Your Words.

I hide between words and smudged paint, masking what I really have to say.  I speak of how my life has grown for the better now, but I still find myself waking up in cold sweat, the thoughts of my past haunting me. My fingers tremble at the thought of doing something new. I trace the letters on old parchment and smile at the memories of a long-lost girl. A girl who’d not known innocence. Just snide words and snide smiles. And yet was the strongest girl I’d ever known. My smiles were true and my voice was loud. And I think it’s time these roads I make for myself take me back to that.

My hair was cut to my ears and my lips always sat in a crooked smile. I hated studying but you could almost always catch me reading past the wee hours of the night. I was proud of my words, prouder of the ones I said out loud and proudest of the ones my father wove for me to present to the world. I found my identity in the people I made bonds with, the people I thought I loved.

My shirts almost never fit me and I grew fatter and fatter each day. My parents told me I was fat. My peers told me I was fat. My teacher told me I was fat. I was called an anaconda, a buffalo, a myriad of names I hated, a myriad of names I was scared of.

There was a game online, a Buzzfeed quiz I assume. A list of actresses from a then popular movie and a quiz to tell you false lies of which one you were. Well, I won’t criticise the game. Rather me for being so fickle to take it to heart. I never played it you see. Somebody else did, and remarked that while they got the lead, I would always get the short, stout end of the stick.

Some days, words, they don’t pierce. They don’t hurt, they definitely don’t kill. All they do, is batter you to an inch of your life. You stand there, a showdown against their words, the spotlight on the both of you. And their words come, ten against one, a hundred against one, and soon, a million against one. They’re at the ropes, they wouldn’t know how it feels to fight this fight that has been programmed to defeat you each time, would they?

But you’re always there, fighting. A stare, a whisper. A harmless comment, an ‘endearing’ encouragement. They add on to your fight. Your eyes have swollen shut with the pain but you don’t need to see anymore. Their words surround you, drown you.

“You have more than you deserve.”

“You eat so much.”

“You’re adorable, don’t get me wrong, but you’re also pretty annoying and clingy.”

“You are pretty beautiful, just on the heavier side.”

I couldn’t care. I shouldn’t care. I know. People say stuff. People are poisonous and cruel and words taken to heart will only cut and kill. But how can I not? Your words have left me wanting for an identity from way before I even needed to create one and now I don’t know what I am without your words.

And that’s when I realise, that is what I am. Your words. An anaconda. A buffalo. Fat and stout. I’m all your words. All the insults, all the snide you’ve laid against me over the years.

And, I am more. I am vibrant. I am black kohl and thick eyeliner. I’m bare nails and stubby fingers. I’m thick thighs and hairy calves. I am a bulging belly and stretch marks all over my body. I am small lips and a squished nose.

And, I am beauty. I am fierceness. I am courage and bravery and strength.

Your words are good and true, but so are mine. And I bid adieu to you, because I’ve made my peace with this fight I fight everyday. Your whispers don’t mean nothing to me, they never will lose their insignificance I presume. But today my words mean more. I finally move back to the ropes and let my words do the talking.  

Let our words fight, for I’m done losing myself.

Cozy

You’re an awesome person and everyday I wake up, talk to you, or see you, there’s something in me, that just, settles. It settles into this crevice I’ve created just for you and me and says, “This…this is nice. This is cozy.” And you know how much I love cozy.

You make me want to be a better person. You make me want to be busy, have this high-wire life, explore all the potential I have, become the most awesome person I can be, become a person worthy of you.

And then sometimes, sometimes you make me want to sit back. Sit back and look at the clouds make weird shapes and guess the animals they are, share the last chocolate milkshake with you. Come back home to you. Come back to life with you. You make me look at life in a way I never thought I would see. I’d always imagined that life could be beautiful but it never was. It was always brown, and dark and murky and hopeless. Everyday was another day of sifting through the rubble looking for hope buried in the cracks.
And then, I got you.

You were just as hopeless as me, and you were looking for hope like I was. And it’s mighty inconvenient to search with one hand only but I’d never let go of yours. Because when I get lost under the rubble, looking too hard, eyes blurry with tears, I feel and see your silhoutte pulling me back, back into your arms. Back into a home I never had. You’re home to me and I need you to live sometimes and I’m fucked up and some days you will hate me and some days I will hate me but I’d rather come back to your disappointed, disgruntled face than anybody else’s happy, jovial one.

