har ek mod par hum ghamon ko saza de

20102025 JOURNAL ENTRY

I lie with my body facing the left of the room, and my heart hurts. I get afraid, so I turn to the right, but then I only see a pile of things that need attention. Everything is harmful and hurtful, in one way or another. I feel like a Pain Factory wherein Elements clock in every day and do overtime. I pay.

Everybody from everywhere is going home for the festival season. The current sensation in my body is akin to what I would feel when everybody in school would hang out with each other, minus me, minus the school boundary. The past week was full of people, which meant more angles of attack on my weakened sustenance. I felt left out in places, in instances that don’t add up to anything later on but haunt me until my brain gets tired of thinking about them.

Presently, I am not tired of it all. I spend my days, all alone, rearranging situations and emotions until the pointedness adjusts, and the pain blunts.

I spent today drinking by myself, scrolling through Instagram, looking at other substance-pilled people, and memes that all mean the same thing. Everything means the same thing. There is somebody at the other end, conveying only one ardent desire – LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME CAN YOU SEE WHAT I AM MADE UP OF IS IT GOOD IS IT WORTHY?

I spent the last couple of hours lying down in various positions, adjusting around my kittens, thinking. I love thinking so much.

I thought of spirals, how nothing is ever a full circle, but a bit distended from the original path. Nothing ever returns. I listened to songs that meant so much when I was somebody else. I listened to RibsbyLorde and SuperRichKidsbyFrankOcean. I am finally a teenager alone in her bedroom, a decade too late. Parents ain’t around (enough/anymore). It drives me crazy, getting old.

I thought of Fiona Apple and almost cried, the beer quick to act. I thought of all these sounds crafted in specific orders and how they all have left spaces within themselves for us to fit our small lives in them. I thought of how many songs I had listened, and how many I had long forgotten, and how they would find me when the time was right. I like leaving things at that, even though it has never worked in my favour. Nothing has found me as of yet. I am still lost.

I thought of blue and expanse; sometimes they are the same thing. Wherever you come from, wherever you will end up, blue will never leave you. Some days it feels like the entire world is bruised to keep me company.

A few days ago, coming back from work, I looked at the inky blue sky melting into the red and yellow of traffic, the scene so electric that it almost made me forgive the arduous commute back home. I am trying not to be angry at people, so I get angry at things and concepts. I am currently angry at my broken chopping board, the broken cooker handle, and the constant smoke in the air. I am angry at the concept of festivals and how it is tied so intricately to the idea of homecoming. Or going back, mostly. I listen to Bruce Springsteen to apply a salve on this specific pain.

Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack

I went out for a ride and I never went back

Like a river that don’t know where it’s flowin’

I took a wrong turn and I just kept goin’

Everybody’s got a hungry heart

Everybody’s got a hungry heart

Lay down your money and you play your part

Everybody’s got a hungry heart

I am angry at the long commute; I am angry at the big, sweet box that I got handed at the office. I am angry at the unpredictable weather and my inability to read, and the heaviness I am feeling right now. I am angry at the fact that everybody is going home, and I am yet again left alone. I thought we were in this together. We are not. Turns out even the closest of your kin has another secret kin they have to get back to, that they like more than you. All of this is childish, but I have been a dissatisfied little girl for the longest time possible, albeit mostly in private. I spend whatever time I have these days training myself to keep it all within. I am trying not to be angry at people. Nothing is ever a person’s fault; it is definitely something in the air, trust me. We are all rid of sin, you are free now, or so I proclaim, and who am I to do so is something that will be decided under your jurisdiction. Everything here is two-way; otherwise, I would be standing at the corner of your street with leaflets of my sermons every Sunday.

The fact of the matter is, the heart hurts no matter what way you position yourself in this world. It was never about avoiding the pain, anyway.