journal.coffee

It baffles me how we see after the storm. The sheer clarity excites me—how we notice when the gales stop blowing, when the sun breaks, when the dust finally settles, and the rain turns to harmless pellets of water until it all finally stops. Then, almost compulsively, we look at the sky. Then, compulsively still, we tell another person the rain has stopped. It rarely plays out differently. Nobody asks, but something inside us urges us to tell them it is over. It has stopped raining, and we are safe again. When all is said and done, it is often said repeatedly to anyone you meet. I reckon it’s the most important thing to tell your fellow people—we are safe now.

As they often join you to look at the sky, you stand together in awe of what’s left after the blue-grey haze of the storm lifts. It was irrelevant how observant one was or how wise; no one saw clearly in a storm. As proud of our intelligence as we were, we were forgetful creatures. A few days of overcast skies, and we forgot how the sun felt. All we had was memory, but memory was tricky and rarely matched the real thing. The little, childlike peek through the curtain after days of torrential rains was how we recorded our blue skies. The colour surging with an odd sense of security could never match the general days. And so, we had to look again every time it stopped raining.

A few days of inclement weather made us grateful for a cup of coffee; an unintended walk on a rainy day made us understand the importance of our regular, dry clothing. It was only at the tip of imminent doom that we could recall how good it all was, and then, we wished if we could only get it once again. It happened over and over, almost as if a cycle of life. No one learned their way around it. We were forgetful creatures—we forgot both our blessings and our curses in the blink of an eye. While getting used to pain was possible, it was much easier to get used to happiness.

The sky was often the most forgotten thing in the world. No one could describe it to you in detail until it was lost, even if temporarily, and most storms were an act of tough love—trying to teach us a lesson we could never learn.

I often wonder how your days are or what you do on an idle weekend afternoon when the chores are done and the sun shines through your window. I wonder if you have the same white curtains which did not shy away from letting the yellow in. There’s a nursery on the path I often walk on. When I do, I smile about your hoarding of plants, imagining how many you must’ve bought by now. Last I remember, there were seven on your desk alone. I think about whether you still make those indulgent breakfast bowls with the oats, the caramelised apples, the cinnamon.

I wonder if you still have the dreams you had. I hope you’re fighting for them. Knowing you, you’re probably burning the midnight oil. I hope you’ve been resting too. I know your propensity to push yourself to the point of getting sick. We were always the same in that regard. As for me, my dreams have changed since we parted. I’m not very sure of what I want from life, not entirely. I do have an inkling now, though. I’m taking it from there—playing at being a writer lately. You always said I had it in me. Here’s me putting your claim to the test.

I wonder if you still sit near the sea by yourself. I wonder if you still cry looking at the sunset over the water. I hope you wipe the dust off your camera now and then. You always had a good eye for the beauty most people did not pay much attention to. The winter skies often make me think of you. When the sky turns pink in the evening, I can’t help but smile. I hope nothing much has changed on your side of the world. I hope you’re happy. I hope you still laugh.

It occurred to me the other day how my choosing you was always half the story, of how love is not about giving but also, being open to receiving. I hope you have it in you to do the latter when love arrives the next time around. As for me, I’m well on my way. I’ve had the warmest days lately, and if I were being bold, I think I may be happy. I’m always a bit unsure about it without you around, but I will have to get used to it.

I look forward to the day when your name will only be your name and not a quiet implosion. I think I’ll go and read in the sun now.

The desk feels awfully cold all of a sudden.

When you call people over for some games and dinner, amidst the merriment and laughter, an elbow often knocks a vase down. As it hits the ground and dissipates into bits of china over the floor, your heart sinks, and while you understand it was a mistake, your face has other ideas. It betrays your empathy. Your despair is apparent—the wrinkles of anger are chiselled on your forehead, your smile turns smaller, clearly indicating you’re maintaining the decorum. Your voice takes a pitch—an urgency. From that point on, everyone becomes careful. A double-checking of elbows ensues. People knew how to respond to loss. It was instinctual to look at it and understand. This was true for broken vases and hearts alike.

