A Fair World

It’s not fair.

It’s not fair that I keep writing to you while you never write back. It’s not fair to me to remember so many things and yet forget the ones that matter. It’s not fair that when I hear my phone ring, for a moment I wish it was you. It’s not fair that this morning I woke up not thinking about you. It’s not fair that I have to make the calls you should have. It’s not fair to your mother, your friends. I don’t know what their relationship was to you, so how do I mimic it to fill their void. It’s not fair for me to try, knowing I won’t succeed. Nobody had filled your void in me. It’s not fair that I am alive today and you are not. It’s not fair that you picked a path that we all know is there and yet never tread up on. It’s just not fair.

Life is not fair. Time is not fair. Memory is not fair. Why can’t I bring to mind memories of us? Why can’t I think back and remember old times? Songs? Places? It’s not fair I can’t go to those places anymore without thinking of you. It’s not fair I am afraid to go in some places. It’s not fair for you to leave me. I am not used to walking this alone. It’s not fair because I am stumbling, falling and reaching for you. But beside me there is nothing but the air. It’s not fair because you never told me that if one day I fall you wouldn’t be there to hold me and give me balance. It’s not fair, because even now, I think any moment you would catch me. But I just keep falling.

It’s not fair because I am afraid of the fall. I am scared of the hurt, I am scared of being like this. I am scared of living life, scared of taking a peaceful breath. I am scared that once I let myself go, something else would hit me and send me flying like this. It’s not fair because I don’t deserve this. It’s not fair because these days I am always scared.

It’s not fair that I didn’t get my goodbye. It’s not fair that you didn’t think about me. I have known you, always, yet it wasn’t enough for you to remember me once. It’s not fair that I have to live with that for the rest of my life. It’s not fair that you have labeled me a failure in my own eyes. It’s not fair because once it wasn’t like this. Once I was happy, and I thought you were too. Once this was simpler. It’s not fair because now I doubt anything will feel so simple again.

It’s not fair that I didn’t know. I didn’t know when you thought you had enough, when you thought you were giving up. It’s not fair that for twenty four blissful and bleak hours I didn’t know you were gone. It’s not fair that I couldn’t sleep once I heard no one could find you. I passed that night worrying about you, praying the worst had not come to pass. It’s not fair that from the moment I heard, deep inside I already knew it had. There was a fear in my heart I couldn’t explain. It’s not fair how I had to find out. It’s not fair that when I Google about you I find out every detail of your dying. It’s not fair that I can’t forget even if I want to. It’s not fair I can’t Google our past. Friendship. Memories. Get togethers. The times I have called crying. The time you trusted me. It’s not fair.

And if none of this is fair, then why do you get to go away and why am I still here? Why did you put me in this forever? Forever was supposed to be about the good things. Forever love. Forever friendship. Forever happily-ever-afters! So why is my first forever your death? It’s not fair because this is surely not what the promise of forever should be about. It’s not fair because now I am scared of forevers. It’s not fair because that’s the one thing I’ll always associate with you. My forever friend. Forever dead.

Nothing can ever make this fair again in this unfair world you’ve left for me to walk upon.

The Letter You Couldn’t Write (Part I)

I know the lure of friendship. I know you are thinking it means we open our lives to the people we call our friends. But sometimes it happens like this. We open our lives, our smiles, but close the doors to changes in perception.

I’ll always be your hero. The one with all the answers, so I didn’t have the heart to tell you that I was haunted by questions too. It not that I didn’t trust our friendship or think you wouldn’t be able to understand my problems, I just didn’t know how to word out my restlessness.

To me, you will always be that girl, the one who had all these amazing stories inside of her. That little girl who meticulously collected Barbies, whose parents indulged her childish whims. You will always be the girl afraid of loud noises, fights and confrontation. I still see you sitting in the balcony holding your hands to your ears, because of fight next door. You were to be protected from all the harshness in the world. So even now, it is hard for me to bring darkness in your life.

To me, you will always be the girl who had to grow up all too fast. You were the girl whose dreams came true, all at the wrong times and turned her life into a nightmare. You were the girl who did everything right and yet her ending got all screwed up. So even now, I don’t have the strength to tell you that I am about to hand you another tragedy to add to your life. I can’t tell you, over the phone, you did everything right, yet I am about to die.

I would tell you though, you will go through it and come out on the other end – alive. Because that’s who you are. You don’t know any other way to live. I can’t tell you how many times I wished I had that in me. Sometimes though, it’s not enough. Being alive and living are two different things and I don’t know how to do one without the other. So don’t think of me as if I am dying. Whenever you think of me, think of all those times we have lived. Remember the laughter that keeps ringing in my ears, even now as I sit down to write. Remember the long rickshaw rides, the setting sun and the promise of friendship we have made to each other. Remember to call my mother, especially because she wouldn’t expect any calls from me. Tell her all the things you would have told me. Fine, if not all that, tell her stories of the past. Tell her the stories inside of you. Tell her about me. I know she would never forget, neither would you. But speak of me, because every time my name falls from your lips, I’ll live a little longer again.

