4

Prompt: The rain.


My very first poem
Was about the rain

The words poured out
Just like the storm 
That had just ended

The poem was sad
Dramatic, depressing and childish

But I still remember 
How the writing itself
Felt like a cleanse

After that first one
The words kept coming

I wrote much more
Not very good and 
Full of teenage angst

That first was like 
Rain watering my mind

I don't romanticize it
But I am thankful
For what it started. 


(Four words a line for April 4. Not the best. But I tried.)
#NaPoWriMo2017

3

Prompt: Write a letter to your 12-year-old self.


Hello Ayesha,

Since you're reading this, it probably means there is a horrible fracture in the time-space continuum and universes are collapsing on themselves because of the paradox this future-past communication has caused. You'll understand that reference in a few years time. Then you'll pat yourself on the back for being clever and making the joke in the first place.

So here's the thing. I'm 25 right now, and no your fascination with round numbers doesn't end. I'm NOT writing to tell you that things get better, the world fixes itself, you will have friends who are good to you, your loneliness and anger are temporary, etc etc. 

I will not say these things to you because without all the angst you will go through now and in the next few years, you wouldn't grow to become me. Your anger, loneliness, attempts at writing, self-righteousness, stubbornness and belief that you know everything about everything, made me. 

All that pain that you've been hoarding, it crystallizes. But I do wonderful things with it. 

You'll grow up really quickly, you know. Wise beyond your years, everyone will say. It's not always a compliment. That feeling you have of being older inside your head? It'll never go away, but it makes me pretty amazing. 

You're gonna see some pretty terrible things in the future. You're seeing some pretty terrible things already. You're allowed to hate them. None of them are okay and they'll change you in ways I don't understand even now. 

You're gonna see and feel some pretty amazing things in the future too. I don't want to be all doom and gloom. 

Here's some advice. Be nicer to Zeina. She deserves it and needs it. 
Be nice to Srishti. She deserves it and needs it even more. 

I'm gonna end this letter now. You're me and so you'll understand why I'm trying not to ramble.

Bye, 
Ayesha

P.S. - I promised I wouldn't tell you to do something that'll change the future, but on the evening that you're with the beautiful boy outside your house chatting to fill an awkward silence, please fucking (oh yeah I curse a lot) kiss him. You definitely definitely will want to, so just do it.


#NaPoWriMo2017

2

I watched you. 
For a long time
Your brow all furrowed
You were angry
Serious
Bothered. 

All I wanted to do was reach out 
Smooth those worry lines out
Rub them away with my fingers

But it's only screens between us
And countries
And distance
And helplessness.

You did fall asleep 
Eventually
Crawled into bed with your phone
As I curled around my laptop

You asked for music
So I made us a playlist
Of songs we love
Of quiet words
Of lullabies I wish I could sing

So I watched you fall asleep
An experience the time difference
Has stolen from me

I listened to your breath even out
That furrow finally smoothed
Before I fell asleep myself.

This is as close as I can come
To having you beside me
To a feeling of nearness
It is a depressing facsimile
Not even close to enough
But at this point
I take what I can get

And hope that soon
I won't be sleeping with a screen anymore. 


#NaPoWriMo2017

1

To begin. A list. Not a poem. 

Offered with a fist of salt and a pinch of humour, with just a dash of bitterness combined with the slimmest hope of empathy.

Built from experiences gathered over the lSt few years.
To remember and remind of a hierarchy of suffering.
A pyramid of people one can complain to.
Who will care and who is mentally cursing you for complaining while having it "so good."

Here's the advice: If you are looking for a sympathetic ear, stick to your level.

Intercontinental or time difference LDRs - The top. No one gets to complain to us except for others in the same situation. No one else gets it. No one else has it as hard. We barely ever meet and they go sleep when I wake up and have you even checked the prices of flight tickets nowadays?