But when someone loses a dream, something they never had, no one sees it break, and therefore, no one understands. It was a lone loss, limited to thoughts. It was a grieving no one could help you with or tiptoe around. It was hard to grieve. It was much harder to grieve for a life you will never have. The outward appearance remained as spotless as the living room cleaned right before the night of games and dinner. When you lost a dream, your thoughts did not change. You still imagined the same possibilities you spent days dreaming of, but now, the thoughts brought dread. The knowledge of how the things you imagined would never happen haunted you. The dream died, and you could only mourn. No one else understood the gravity of the situation, for there was no shattering to see.

But dreams were not mere vases; they were houses: rooms of reverie, of possibility, beds and duvets of comfort, yards of freshly-cut grass and laughter, a patio flowing with warm conversation, and a little garden of hope; a little escape when the going got tough. Then, the house was haunted by what could be, the silence of something that never was, the garden that was never planted. Left behind in time, you stayed by yourself. No one knew why or for how long you’d stick around. Eventually, you burned the house down. Like all grieving, this one charted its own course. Like all grieving, this ended, too.

Then, one day, you dreamt again.

The other day while I was reading, a bee landed on the page. It stood around the corner. Then, it walked between the lines like we often walk around in the alleys, walkways and gardens built around some monument, appreciating them without an ounce of understanding of the why. We could never know for sure why someone did what they did. We only had a cheap explanation on a plaque now and then. Like we left the complex after an hour of feigning curiosity when instead we were bored out of our wits, the bee flew away as well. I continued reading. I had nothing better to do.

That was not entirely true. I had a lot of things to do, but the sun was warm. I did keep a check on my watch to see if I didn’t go overboard with this delinquency. This was not new to me. I have always sneaked to the library in school to read something. In high school, I often found myself in one of the labs because our teacher there listened to fantastic music to which he’d introduce me. My taste for all music is a gift from him imparted over two years. In college, I often sat in seminars with a book in my hand. The new trends in technology had no authority over the classics.

All we had, all we could grab from this world, were these little pockets of time. I was a furtive thief, quite like the neighbourhood cat. The one who belonged to no one but somehow survived. The one who called the neighbourhood its own and had a familiarity with everyone in it, but no one could tell you where it disappeared to when it did. No one could predict when it would appear next. The only difference between the cat and myself was that I had actual duties, like casting a vote, meeting someone for lunch, crunching numbers to earn some money. None of it was too interesting, but I carried it well to an extent.

This responsible delinquency kept my life interesting. I was always looking to steal a moment of my own. I often wondered why I acted this way. Like the bee lost in the labyrinth of sentences, I did not know how to make sense of it. Perhaps, reading would not be as fun if I only read for days without anyone asking me to go to the bank at the same hour.

All adult life was an act of quiet, harmless rebellion.

Perhaps, I was broken in some way. There was an almost unending capacity for forgiveness in me. It did not make sense to me. I look at my father sometimes. I look at his life, and I notice where I get this emotional altruism from. I see the consequences of it, here and there—and yet, I live a life guided by what I saw growing up. I look at my mother. I look at her immense capacity to go out of her way for others, and I see where I get my sense of responsibility from. I see how too much of it can take a toll on someone, now and then—and yet, I take the weight as if it were my own.

Combined with some of my own experiences, some lessons I learned through proxy, and some mistakes I made on my own, I had lost the ability to hold a grudge. It was a terrible affliction. Life was much easier for people who could hate easily and quickly. Those in their marble institutions and ivory towers could talk about kindness all day long; the average person got through their days by slicing connections on the slightest of misgivings. Why blame them? They were better off doing it this way than understanding.

Empathy was a privilege of people with enough time on their hands—to sit and ponder. Those trying to make a living, to save themselves, could not afford that kind of time. I often did not have the time myself, but in a series of events I could not even replicate myself, I had developed a distaste for walling people off. People who left a sour taste in my mouth could still ask for a favour, and on most days, I obliged. A friend or two often advised me how this was not a wise way to live. To their dismay, I did not learn a thing.

To be honest, I did not even understand on most days, and yes, I was no saint either—I was furious now and then. Still, I put my hand forward when asked for help. It was a taxing way to live. I could see how this capacity was misused by others, but I often reminded myself of history when I felt the need to change.

To me, humanity was a story of regular people forgiving each other, of lending an unwilling hand, over and over, even when it hurt, especially when it hurt, regardless of who gained or lost. History was checkpointed in treaties of peace.