Don’t peek into the past in search for reasons. Do not color our childhood, our memories trying to decipher the point from where it all went downhill. Don’t blame yourself, live in guilt or shame or pain. I wouldn’t want you to do that to yourself. Don’t beat yourself up thinking what you could have said to alter this course of my life. I would never give you this burden. So live. Live enough for the both of us.

Because the true lure of friendship is promises. Promise me, you’ll be okay, you will get through this and keep on holding on to me. Promise me, you will be a friend enough to know when to let go. Once, you had said to me that I was your anchor. I guess it didn’t occur to you that anchors have to sink all the way to the bottom, before it can hold anything else in place. I promise, even as I go down, I’ll keep anchoring you on.

Let’s Talk About Suicide

Suicide.

Yes, I want to talk about it. Too long we have hidden as a country, as a culture under its shadows, afraid to question it. Suicide is not a stigma, and it is time we open our worlds, our conversations and our minds to it. Doing the opposite is what gets people killed usually.

Throughout history we have seen people distance themselves from things they do not understand. As if by not talking about it, they would miraculously make it disappear. Too often we stamp labels when faced with our incapability to accept something out of the norm. Not too long ago, it was sex, tobacco, alcohol, drugs that we considered taboo. Someone had to once break those unutterable s to educate people. If we don’t know what we are fighting against, how can we hope to win?

Our adamant stance in avoiding it, is unhinging our youth today. Looking away is not stopping it from happening. Keeping razor blades and pills locked in a cabinet is not stopping them. Assuming they do not have access to guns, or ropes or rooftops or ceiling fans is not keeping them safe. Telling them to stay away from the water, is not saving them. Putting them in a box is not freeing them from the bondage of their thoughts. And if we have been failing, that must mean we are doing something very wrong. So yes, I do think we need to break away from those silences and talk about it.

When someone dies of suicide, it is not their death alone that we mourn. We mourn our failures as a society from preventing it from happening. We mourn our inability in sighting those signs. We mourn not knowing the right things to say, the people to reach out to. We mourn knowing we erred and someone innocent, brave paid the ultimate price for our mistakes.

Too often we brush suicides aside saying, the people who killed themselves were weak. It is the explanation that absolves our part in it. But think about it – weakness is not an attribute that would encourage them to bleed the life out of them. It takes a lot of courage to do the unthinkable. And it takes a long way to reach that unthinkable conclusion. People suffer a lot to reach the tipping point. But our uneducated eyes do not follow their path.

We put life above everything. But imagine the hurt, the pain it would take for someone to put death above that. They are not scared of dying, but rather of living. And that is our failure. It’s not that we couldn’t instill the value of life in them, but rather we did nothing to stop the value of life from falling in their eyes.

People who commit suicide go through immense depression over a long period of time. We need stop laughing at depression. It is fatal, considering some people end up killing themselves from it. Instead of making fun, or ignoring people who suffer from depression, we need to acknowledge their pain. Making light of the matter, makes  them eventually think they do not matter. But we all know that everybody matters. If we cannot communicate that small information to them, then we need to learn how to communicate better.

When someone close dies of suicide, our society pressures us not to ask why. They say the why does not matter. It will not bring them back, will not give them peace. Forgive and forget. But we need to ask why. Why did we let them down? Why did they think death was better than life? Why did we miss the signs? Why did they feel no one would care? Or think they had no one to confide in? Without asking the why we will never figure out where we went wrong. We won’t be able to save the next person. The why may not bring our loved ones back, but it surely will put a stop to someone else’s loved one from following that path.

We have been taught through religion, through social beliefs and customs to ostracize people who commit suicide. We have been taught to say they would not go to heaven or suffer for eternity. We need to stop preaching that bullshit. Instead of putting punishment and fear in the hearts of people, we need to open our eyes and ears. Because obviously those antiquated words are not helping everybody. Obviously some people are falling through the cracks. And since we are so bent in ostracizing suicide, nobody is willing to be associated with it anymore.

When we talk about suicide we are not condoning it, but we are giving a chance to those who suffer to speak up. We are giving them the opportunity to talk to us, to ask for help. We are giving them hope.

So let’s break the taboo. Let’s burn the stigma. Let’s talk about suicide.

Box of feelings

Someone teach us to free our feelings, because we do not know how to live like that. We do not know how to word our feelings out, or express them through action. We are stuck wanting someone to read our silences. But silences are unreadable. We do not know how to think positive, because really, what is truly positive? We know that the negatives accompany every good thing and we are afraid. We are so afraid to let our hopes soar. It doesn’t take that long to fly, but we know when hopes crash, everything breaks into pieces.