Intra-continental or accessible or less time difference LDRs - None of the benefits of being single. None of the benefits of being in a same place relationship. All the problems of both. Sure we get to meet once in three months, but do you know how horrible it is to fall asleep alone everyday?

Live-in or married relationships - Yeah we live together, but damn I miss having my own space sometimes. Do you know how annoying it is to clean up after two people and have to do the dishes and have to remind them of the bills all the time? Also, know how annoying the have a kid questions are? 

Dating but not living together - Sure we live in the same city, but with our schedules it gets so difficult to meet what with traffic and all. And god, all the when are you getting married questions every time anyone sees us together!

Single, all kinds - Everyone and everything sucks. No one gets to complain to us. At least you have someone. You've escaped the drudgery of dating and the nonsense that comes with trying to find a good person. And the jumping through hoops and the emotional highs and lows. Know how annoying Tinder can be? And those unsolicited dick pics!


I know I'm missing layers and tiers.
And I know the list will grow.
People with babies will get in there as more of my friends circle starts having them.
For now, stick to your level. 


#NaPoWriMo2017

National Poetry Month 2017

I have been pretty horrible over the last year or so at maintaining this lovely repository of thought and writing. I've stopped calling myself a writer because I don't deserve it, since I've been so bad even at keeping up my two blog posts per month minimum. Anyway, enough self bashing. It's a month of poetry and while I have never actually considered myself a poet, it's an excuse to try writing something every single day. Whether with a prompt or just building out the countless notes and drafts I keep abandoning, I'll try to make this a month where you, dear blog, will get updated every day. I might delay the posts. And I might upload many together. But I promise to try and have thirty pieces of writing on here at the end of this month. 

Here's to an attempt at reclaiming something I allowed myself to lose. 

#NaPoWriMo2017

Yes, it's another friendship post

I've written before (here and here) about friendships, in an attempt to work through changes. Those words were effective and honest. They still ring true, more than I would like to admit. 

But this is different. 
This time it isn't just about long distance friendships. 
And it isn't just about long gaps between conversations so that it's difficult to figure out if there is common ground. 

This time, it is the slow knife-twist of seeing actual events prove one of your worst fears - the best friendships can die.  It is the knowledge that sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you will not be able to understand or be happy for the people you claim to love. 
It is the guilt that comes with that knowledge and inability. 
It is the imagined feelings of being left out that you struggled with as a child and worked hard at leaving behind, turning into the reality of actually being left behind. 
It is being on a road you thought you had company on and then looking around to see that you are on a different road altogether.
It is believing a friendship would last a lifetime only to realise it lasted just a season.
It is trying to reach out across the chasm only you seem to see and finding that there is no one on the other side. 
It is wanting to tell your stories to the important people to then understand that they do not care to hear. 
It is the excitement of discovery dissipating into the ether because those you thought would feel joy, don't even want to know. 

It is parallel lines that will never meet. 
Or even worse, lines that intersected once, never to meet again. 

Some posts need updating

I wrote this post four years ago. I think it's time it was updated. 

http://ayeshasruti.blogspot.com/2012/12/i-cant-seem-to-be-able-look-at-my-hands.html

I can look at my hands again. Now, when I see them, I don't think of broken dreams and ruined sandcastles. I don't think of the things I let go.

Now, I see how I built myself a life far away from everything familiar. The opportunities I have grasped even though things were difficult. The home I set up and maintain, a space all mine. The new things I learn every day, the job I am learning to become better at. The meals I make for myself both simple and fancy. The support I offer to those most important to me. The freedom to sometimes indulge in the luxuries I always denied myself.

My hands remind me of how I still build sandcastles, but that they are meant to be washed away for bigger ones. That dreams are always changing and expanding, that they NEED to be destroyed sometimes when they turn into nightmares. 

The spaces between my fingers still remind me of my loneliness, but also of long walks in new cities where two bodies moved not as one, but together. They remind me of messages I type and letters I write; gifts I create and photographs I collect to nurture something that is beautiful, even if I might have to let it go one day.