There’s a palm tree about a kilometre away from the house I grew up in. It belongs to someone else—not that anyone owns trees. They just happen to find themselves within walls of someone’s property. Then, if they’re not chopped down for reasons beyond their comprehension, they continue growing there. They didn’t need to be taken care of often; they were capable of looking after themselves.

I often walk by this lone specimen. It stands by itself, proud and tall, almost as if it were challenging the sky behind it. I was too small to intervene. All I could do was walk by it and stare in awe at its reluctance to bow to anything, at its constancy, the permanence of this slender silhouette, unwavering. So, that is what I’ve done year after year.

When I find myself in the street it calls home, I look up at it like we looked at a friend who has always been around. Perhaps, not in the most active role, but their presence is what begets respect. In the same way one caught up with a friend, I reflect on my life when I walk by it. It does not take me long to say hello and leave—I am a fast walker. But, there is a camaraderie in the moment, a familiarity one would never understand by mere words.

The palm, standing tall still, has been a silent spectator of my life for long enough; I have reason to believe it might just recognise me as I recognise it too. I gave my heart and soul to someone on this precise street—in an event as simple as running into them. The phone call for my first job was answered on this street, in front of the very palm. This was where I fell in love with the rain again, learning to choose happiness.

In times of uncertainty, you needed a reminder to stand your ground. The tree is one of the few things in the neighbourhood which reminds me of myself through time. I walked by it again yesterday. I looked up out of habit, and it was there, as it always has been. I thought of the first time I had walked by it almost over a decade ago.

Not much had changed, and the little that had did not stand ground in front of its endless continuity.

While the minor differences are too many and too unimportant to count, I believe the one thing which separates me from what I remember myself as from a few years ago is the ability to be insignificant, to be unimportant, to be—in the most obvious sense of the word—happy. There was greatness in not intending to be great in the face of a world that runs on achievement. There was courage in the common person, in the nobodies, the people whose lives are rarely well-documented. Not all of us were conquerors, and those who conquered anything at all, did it arbitrarily, almost unintentionally.

It was easy to want some kind of worldly success but far difficult to exist without the subtext of elaborate dreams and impossible ambition. What was I on a random day without my pursuit for the picture-perfect life I could possibly never achieve? I reckon this understanding—or lack thereof—had prevented me from reaching this newfound levity earlier. The delay has only made me more shameless in embracing it. I am basking in the lighter days. I am not without ambition, of course. There are things I want from life. It is human to want. The trick is to not let it dictate your days. It is a dissonance, but it serves well to those like me—who held onto things too tightly.

I couldn’t be too sure about what changed or how I achieved this calm. But something did, and now I am happy, or at least, I have a sort of contentment I cannot put well into words. Words and language were a terrible proxy for our capacity to feel. The word smile pales in comparison to what you see when you see someone smiling, and if you’ll take my word for it, using the longer, more complex word for something is worse. In any case, I could not possibly tell you what I feel in my heart. I only know I have now given myself permission to exist, to breathe. I embrace the banality of life instead of making it larger than it has to be.

In a sentence, without wasting any more words, I’d say it only occurred to me for the first time a few months ago how I could not fail at creating a life that belonged only to me. I found relentless freedom tucked beneath that epiphany. It has not been the same since.

I believe life has an interesting way to start everyone out with a certain drive—a unique way to look at everything—only to have the world squash it before their eyes. This destruction was not immediate. It was how the leftover rain, falling drop by drop at an inconspicuous stone sitting by itself in the corner, managed to make a hole in it. It was a slow burn; one could rarely mark when it happened. A rock has barely any capacity to perceive the lengths of time, and even with their clocks and calendars, people were only a smidge better.

We did not realise how far we walked from ourselves until we cried, just like the rock broke apart and spilt the last drop, which struck the final blow. Crying was an event so rare in the adult life, at least in my experience, that I remember each breakdown. When I say rare, I don’t mean it wasn’t plenty. I have cried enough since I left home in the standard rite of passage. We pretend we’re different from the other animals as if we don’t act precisely the same way in most things. It was a staple characteristic of life on this planet—to leave the nest.

