The Letter You Would Have Written Part III

Four years later, it will happen like this. You will sit on New Year’s eve and want to think of anything but my death. You would want to wear a sari. You would want to wear flowers on your hair. Not cover it up with a scarf. You would like to make a New Year’s resolution, go celebrate the beginning of something new.

Four years later, you would wonder if you haven’t grieved already, if you haven’t grieved too much. You would wonder if it’s okay to put down your sorrow. You would wonder what did that even mean for you and I? Would it mean you have forgotten me? Would it mean you have moved on? Would it mean it is okay for you to celebrate something new, instead of mourning for someone who didn’t want to be here?

Four years later, you would look for me to give you answers. You would ask me, if this is betrayal. You would ask, if I think you deserve to be happy. What would I tell you, if I was there?

I would say four years is a long time. I would say, you mourned me and grieved me and remembered me. And I would say, it’s okay to wear sarees and put on flowers. I know how much you loved flowers. I would say, go celebrate. But you and I both know you hate unnecessary talk and people drain you out. So may be, stay home instead, but be happy. I didn’t die to punish anyone and you should probably start to live your life without trying to atone for things you never said, or did. I would say, stop counting how many years it has been since I have been gone. But then again, you and I both know, how you love to keep track of time. So chances are, you won’t listen to me. So may be, I won’t say that then.

I would say instead, this New Years Eve start over. I would say what I said to you eight years ago, Don’t dare to forget me! I would also say, But I am not afraid anymore that you ever will.

And I know you would reply, This is not how to make someone remember you. 

I would totally agree. You know, I would never want you to remember me like that. So I would then say, Tell me, how would you rather remember me?  And then I would ask, Well then, why aren’t you doing it right?

15 Seconds Since You Have Let Go

Dear A,

Fall is here. Soon it will be winter again. This will be my third winter without you. You know, time doesn’t fly; it gallops. Every time it thuds it’s hooves, a million stories go by that you will never know.

Once, my younger brother had said to me, “In a few years I’ll be older than you.” I told him that in a few years I’ll be older too and so he will never be older than me. I thought he was naive. But I think now, it was me who didn’t know. This winter I will become older than you. I will live to celebrate a birthday you never saw. I will go on to reach milestones you never reached. Do you hear the hooves of time, thumping, rushing forward, marching me to a place I didn’t know existed?

You know, I have a car now. A beautiful red car. Sometimes, when I am driving I think of you. Would you have liked driving? I guess we will never know. Do you remember I taught you how to ride a bicycle once? I recall I couldn’t believe that you didn’t know how to ride one. So I marched you downstairs and made you sit on my pink, bunny bicycle. I remember you looked around to check for training wheels and realized there weren’t any. But I told you, remember? I got your back! I steadied the bicycle as you learned to paddle. I ran across the street, holding it from the back so you wouldn’t fall down. And we laughed. We laughed when you bicycled by yourself for 15 seconds straight. Even when we were young, we knew when to take our victories. I think time has taken our ability to take our victories over the mundane things.

I have a copy of a cover song you did of, “Hey there Delilah.” Can I tell you a secret? Sometimes when I need to hear you talk, I play the cover you sang. I swear it feels like you are talking again. I had forgotten how you sound… until I heard you sing. Time is galloping again, A. I cant’t hear you over this thudding anymore. Time is a taking me further away from who we were.

I miss the comfort of friendship. You know, its funny that I thought all those years ago that I was holding you steady. A, you never told me, you were holding me too. You were my training wheels, teaching me how to paddle through life. You left a while ago, but this sure feels a lot longer than 15 seconds.

Tell me A, how am I doing? Am I falling down and I have yet to see it? Or am I learning to go on without you?

How to own your darkness

I have never been afraid of the dark. The dark lives in all of us. Most days we let it sleep, deep inside our heart, behind a locked door. But some days it breaks free from the chains. It comes to find us. Or we go to find it. Then we sit and talk and get to know our dark inside out.

I have sat for months with my dark. The jealousy that never make it pass my lips, the pain that is stored under my eye lids and the silence that holds all my questions and complains – I know them all. I know how they can grow and expand, if only I give them space. I have learned how much they crave attention, all the time. I know even if I sit with them and talk to them and learn to understand their source, at the end of the day, I have to leave them locked.