When I look at my hands now, I see growth and strength. An independence tinged with loss, but fortified with acceptance. 

The veins on the back of my hand don't stick out any more because I don't have to hold on to something that was always running away from me.

I look at my hands everyday and love what they signify. They remind me that I am enough.

It's Birthday Time!

Of course I didn't forget. I am just a little late with sending it across is all. 

Happy birthday, my love. 

Looks like this post breaks the incredible dry spell this poor blog has seen lately. An eight month dry spell. Which is an abysmal record even for me. 

But this post isn't about me. 

It's about a perfect collection of moments and events that ended with you and me becoming friends. An unlikely partnership to someone on the outside looking in. But we make it work. 

You are one of the few people I know I can come to with the small things and the big things. And you will be around to listen to both. Whether you agree or disagree or even understand, you listen and you care. To me, that matters more than anything else. 

Whether we ever have our long walks again or I ever get to make you special coffee, you and I will still have the conversations and the connection. The words and the memories. Our relationship has changed as we have. 

From our conversation on my birthday sitting outside college with me in a black dress you didn't believe I owned, to sending each other infrequent mails and frequent messages, we have come a long way. 

I do love you even though I don't say it as often as I should. And I am thankful you are part of my life in whatever way. 

Happy birthday again, my love. 

Sending love and hugs your way always. 

Life lessons

Misery is a continuous cycle. Happiness ends in the moment.

When something horrible happens, our hearts and minds expand to find people to pass it on to. Or maybe not pass it on, but to share. When we feel sad, we want to find people who will make us feel better. We seek out comfort. We tell others our sorry tales and seek empathy, a shared experience. We expect our friends to offer their shoulders, our family to offer their laps to rest our heads in, our lovers to offer their arms to envelop us. We publicize our grief, our sorrow, calls of help hoping someone is listening. We turn it into anger and lash out.

It's a cycle that gets passed on from one person to another. Sure, spreading it around reduces its intensity, but in some way or the other, it gets passed on.

When something good happens, we hoard it. We keep those cards close to our chests and guard them intensely. We announce the events to everyone to make people jealous, but the true happiness is something we keep to ourselves. We are fierce of keeping that headiness close to us, because why would we want to dilute that. When moments of joy are so fleeting, we prefer saving them, savouring them. We don't "lash out" in happiness.

Misery is continuous. Happiness is fleeting.

We spread misery. We hoard happiness.

The Gingerbread Man

"Run run as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man!"

My mother tells me that this used to be my favourite story when I was little kid, with "The Three Little Pigs" coming a close second. She would read "The Gingerbread Man" to me every day and it got to a point where I could recite the whole thing with her, right down to the periods and the page turns. She says when it was time for me to join preschool, when the principal met me, he thought I could read, because I recited the story, with the page turns, at the age of three. I don't remember any of this, of course, but it's good to know I was a smart kid :p

Anyway, it's funny how some things come back to you and I think it's a sign of growing up and growing old when a childhood story can be twisted into an adult allegory. I say this because I realised the other day, that I am the gingerbread man. Running as fast and far as I can to try and escape the realities of my life I don't like.

I ran away the moment I found an escape, leaving home and family to go to college in another city. I rarely ever felt homesick. I looked for internships in places far from home. When I graduated, I never even considered moving back home. I continued running, staying as far away as possible, a visitor once in three months for a weekend at a time.

I ran away from the memories my house held, the loneliness of the city, the friends I never had. I found a way to leave and I never looked back. I made other friends and found a new city that I adopted as home, telling myself this is what people do and what I was doing was just normal.

With all the running away I never stopped to think about the people I was leaving behind to handle what I was running away from. I was too weak and I left the heavy lifting to everyone else.

But that's the thing about running away. Once you start, you never stop.

Because no matter how fast or far you run, the people and the reality you leave behind will always catch up. While this would all sound so much cooler as a spy detective thriller, having your reality catch up to you isn't nearly as thrilling.