In any case, I remember each time I have cried since I was handed the reins of my life. I was meek for most of my childhood—too sensitive to most things. I often found myself overwhelmed. Yet, I barely remember all those times now. Of course, memory is fickle, and now that I have written these words down, they will ruffle some old strings, and I will find myself unexpectedly morbid by the evening. When I say I barely remember them, I only mean the moments are not available at my beck and call.

Perhaps, we should cry more often—for sadness, for happiness, for love—so we may not perceive it as something unusual but a regular, rote event no one pays heed to. That is all wishful thinking. For all I know, only in moments of unimaginable heartache did I find the strength to attempt to change things. No, to make them as they were before the world told me how they should be.

Perhaps, all those drops of rain do is tell the rock to move, over and over, and when they realise it cannot do so for it is stuck in its ways, they break it apart so it may become dust and move after all.

When I was a bit younger and a bit foolish than I am now, I used to think pain equalled greatness. With respect and reverence in my eyes, I looked up to the greats, for the more I read them, the more I found brokenness among all of them, connecting them through time. It was how I defined writing, too. It was the sharing of what ails us so others might feel at home, and in that slice of a moment, I too felt greater than I was; I felt greater than my words were.

Now, I see it for it is, and it is nothing but a habit. The greats did not write about the qualms and complaints of being human. They only wrote out of habit. It was the people who assigned them a role—the poster-children of all things that broke us. A note of optimism by any of them was left alone, considered branching from their usual, and forgotten as a lesser work. Perhaps, they were only asking people to stop with the clapping.

And so, I wish to never be great. I want to be commonplace, forgettable, and even dull. I hope you find nothing but a mild intrigue in my words, and occasionally, if they are good, I hope you’re entertained. No one remembered a poem that made them feel joy. Our narratives were always bookmarked by things that destroyed us. We thought of our lives in a stream of significant loss. It took substantial effort to think about the good, run of the mill days. It took less than a second to remember the pain.

The human capacity for suffering was astonishing. I would not fuel the fire. Naturally, life will break me. Out of habit, I may record a few words about it, and maybe they become all you remember from me, but I have to try. I must try to write more about the days when nothing ever happened—when I walked only to walk, when I drank only to have a drink, and when I was by myself not out of loneliness but happenstance.

Here’s to us—the commoners, the forgotten, the insignificant. Here’s to the people who lived and died for nothing in particular.

I wanted to write something profound. Simple, maybe, but profound. But here I was, sitting, waiting for the electrician to ring the bell only so he could help fix the water heater. It was all I could think of, and it did not bother me as much. People rarely talked about the simplest things—getting groceries, getting the heater fixed, and the dishes we washed every night. Yet, these were the things that our lives revolved around.

Sure, you could have all your dreams in the palm of your hand, a house so high no one can even look up at it without getting blinded by the sun. Yet, there is a good chance you would be waiting like me for the electrician to come fix something. If you were handy, you could handle most of it yourself. I tried to do most of it myself, too. But most of life was waiting for assistance. It was the very fabric of society. You were always waiting—in traffic, in aisles, airports and stations, your own home—for someone else.

I had a deep respect for every job in the world that actually moved it, simply because I could not do it. I had never been someone who went out in the day to physically change things for others. No leader, celebrity or CEO moved the world. They only talked in the high and mighty jargon. The people like cab drivers, people who handled deliveries, electricians, hairdressers, plumbers, and on and on held the world together. The others, like me, continually spewed bullshit in words and fifty-slide presentations about hullabaloo no one will remember.

They weren’t unnecessary—most people did something significant, and everyone worked hard regardless of what they worked on. I had respect for hard work, but I could not respect someone based on how high they were in the hierarchy. I have always had a problem with it. Labels and positions meant nothing to me.

I often came off as polite but disrespectful to most people who were full of themselves. Naturally, it confused them. They could not decide if I liked them or not. For the most part, I did not. I only treated everyone as a fellow human being with the same qualms, the same heartaches, the same broken water heaters—no less, no more.

There were no Gods among us.

