory off it.

You feel like some sort of absurd dream, but god, you were so undeniably real that I don’t know how to erase this sinking feeling.

“Once again, you have to greet me with goodbye.”

Every single time. I’m still counting.

[peripheralism]

you won’t even leave me alone in my dreams. 

[peripheralism]

sad. very sad.

I will always sleep with your sweater.

It doesn’t smell like him anymore, neither does it provide any warmth in the heat of summer. A drop of sweat rolls down the nape of my neck, and I wipe it off with it. I stay hidden under the weight of my covers until I can’t see sunlight, and I can only feel him. Kind of like how we were back when.

I look around my home, and my heart starts racing with the absence of him. There are empty spots in the furniture, spots that he completed. There’s a strange emptiness on the other side of my bed. We fit so well, like two unexpected pieces being placed together.

I’m so angry at you.

You snatched me out of the blue, and now I can’t get back. I am tuned to you - your flaws, hard bits, even the soft ones. My body is tuned to you, I move with you in sync - I still do.

I make it sound like he’s dead.

You’re not. But it feels like you are. You radiate this different kind of cold - one that doesn’t care to accept the past and one that can erase in a heartbeat. And I’m stuck in this whirlwind of memories that I wish I could forget.

I wish I could forget you.  

No guys will compare. No guy can compare. No guy should compare.

You have broken me. And I’m putting this in the slightest way possible, but I don’t think I can fix it anymore.

[peripheralism]

god, is this my cliche breakup post? 

[peripheralism]

down

his skin tastes like home, his touch feels like euphoria.  he is the last person on me, in me, with me. 

today is the most important day of my life, and i am to face it with swollen eyes and a heavy heart. 

he walked out, he chooses to chose himself, and it feels like a million stars combusting right in front of me, and there is nothing i can do to save my world. 

lord, there are so many things i would do to feel him on me one more time. 

[peripheralism]

मेरी हर बात में साथ तू है, मेरे सारे हालात तू, माही वे ।।

[peripheralism]

tired

i dont think you know how much my pillowcase 

bleeds with the hurt it sees

it is not meant to sustain the pins and needles and jagged ends

it seems to be my

only friend 

you tut at my eyes 

purple ringed with black

dont get me wrong,

i get enough sleep

[peripheralism]

I Am Sappy

I think I have a healthier relationship with love now. 

I couldn’t quite map it out at first, it was as though I was hit by a train of hormones and stereotypes dictated by media. Hormones, which were obviously the cause for the many shenanigans I engaged in as a teen, but I never anticipated how love would allow me to sustain a floating relationship. A virtual one, in fact. Something that I never imagined to keep intact, but two years is not a joke. At least, not to me.

But now...now I can see a picture form in my head. Not a clear one, mind you, and definitely not something that’s big enough to keep my hopes up for the rest of my life, but it’s something. Fuzzy, vague, but it’s there. And it respects me as much as I want to...dare I say, as much as I deserve. It loves me, it cares for me, and it doesn’t let me down. I am in love with this picture as much as it loves me, and I cannot get enough of how full my heart feels. 

Man, have I become a cheeseball? 

[peripheralism]

Don’t give people a reason to belittle you. What’s yours is yours. Share it with those who you can trust.

[peripheralism]

Thoughts From A Kite

Why do people hold your past again you?

Youth cannot be an excuse but,

It hurts.

Sometimes mere presence isn’t enough.

In his case, it definitely was not.

He is the happiest of smiles, but the harshest of winters and I don’t know which side to pick.

Do I need to pick?

Choice is luxury.

I am not rich.

My bank account is depleting by the day.

Can I afford this?

Questions make my mind fuzzy.

I think I’ve started to hate living in this fuzz.

[peripheralism]

i miss you, i may

this magnificent easy breezy day

(you sang this to me, the very first time)

[peripheralism]

i am manufactured

Sometimes I wish that I was not so...conventional. 

Do you ever look at someone and marvel in the fact that they’re so different? They’re so exquisitely themselves, and so unknowing of how appalling they are in comparison to any other. They stand out, and not awkwardly so, but beautifully enough. 

Enough for the world to sustain them, and not scorn at them like they do any foreign concept. Their minds are so attuned to their own beat, their own unique hum, that they never settle. They never comply or agree to norms, no...they make their own. 

And the best part? 

They don’t even have to try. 

I wish I was one them.