The people you left behind to deal with the messes you made, the memories that trip you up when you least expect them, and the realization of how much of a coward you are for running away - they will catch up. And then there are no excuses you can make to yourself, nothing you can say to make yourself feel better.

That's how you are reminded of how weak you truly are. How you know you do not have it in you to go back.

How you are just a coward.

How do I know this? Because I thought I was done and then I had my realization too - the epiphany that I am still running. Only this time, I found YOU to run to. Kind, warm, strong you who believes in my lies, my masks. Who doesn't see the stupid crying child I hide behind big words and bigger speeches. I am still the gingerbread man, running away from my past and my present, only now I conveniently cry into your arms. Stupid scared cowardly little me.

The gingerbread man eventually got caught and eaten by those who were chasing him.

I wonder when my time will come.

Happy birthday, love :)

Another year, another birthday.

Funny how this is the post that breaks the long cycle of not having put up anything on this blog since February.

It's been quite a year. So much has changed and so much has happened. But I guess that is what life is about, isn't it? Things happen and we learn and grow. We read and write and deal some more.

Not too much has changed with the both of us though. The lengthy conversations discussing books and the rants over mail discussing everything else. The occasional visits to your city and the overpriced cups of coffee. And above all, the fact that no matter what happens in our lives and how far away we stay, we will still stay friends, your weirdness fitting in with mine, because hey, what is life without a little weird? :)

So here is to you becoming a year older and definitely wiser :)

Here is to more overpriced cups of coffee in a cafe in Bombay and the hours of conversations around them.

Here's hoping the year ahead holds better, bigger things; that your movie gets written before you go crazy and that you get to see some of the places you have been planning to.

Happy birthday, gopher.

Lots of love and hugs.

You have spoiled me. Taught me to love myself just a little more. Reminded me that I am not as bad as I make myself out to be. You have accepted and you have cared and you have listened. Maybe just a little too much.

And that is why sometimes, when I talk to you in my head I freeze. I trip over the words I am thinking because I brake suddenly.

Because I am afraid. Of you, of what we have, of myself, of how you make me feel, of the future, of everything. A kind of choking fear that drowns out all rational thought. That takes all that's bad and then compounds it. Momentary, but overpowering.

A fear that I am not good enough for you. Too young, too immature, too annoying, too plain, too excitable, too far away.

A fear that we were never supposed to get together, that we will never work.

A fear that what we have is just too good to be true. Combined with a fear that maybe we don't have anything at all and that we're just deluding ourselves into believing we do.

A fear that one day you will wake up and realize that I am not as strong or well-read or smart or verbose or interesting as you first thought.

A fear that one day I'll just push too hard with something I say or do and that final straw is what will make you decide enough is enough.

A fear that maybe I've used up all the good that I'm supposed to get in my lifetime and that if this goes away, you go away, I will never ever get any more because no one person gets to have that much.

And on top of all of that, combined with all of that, the fear that you will get bored of me. That if I don't try hard enough to keep you, you'll leave.

All of it is as simple as that. And as complicated as that.

I have no idea what I would do without you.

I don't deal very well with change. Which is not the most effective way to be because well, as the cliche goes, change is the most constant thing in the world.

We are changing every minute, every second; both physically and mentally, constantly.

The thing about change and friendships is that while people become friends for multiple reasons, those reasons can change over time. While once people connected over mutual shared interests, maybe they grow to become friends who need each other for support during difficult times. While sometimes adversity can build a friendship, when things get back to normal, that relationship might just not work anymore. There are work friends who you never meet outside work and friends with whom you never discuss work.

The thing is, usually when people are friends, they get to grow and change together. Sometimes even affecting the changes in each other (and nope, I'm not talking about girls' periods syncing up). Friends figure out life together, or try to at least. They are with each other through changing ideologies and new discoveries, heartbreaks and recoveries. When the changes happen the process feels gradual, organic. You get to adapt and even if those changes don't sit well with you, you grow into them with time.