Life ebbed and flowed between pockets of happiness and phases of devastating sadness. Like most people, I’ve had my share of both. I’ve smiled for hours staring at the cityscape, coffee and conversation serving as proper footnotes to these bookmarks in my memory. I’ve stood on ledges to see sunsets for what seemed to be the last time, broken and distraught. I’ve loved and hated the cold showers in June in different years. I still refuse to carry an umbrella, learning nothing from every single time I’ve come home drenched. The human soul was oddly stubborn. There was inertia in emotion, or at least, how we perceived it.

I’ve held onto happiness hard enough to be the one squeezing it out of my life as if I were squeezing some ketchup out of a bottle. I’ve built homes in despair, taking into account the one semester I spent at architecture school. Of course, the houses were flimsy. I did not know much about building them; I built them in people. Everything I’ve felt has always been enveloped by my state of mind. Sunrises have saved me from myself; crowds have made me feel a belonging like none other. Everything in my life has been romanticised to the point of annoyance. But now, I am neither happy nor depressed. I can see everything for what it is.

It is a good change of pace for someone who has scoured for meaning all his life. Without the lens of what I feel, I see a cup of coffee for what it is, I see people for who they are, and my days are just days, one after the other, all of them a combination of everything I have felt before in different measures. The sunsets are sunsets; you could never guess the palette for the day. The rain is now water and nothing else. The fluttering leaves, masking the sun in a game of peekaboo, are just the leaves. Conversation is conversation, nothing more, nothing less.

All my days are still as they were, as they always have been, and all of life is still incredibly beautiful, abundant, and infinite. I believe the one thing that’s changed is my desire for meaning from it all. An unbiased audience, I see it with an unmatched clarity now. Beauty never needed a reason to exist. It was only here to be looked at, calmly.

When I think of love, I remember little. They say grief blurs your memory. I believe they are wrong. When I think of love, I remember little, but what I remember, I remember clearly. Love is an accidental streak stain of red wine—a cheap cabernet—on the white corner of my otherwise spotless apartment at three in the morning. The broken glass serving only as an interrobang as it fell in synch with my falling heart. The base oscillating, stem still attached, surrounded by shards of broken glass until it came to a halt.

Love has been a long road paved with eggshells between two cities three thousand miles apart. It has been losing all I stood for only to continually talk in rote sentences and prescribed vocabulary, my words being pulled like a hapless marionette. It has been the fear of how a single word in the wrong intonation might spiral into an argument at eleven in the night after a long day working two jobs, only so I could afford a flight to visit for the weekend. It’s been running at the airport with the agonising pain of a torn ankle, phone in hand, doubt in mind, but boarding anyway.

Love has also been waiting. It has been waiting in a café for a date who never showed up. I believe a part of me never left from that little chair. I wonder if it’s still there, and if not, what does my ghost haunt now? Love to me is waiting for a promise of meeting again, of spending years holding on to the hope of insanity. Only for them to return, to tell me how they expected me to have forgotten, and how it was only natural for promises to break. It has been a masterclass in patience.

Love has been a museum of broken hearts—not all exhibits my own. But, love has been grieving for someone who is not dead. It has been a stalemate. Love has been begging for someone to stay, not for love, but only to lend a hand for a week; the fear of being left alone as your life fell apart. Love has been many things, really, but it has not for a moment, not even for a second, been kind.

And yet, a faint echo from somewhere deep within me tells me: it gets better. And so, I sit here—a sliver of hope on the table and my heart on my sleeve—waiting.

The one thing I had learned about being alone, or loneliness—semantics anyway—was that there was peace in camaraderie. It did not matter where you found it. They often say beggars could not be choosers—you had to take it to heart. If you craved a smile, you had to befriend your barista, and if you wanted to talk about ideas, you had to take the word of your cab driver. It was a luxury to want a specific kind of person and them being available at all times for all your needs. It was an impossible expectation from even the kindest, most well-intentioned of friends you had.

Perhaps, this is why I walked as much as I did. Back when I was studying, living alone then as I am now, I would get ready in the evenings and visit the crowded sectors, the markets, and the malls. I’d spend the entirety of my days there, going in and out of coffee shops, making small talk with the baristas who at some point recognised me, my regular orders.

Just so they did not forget me, I would change my regular order now and then. It kept things fresh, naturally, but it also gave me a different talking point. Sometimes, I’d order a hot chocolate instead of an americano. They’d ask me why, and I’d tell them I was a little under the weather. Then, we’d talk about how the winters were colder that season. As if that wasn’t something people said each year, a constant repetition of how things were getting worse with no proof in hand.