The dark is haunting. The dark is full of shadows and doubts. The dark has too many misgivings. I have been told to let the dark be. After all opening that door is how it seeps out and takes over. But I have never been able to understand how I can fight something if I don’t know how far it can grasp, how big its dimensions are. Dark will own me anyways if I keep hiding from it.

They tell me to accept others people’s darkness because that is a form of how we show love. So why am I not allowed to love parts of me? Shouldn’t my dedication be towards me? Can I not accept my darkness of what it is without embellishing or demolishing?

So make yourself comfortable on days when you sit with your darkness. Hear it’s stories, knowing they come with their own set of bias’. Learn to talk without being demeaning. Use logic, use emotions or if nothing works fashion lies to put it to sleep. Know your darkness just as well as your know your light. You don’t have to love them equally, but you have to acknowledge they are present, even when in our hearts we all wish they didn’t.

After all if I don’t know my own darkness, how can I ever explain or expect other people to treat it gently? How can I teach them when to feed it and more importantly what tune to play to put it to sleep?

Before The Walls

I knew him from the time before the walls set in. But that’s not why we remained friends for the next two decades. The thing about a friendship as old as ours is that growing up we never walled each other out. So when 32 months ago he died of suicide, I couldn’t help but question did he ever let me in to begin with?

But twenty years of knowing him never prepared me for the time he would do the leaving. All my life he had shown me friendship was staying, even if no one stayed, and never letting go. But suddenly he was gone somewhere and I didn’t know where to follow him to. There was no whisper of discontent, no signs of sorrow, and no goodbye. One day he was here telling me he would come to see me next time he had time off and a few days later he was gone without a trail.

See, we became friends way before we even understood what friendship stood for. So it made me question the very basis of our friendship. Was it really friendship even if he couldn’t let me in? Had I catastrophically failed the one friendship I held dear above all else?

Ever since he died I have been at war with myself. On one hand I tell myself that he was my friend because he loved me. He was there with me all through my pains because he cared. But on the other hand I felt that if he truly was my friend, why did he leave me like this? Over the years we have grown relying on one another’s strength and patience. But suddenly it seems everything I knew was an illusion and I wasn’t sure anymore of what we had. It scared me that someone I thought I knew so well, kept this pain so well-hidden. It makes me question sometimes if this side was truly hidden from me or was I oblivious to it all. And more importantly am I even worthy of his friendship?

Some days I want to tell his story amongst friends, people who have known him just like I have. But these days when I meet people I start the story of my life with the name of the boy I’ll never forget.

Finding Happiness

I keep looking for happiness

In big moments to smaller incidents

Always thinking I’ll encounter it here and there

But most of the time happiness finds me faster

Than I can,

But then it also leaves me first.

And I never get to ask all the things I wanted

Like, how do I find it again?

So the next time I am still looking in unlikely places

And in the wrong times

Is it a wonder then, why I can never find happiness?

You could have been that girl

Love is of course the best place to start writing

For how can a mere heart hold all that you have to say?

But Love is also the easiest time to stop writing,

You have things to say, but no words anymore.

You grow older,

Replace paper with people

You forget the pen

And pack your favorite lipstick instead

That’s not love for you; that’s life

And you are happy without the words

You are happy not writing about why you no longer believe in love

Happier not trusting others to keep their word

Happy to just exist in moments

Fairy tales are best left at home, under pillow cases

And kisses that curl your toes are tucked away in dreams

You are all grown up now and love is just another expression

And poetry is for people with things to say

And you have concerns of your own

Problems to which there are no solution

Relationships that are more like entanglements

You don’t have time for paper

Paper didn’t heal you then; paper wouldn’t make you believe again

So you forget to hold your thoughts

Time is of essence

And you stop to write, stop to love

It’s time to open your eyes and live again.

One day you get a glimpse from behind the glass window of your car

Of a small cafe by the road

Where young lovers crowd

You see a girl sitting at a table

She’s writing away all her sorrows

You could have just easily been that girl.

But you chose to toss the diary out the window

And walked out of that cafe so along ago

So you sit behind glass windows in cars and to drive to work

And think to yourself, you could have been that girl.