Then there's the long-distance friendships (LDFs). Friendships where talking happens once in six months and meetings, once in a year. Friendships which devolve into acquaintanceships. Friends who disappear because out of sight is out of mind.

And while you're dealing with the challenges inherent in maintaining LDFs, you don't have the advantage of adapting to change. In that half-yearly conversation six months' of change and growth is thrown at you. In that yearly meeting, you have three hours to adapt to a different person from the one you knew a year ago.

What if you don't even like the new person anymore? You haven't had that gradual acceptance and what if you, at the stage you are at, do not feel like you are friends at all? What then? You speak to each other and your mind cannot process and you feel like maybe the new people you have turned into cannot be friends. You sit across from someone you grew up with and suddenly you realize that the people you are, aren't compatible.

What then?

How do you deal with the fact that you don't even like the person you once loved?

Is it shock? A reaction to too much information in too little time? Something that will go away with that magic word - time?

Or is it the death knell of a friendship?

How do you cope?

Sigh.

The moon and I

There was a full moon today. And being on the late night shift meant that I followed the moon to work. And followed it back home as the sun rose.

It looked so beautiful in the sky that I had to work doubly hard to concentrate on the road to keep from being distracted by it.

And as I watched it I thought of us. Of our conversations about it.
Of Goa, when we spoke of the tides and how the moon calls to the sea.
Of Hampi, when we discussed why we had to give it a gender at all and how I got lost in that conversation.
Of how our childhoods were spent visualizing the moon as 'chanda mama'; how it is also known as a woman with blemishes and how she casts such a spell.
Of that really corny movie dialogue which is something to the effect of 'when I look at the moon even when you aren't around I know that wherever you are, you are looking at the same moon.'

More than anything else, I realized how much can be connected to something as incongruous and common as a full moon day.
The desire to be with you, the memories of conversations, the fleeting snapshots of meetings, the romanticism of the poets and the science behind the tides.

You will always be my moon.
Lighting up the dark of my night.
Disappearing when the morning comes.
Living on reflected beauty but being all the more beautiful for it because one can actually look directly at the moon with no fear of being blinded.
Mysterious and so very very far away.

I will always be the tide.
Constantly running to catch you.
Dancing at your whims and fancies.
Stretching out to you at your slightest call.

And always, always, falling just a little bit short of actually finding you.

Six!

Wow.

I cannot believe I didn't even realize it till today.

You turned six this year, Things and Thoughts *GASP*

I cannot believe it has actually been this long that I have been writing and updated this virtual collection of thoughts, memories and ideas. I have been very lax this year with the updates, breaking my two posts a day rule and I am ashamed of that. But well, regardless of the frequency of my updates, the point is that I have been updating this lovely dumping ground for ideas for a whole six years :O

I've been told multiple times to shift to Wordpress because it's easier to customize. But how do I just leave these six years of history behind? Nope. Not happening.

I do blog occasionally on my Tumblr blog (ayeshasruti.tumblr.com) and yes that is a bit of blatant self-promotion there. But this space is still where I come to vent. With its upwards of 35 drafts and as of this post, 272 updates, this blog has been a large part of my writing and growing up experience.

Thank you to those few who bother to read my rants and useless theories.

And thank you, dear blog.

Cheers and happy sixth!

:D

P.S. - I got some great news today. And I need to put it somewhere to remember it, and well, that's the point of this blog. So YAY! It's like blogception where I'm celebrating blog being around by thanking blog for being around by using it to celebrate something else.

I read something today that made me think of you. Then again, there are too many things that make me think of you. A picture, a song, so many random things.

Anyway, I was reading an article that talked about the things one thinks of before falling asleep. Because those last few minutes before you fall asleep are your quietest, most personal moments, away from the noise of the people around you and the constant barrage of information that assails you through the day. And how the person you think of in that time, in those few moments before sleep takes over, is extremely privileged.