To this day, when I feel the loneliness engulfing me, my only instinct is to go out, even if no friends are available to grab a bite or drinks or coffee, and even if the family is busy. Although, family is rarely busy, especially if there’s love. I believe I could not change this about myself now. I was accustomed to this managed loneliness. I needed everything in moderation—other people, myself, silence. The streets were my cave to retreat to.

You were not always in luck, though. I left my flat to walk the other evening. I couldn’t see much in the shadows, but there was a sheet of rain under the street lamp that told me to rush back home. It was the only conversation I was granted that evening. It would have to do, I thought, and I walked back home.

It was a sunny day yesterday; the white buildings turned yellow, and the grass on my balcony looked like proper grass. It was the only time it looked like real grass, really. It was a bargain I could get behind. There was a tradeoff between the artificial and the real, and somewhere between all of that was life. People who did not step into nature often did not know what a little grass and sun could do to us. Those who did not live in towns or cities, the realm of make-believe, eventually got disconnected from the world they at some point had to return to. I was none of them; like always, I preferred not to belong. I lived suspended between the two worlds.

In spirit of the tradeoff, I decided never to clean those sheets of grass, like I once saw the person living across from me, a building ahead. I could see them vacuuming their balcony once, and it gave me a moment of confusion, at first, but then, a hearty laugh. They weren’t wrong in doing it, of course, but there was an irony embedded in there, apparent and for all to see, especially those who lived a beeline ahead of them. This event did not impact my decision in any way. Once I had cut the sheets to fit my balcony, the grass was real.

I got a few plants a couple of weeks ago, and when I fitted them into the planters, some soil fell on the grass. There are now two patches of mud on it. A pigeon flew into the balcony and brought a couple of twigs, and they remain, rolling here and there with the wind, stuck in the boxed balcony. When it left, it also left a few feathers behind. Feathers were a come and go; the breeze rarely minded taking them away. As I read in the sun, which shone brighter after a couple of days of relentless showers, some tufts of grass and one whole leaf lay near my feet. These little gifts from the neighbourhood brought me joy.

The two days of rain aside, yesterday was like most days in recent months. At first, I wanted to share this warmth with others, but as infinite as it was, I wasn’t intent on giving an ounce of it away. So, I basked in the sun, read a little and at some point, I fell into a nap. I woke up to a sky peppered with clouds.

It was a productive afternoon.

In talking to others about nothing in particular over a few cups of tea or coffee, or sometimes, as an exception, about grave things affecting our lives was a beauty most people did not pause to focus on; I had no intention to build an empire, but friendships, more and more of them. Friendships grounded on mutual respect and not a desperate attempt to not be alone. Although, reluctantly, even that was something I was willing to oblige.

It was sacred to me—conversation. A person could claim to be anything in the world. If they were bold, they could even claim to be happy, but their words often betrayed them at tea time on a Thursday afternoon. To know someone, you did not have to talk to them drunk, staring at the dark, starlit sky, as is often suggested, but in the aisle of a grocery store during rush hour on a Monday. It was the only time a person was busy enough to not think about what they said.

I would catch the drift of some conversation happening around me. As guilty as I am, I often eavesdropped for a bit. Not for information, hearsay or gossip, but instead for the voices. I liked noticing when someone used their social voice. I distrusted people who relied on it. There was a distinction in how people talked generally and socially—a drink in their hands, a plate on their table, a tag on their chest.

Of course, people talked differently with different people. But, this was only true for the content of the words, not the mannerism. Everyone brought a unique mix of voice, accent and words they preferred. The rest was a farce. It was a pretentious game about who could sound kinder or smarter. Perhaps, for some shrewd gain, not that anyone admitted to it, or to portray a value system they did not grow up with, or worse, believed in. This dislike was, of course, a fatal flaw. I lost more than I gained because of it.

It was not that I could not be tactful, only that I often chose not to be for the sheer simplicity of trying to be honest in most things. It was a terrible nuisance to use words you did not like, or worse, use a voice that wasn’t your own. I could never understand it all, not that I made any attempt to do so. I was too stubborn to even try.