Call us cynical if you must, but what can we really say? We do not use cynicism as our armor. Please don’t think so. It is but our savior. As long as we know something will go wrong we will not end up shattered. We call it the reality.

So we need someone to teach us how to let go. We need to learn to love, to dream, to be an optimist. But optimism is not something that we are familiar with. We need to trust in something so bad. We do not know how to let all our thoughts show. Instead we pack them in boxes, wrap them in fairy tales and tuck them away.

Now that box is lost and we need help to find it again. Someone please help us find it again. That box holds so much of us. But we do not how to ask for help. We do not know how to say that we need support. We do not understand how we can find someone who sees us, even without the box of feelings in our hands.

So please. We know, it is hard to find people you cannot see, hear them when they don’t speak. But our eyes are speaking, our hands are speaking. We are asking for help. Will you help us to find ourselves again?

The Used To Be’s

Sometimes I scroll down the social network page and look at all the people I used to know.

There’s the brother who played sports and stayed away from girls when I left. Now he calls me for advice regarding girls. There’s the picture of my extended family, all huddled together in the frame that holds faces I haven’t met yet. There are the people I used to know in high school. Some I have always talked to, some barely said enough words. I see them married, engaged to people I don’t even know. I see some of them making plans that I never got around to hear. I see pictures of how they look and try to find a similarity I can trace back to.

And sometimes I can, but those don’t happen very often. Often I just reach across the screen and touch the pictures, the messages, the stories they share and wish to know them once again. Instead I fist my hands and pull away, close my eyes and stop to wonder. It doesn’t matter anyway. Lives go on and that is true for me as well.

And then I wonder again, do they think the same thing about me? Do they look at my picture and see someone different? Do they wonder if I still sound the same, smile the same, cry the same? Do they feel that my life had taken me so very far from them that the only thing they can do now is gaze at someone who used to be?

But then, I guess no one likes to word their grievances. So we all go back to our social networks, scroll through endless names and go on pretending, avoiding how very separate we have all become. Perhaps even forgetting, the very things that once connected us all.

The Oasis of Normalcy

We all pretend it didn’t happen yet. Disaster didn’t strike our world and tip us off the balance. We all turn to do the things, the usual things we always do. It’s as if we believe that if we pretend long enough we can convince ourselves we are still safe. That everything is the way it used to be. We sit down to dinner, turn the music up, pick up the novel placed face down on the table and start reading from the last page.

Then one of us says something ambiguous, as if slowly breaching the silence we had erected. We all know we can’t close our eyes forever. But a little but longer wouldn’t hurt, would it? We all opt to ignore it. Not yet. Let the normalcy rule for a bit more. We go our separate ways and try, as hard as we can, to show others we are busy, immersed in our own world. But the truth is, we aren’t really. All of us keep thinking back to what had already come to pass. We try to distract our mind for few more hours. Let tonight be peaceful. But then we carry our thoughts to bed and sleep on it. And wonder about it.

Next morning we gather and slowly bring up the topic we have been dreading. The Question. Hell, bring it out in the open. We hope, we pray, once we have stopped avoiding it would stop haunting us. But it never happens like that. Instead we are drowned as the barge is opened. We fight to stay alive, to keep breathing. We fight our pride and accept help from others, because surviving is all that’s important isn’t it? We don’t know how to swim, how to stay afloat. But we learn, we take support and sometimes support others to keep them from going down. Something, anything to get us through this. It goes on and on, until we are exhausted.

We keep thinking if only we somehow survive this, we can make it to the safe haven. The place where nothing goes wrong. And the lucky few, determined few of us do reach that. We think it’s The Plateau and we’ll be able to rest. There’s a breathing room, a tiny window to exhale our breath, to sigh. But then the Next Big thing happens. And once again we are going down, down.

Our fight for normalcy, for stability wages on, but it’s an oasis that doesn’t exist. We are fools for believing in it. But then again, without such foolish belief, there would be no hope and no reason to keep fighting at all, would there?

The Others

The world in which we live is flawed. People cry, people go hungry but the others don’t care. The others can smile, can eat; the others can waste food. The others can afford luxurious cars to go to their high rise apartments.

We all talk about differences. Do you know the biggest difference? Our world is divided into two: us and the others. No matter where we are, what we do, it all comes down to where those others are and what they have done. The others are the standard against which we measure ourselves. The others have all, and we have none.

So who are these others? Anybody, other than us, is others. Right?

Is it a surprise then, why we can’t appreciate what we have? It seems as if we only think of those others when we want something. We never think the others don’t have what we have. We don’t think of others when we are being grateful. We never think, to someone else out there, we might just be one of the others.