Because you see, when you think of this person through the day, it isn't as important or relevant since those thoughts are soon replaced with the million other things going through your head. But in the quiet of the night, when you really have time to think, and this is who you dedicate your thoughts to, then the person is special, important.

I think that we usually, not always, but often, end up dreaming about those last thoughts in our head. Or we try to think of things that we might want to dream about which adds to the fact that you think of this person because you might want to also dream of him/her.

And every day, I find myself thinking of you. Because I can't be with you like I want to, I tend to think of you just as I fall asleep, hoping that maybe that night, I will dream of you. And it's why I like talking to you when I get into bed or before I get into bed. It's all very silly. But it's true.

You are the last thing I think of before I fall asleep.

Broken record

Stuck

Stuck

Stuck

Goodbye

I've been putting this off for a few months now. I keep writing this and then deleting it and then writing it again and then saving it and then coming up with lines in that dim haze just before falling asleep so that I can forget them when I wake up the next day. This is one of those posts that will not make things better when I write it all out. On the contrary, it'll probably make things worse by concretizing something very painful. Probably why I have broken my own "writing is therapeutic purging" rule in this particular regard.

Now that the explanation is done, let me get straight to Part 1.

Long distance relationships are very difficult.
Now the thing is, whenever anyone hears the words "long distance relationship," the mind immediately jumps to the romantic relationship. And images of late-night conversations, phone bills and constant angst. More often than not, all of those associations are true and justified. But what people seem to forget is that friendships between people in different places are also long distance relationships. So if you live in one city and your best friend lives in another, that is also a long distance relationship. The reason I bring this up and explain it is because long distance friendships, LDFs, are sometimes much more difficult than the long distance romances, LDRs.

When people are not in physical proximity to each other, the principle of "out of sight, out of mind" immediately comes into play. Now with LDRs, people make more of an effort to reduce that by making it a point to talk regardless of work and fatigue because there is love, lust and desire at play. There is a certain selfishness that makes it difficult to take the LDR for granted because the factors at play differ from those of the LDF.
Things change when it comes to friends. Since you were so close or since you believe you know each other so well that the friend will understand, it becomes that much easier to take the LDF for granted. It becomes easy to take the person himself/herself for granted because "hey, you know what I'm like na. I suck at keeping in touch and I've been so busy and so much has been happening and I know you understand." And the ironic truth is that the friendship itself hinges on that very understanding of each other.

The essential difference is that because it's easier to take each other for granted, the parties in an LDF have to make that much more effort to stay in each other's lives. Like with LDRs where people do cheesy things they otherwise would laugh at and arrange date nights every week or call as often as possible and constantly text, LDFs also need friend chat nights, long rambling mails, more WhatsApp and more SMSes if WhatsApp isn't an option.


Now for Part 2 of this letter/ramble/post.

It is much more difficult to get over a friendship than a romance.
In a romance, when the two people decide they can't be together, they have "the talk". They talk about breaking up and the reasons why. Even if the breakup isn't mutual, the dreaded talk still happens. Where one person says "I can't do this anymore." There is a modicum of closure. You KNOW that the relationship is over and can begin the process of moving on.
But with a friendship, there is no talk. Because more often than not, you don't even realize that the relationship is over. There is no closure because the next time you two meet, you'll probably have an okay time but when you leave, it goes back to no calls, no conversations. One day you wake up and realize that the only updates you are getting are from Facebook or Instagram or Twitter. You see a 'Last seen at XX' on WhatsApp and realize that you have not had a conversation in a while. You think of the last time you spoke and you can't remember when it was and you see a huge black chasm of empty where your supposedly forever friendship was. And another thing, it's very possible that the second person realizes none of these things. Which is another reason why it's more difficult for one person to get over the failed relationship.

With the end of a romance, you turn to your friends for support.
With the end of a friendship, where do you go?


Now Part 3.

Why I have rambled so much.