I obsessively ripped detail off my words—places, technology, streets, monuments—because I wanted them to stay out of time. It was important to me. Perhaps, it was my only fixation. It was a conscious decision then not to name the town I grew up in, to not tell you about the world around me at all. If you wanted to know more about the world, you would not be sitting here reading these words in front of you, trying to escape. I respected it.

This often pushed me into a corner. It was difficult to write when you could not just pick something off the news to craft a few words around. Craft—I hated the word, primarily when writers used it. A craftsman followed instructions, an artist defied them. I was none of them, but if I were to choose, I’d prefer to defy. While I was stubborn, I was not naive; I was convinced this fixation was the sole contributor in only a handful of people ever knowing about my work because, in my preference to avoid the world, I often seemed apathetic towards it.

It was irrelevant to me, however, for I never wrote for anyone else. I did not even know if I was a writer, really. I could string a few words, and sometimes, I made sense. I believe it was more habit than the urge people prattled on about when they talked about writing in their little clubs and forums, talking about changing the world, grossly unaware of their privilege to be able to spend afternoon after afternoon talking about the world and its ailments. I wasn’t any better, of course, but I preferred to keep the irony limited to myself.

Writers who talked to other writers about writing were rarely writing anything at all. It was a hill I chose to die on a long time ago. I had no reasoning for why I put my thoughts down as regularly as I did, why I continually jotted broken sentences and phrases down as I went about my day, or why I pondered over so much when I had no intention whatsoever to try and affect most of it. Maybe, there was still time for me to find answers to the countless questions I decided against listing after three. It had only been about ten years of writing; three of doing it properly.

Writers have bled words for far longer than I have lived.

When I woke up in a new life a few months later, I thought of you. I spent the morning pacing, questioning my newfound levity, asking whether leaving without a word was the right thing thing to do. It was cold, and the idea only made it colder.

It occurred to me how people did not leave in grand announcements or after a candid conversation. It happened, of course, but it was rare. The act of leaving itself was a furtive, cunning and even desperate attempt to be free. Bags were rarely packed loudly and with a thump. People fled from other people like they left from prisons, slowly digging a hole in the back of the wall and stealing essentials into a bag. When a window arose, they ran for their lives.

The reasons for leaving were to each their own, and I was no one to have an opinion about the right or wrong way to do it. The matters of right and wrong never weighed on people wriggling in a pit of quicksand they stepped into of their own accord. I, too, was writhing in your uncertainty, trapped in your maybes and perhapses, with no end to the struggle in sight. So when I planned my escape, I did not make an announcement; I only chose to leave.

Eventually, I reached an impasse—I would not question my leaving had I not left. So, I settled the argument within me for it to have been a decision. Often, it did not matter if it were right or wrong, only that a decision was made. Perhaps, my deciding to leave was the only way out of our whirlpool of indecisiveness.

In the aftermath of my grand escape, I had no anger left for you. I had no love left either, only nostalgia. I had spent enough time mourning the cost of happiness, so I decided to begin writing.

As I wrote a few words about this brief inquiry, a pigeon suddenly flew onto the slab of my balcony. I saw its shape through the glass door, still frosted from the cold night. It walked straight across with its head bobbing till it reached the tail end and flew away. It made me laugh for no reason in particular. Maybe, it was the ridiculous bobbing of the head.

Often, it did not matter whether a joke was funny, only if the person listening desperately needed a laugh. I had always laughed much too easily.

I woke up with the feeble sound of rain pattering outside. Just then, in the haze of not having fully woken up, it occurred to me how maybe it wasn’t the rain. What if it was some neighbour a floor above or below my own doing some maintenance early in the morning? The thought made me angry for a split second until I settled for the more rational alternative—it was raining. I chuckled at how human I was, and a minute later, I got out of bed.

I replied to a few important messages; I left some for when I was done writing. I was learning to save my state of mind for these words. It did help to some extent, for I managed to write almost daily with this shift in perspective. Perhaps, there is some merit in protecting oneself. I wouldn’t know. I have rarely kept myself first. This was as new for me as for the few people disgruntled by this change in how I carried myself.

I thought about how I had slept with a slightly heavier heart last night as I made my bed. The morning after you slept with sadness always felt softer, and the rain outside, which I could see falling now since I had drawn the curtains open, only added to this air of calm. If we had even a sliver of care for ourselves, we were gentler with ourselves now and then. It took a lot of time to learn to care for ourselves, however. We were the last people we learned to care for.

I felt some hunger but didn’t want to have breakfast yet, so I picked a croissant up and had it with my coffee before writing. This little satiation almost made me not want to write anything, so I made a note of not having anything before I had written every day. Caring for ourselves came in different ways. In my daze of the croissant’s subtle sweetness, I sat for a while, staring at the wet grass in my balcony, which albeit fake, looked real enough in the right setting.

My gaze shifted to the drops sliding down the glass panels of the balcony. I noticed how they were out of step with the others. I believe, at some point, they took to their own pace—some slid slowly, some stopped altogether, and some splashed now and then in the puddle which had formed right below them.

Something about this made me happy, and so I began writing.

Did I have a dream? Perhaps, I did. Maybe, there was one beneath the layer of strict responsibility. I could often see a glint of it underneath the numbing weight of purpose or lack thereof. Perhaps, I traded it all away sliver by sliver in the seemingly significant sacrifices, negligible in the grand scheme of things. Often, I remembered pieces of it between the sips of countless cups of coffee I had by myself, for I could not stand other people for long and that I, myself, was tolerable in small doses. Tucked between all of that, I believe there was one.

While I sang songs about living in isolation, of this and of that, my dream was quite the opposite. My dream was of a noisy house, of a cacophony of the highest proportions, of a simple life complete with the picket fence and a yard. When I pictured it, I saw a breakfast table where everyone had to go somewhere, but there was still time to throw tantrums. I wanted the neat, enveloped life most people rejected in my time. I reckon it’s the only thing I truly wanted. I wanted it early too.

I had not thought about it for a while now. I was on the verge of forgetting. Dreams were often lost amidst rainy days where all one wanted was to get home dry. I had been running in the rain for long enough to begin revelling in it. The dream had all but washed away by this point. But like paint which appeared to have dried only for someone to touch it and wince in disgust, dreams were never entirely gone. The speckles of my dream still remained.

Don’t get me wrong, I grew up in a home where love has never ended. It was precisely why my dream was the way it was. I wanted to improve upon a painting already fit for museums, or even better, the memory of a child on a field trip. When I did talk about it, it was natural for people to point out how time was unimportant, but time was important. It was for me and for my dream.

We made do with what we got, however. It was all about making do with what we got. So, I was making do with my fingers crossed, gripping what’s left of it, afraid I might forget it all one day, quite like I forgot an umbrella in the stand by the door of a museum in a city where it never stops raining.

I lived in all seasons of my life at the same time. Since I woke up today, I have been to more cities than I can count. I remember the voice of each person I gave my heart to with an accuracy I could not even imagine putting down on paper. But even more, I remember the voices and faces of the countless others I befriended and forgot all about until a memory resurfaced. I was viewing my life at all times like slices placed carefully under a microscope. I did not know what I was trying to find, so when they asked me what was on my mind, I did not know what to say.

It had always been this way. Wherever I’ve gone, wherever I’ve sat, I could always feel the draw; these jumbled strings of memory pulling me like a twisted marionette. It was always in the corner of my mind, some old laughter which was now a song I couldn’t remember the name of, some room I couldn’t guarantee would still exist, and even if it did, it would not be the same; I have previously attempted to trace my steps to phantoms of my past, only to learn they didn’t care to stick around. I was, of course, the first to leave, so I couldn’t hold it against them either.

I did not know how to answer when people asked me if I were in good spirits. My calm was always accompanied with a loss I did not consider at first—when it happened. Only in hindsight did I stop to consider it. We must go forward; I understood it better than most. But all lives I’ve left behind, all futures I did not see pan out deserved, perhaps, in better hands, a completion I did not wait around for. As angry as I have been for being left behind, in the overall tally of things, I’ve been the one who was leaving, continually. Maybe, out of habit or worse, out of disregard for anyone and anything else.

My life so far has been a sentence skipped, a draft left midway, a story left untold for so long, I didn’t intend to tell it anymore. Perhaps, these fragments only wanted to be told. It was a terrible impasse.