Because I'm grieving. I woke up one day and realized that the "family" I chose for myself doesn't exist anymore. After growing up with barely any friends, when I found a set of people who understood and loved me, I decided I would never let go. And the thing is, I did try. But then, I realized that if people want you in their lives, they'll make just as much of an effort as you do to have you in their lives. That when I take a step forward, the other person must too. And to fall back on the age-old cliche, "You can't clap with one hand." That while you might want to hold on to someone, they have to want to be held on to.

It's because I realized that while I was expected to understand busy schedules and new boyfriends/girlfriends, new office friends, workplace shenanigans and gruelling college timetables, my one-time friends forgot that I have the same issues too. I work and have weird shifts. I also have office friends to maintain relationships with. I have my mom to make time for. I have a non-college group boyfriend. While I was expected to drop everything to maintain a friendship I believed important, the second party didn't care enough to do the same.

While I was expected to understand that X or Y or Z sucks at keeping in touch, X and Y and Z forgot that sometimes I prefer texting to talking on the phone. That I on principle will reply to any message I get, no matter how busy I am, to the extent that it borders on a compulsion.

Friendships survive when there are one-on-one conversations. While group conversations have their own unique charm, they are also safe because you don't have to make that much of an effort to understand one person. You can disappear in the five other chattering voices and speak up once in a while without it being a problem.

So the reason I have been putting this post off for so long and have ranted for so long, is because I am trying to heal. And the fact that writing this down is a symbolic gesture that means a lot.
I am trying to move on from the broken friendships that I can never get closure from. I am trying not to feel jealous when I see an update or picture on Facebook/Instagram, wondering how if there was time to post that update, there was no time to say hello. I am trying to be indifferent to those 'Last seen at XX' moments, wondering if that conversation could have been with me. I am trying to live without the pieces of myself I gave away in vain to people who I thought deserved them.

Which is why any breakup in this social media obsessed age is impossible. But then that's a topic for another day.

I am trying to work harder at saving the few LDFs that did survive and are surviving the distance. Because the fact that they lasted this long, means that maybe I wasn't completely idiotic with my choice of family.

This is an attempt at saying goodbye.

I know I will never completely move on. It's almost impossible to, as I just illustrated. But at least I can try letting go of the pain, hurt, bitterness and anger.

I suck at letting go. Because anyone who has followed this blog knows that I am hoarder who is terrified of forgetting.

But well, it's high time that I make self-preservation my overarching impulse.

So...

Goodbye.

Which is worse?

A life never lived or a life wasted?
Opportunities never had or opportunities squandered?
Potential that was never allowed to be fulfilled or potential that was lost?
Dreams never followed through or dreams had and broken?
Families never made or families pushed away?
Love that never bloomed or love that was allowed to wither?
Houses never built or houses gone to ruin?

Which is worse?
Life lost young or life going on too long?

Happy birthday, you :)

Another year, another post.

It's been a long year, this last one. And an extremely quick one too. It's 2014 June already. Where in hell did the time fly?

I've learnt a lot in the last year. Had lots of good days. And lots of bad days. And learnt that people change, distance is sometimes just too much, friendships evolve and that sometimes, people just grow up and move on.

We barely talk. We barely meet. We don't have crazy video chats. There are no long walks, no cups of coffee while curled up in an ancient blue sofa.

You know what? It's funny, but I realised that I only drink coffee at work or in cafes/restaurants. Rarely, if ever, at home. I was always making the coffee and watching people I love drink it. Anyhoo, I digress.

Our friendship has changed. We have changed. You have your people, I have mine. You have your life, your loves, your family and I have mine.

But over the last year I also learned not to delude myself into believing that people will stick around for you. But we'll always have each other. Because I never learnt how to properly let go.

So here's to us. To our love for words and each other. For a birthday tradition that we have both vowed to keep at, for better or for worse.

Happy birthday, beloved gopher. I know underground is cozy, but pop up and say hello more often :)

Love and lots of Ayesha hugs.