Because you’re my familiar, comfortable, my cozy.

And you know how much I love cozy.

Drowning.

This story, like all masterpieces *coughs* starts with the main character dying. Which is me. I was dying. Drowning to be specific. How?

Well, keep reading.

As a child, I used to swim a lot. Never swum too deep, never got into a situation where I could potentially drown. Except…..for that one time. What one time, you ask?

So it’s nine in the morning and I’ve swum to the deep end. I’m alone in the entire pool so I decide maybe I should try underwater swimming. Swim vertically down to the bottom. My parents had forbidden me from doing so, but they weren’t here then, right? And all good girls are just bad girls who never got caught. *badly winks*

So, I start swimming downwards and it’s pretty difficult. The water kept pushing me back before even my feet were fully underwater. So, I got out of the pool and dived. Beautifully, I would like to add. *pats own back*

The problem was what happened after.

I was pretty deep now and needed to get back to the top before I ran out of air. But each time I pushed myself up, the water pushed me down. I hadn’t anticipated this. The water was green and I could see the light shining through but it was still deep. I kept pushing my legs, hands outstretched hoping that maybe something would just grab me, pull me out.

I was losing hope and then, I hallucinated. I think it was the lack of air, or the pure fear in my heart but something made me see a hand, a large hand just push into the water, sending the vibrations till me.

That hand, it looked like my father’s to be honest, maybe bigger. I don’t really remember. All I remember is giving a final push with my legs and catching hold of that hand.

I burst out of the water, gasping hard, squinting around. The pool’s still empty and the hand’s gone. Mine’s empty, still in a grip but onto thin air. I was still a little scared and my heart was beating really fast. And then, I started to laugh. That maniacal laughter you have right? The one you have when you can’t really believe your luck? That was me right then.

Everything after was quite simple. I got out of the water, showered, changed, went home and never mentioned the incident to my parents. And eventually I forgot about it too.

Till yesterday.

Till the time I asked for a scissor and the same hand I had seen gave it to me, a green felt tip scissor, just timidly muttering, “Please don’t forget to return it.”

I guess that hand had returned to get me out of the deep again.

Two Truths And A Lie

Today’s entry: Two truths and a lie. As you might have already guessed, today’s story is going to be a series of truths, with an occasional lie in between. To make it easier, two lines are truths, one is a lie. Each ‘line’ is separated by a fullstop if that was confusing. Well, here’s the catch: The game has already started.

I was brought up in a small town, a place my friends ‘affectionately’ like to call Auschwitz. It’s a very picturesque place and the people are wonderful. That place, those people have shaped me into who I am today. I had friends, who I realize now, were not really my friends. They were…acquaintances, for the lack of a better word. They were sweet, plain, and (I’m going to sound like a b**** for saying this) boring. But they did teach me a lot. In a lot of incidents, which at that time I pushed off as insignificant.

Throughout my blog, you’ll find that I’ll mention an issue of mine that I’ll always make light of: my body, or rather, my figure. At first, before writing this, I thought, “Why should I tell people this? Why give people ammunition to attack me?” Then I realized that the only reason I hadn’t hesitated before writing that line, was that I wasn’t afraid anymore. A lot of things change you. I would like to think that a lot changed me, made me a person I could tolerate, a person I could come to love. It was also because I stopped caring. About pleasing people. And I shall never regret it. Without change we are no longer living, we are stationary beings in an ever moving universe.

The sentences I write here seem random, but guessing which ones are true and which are lies may give them more meaning, or render them completely useless. And they’ll be of significance as the story of my stories unfolds. Yes, I should have named my blog Story-ception. I’m sorry that was a bad joke.

Bad jokes aside, here comes what I really wanted to tell you guys. Just a reminder though, the game’s still on. There was a quote I had written a year ago on Tumblr, and it stands true to this day. It went something like this, “Whatever I do, whatever I write, I’ll probably never write the truth. ‘But that’s horrible!’ they say. And I tell them, The truth is horrible and it is dangerous. it can destroy you and leave a bad taste in your mouth. the truth is bitter, its something you don’t want to see. If I write the truth I’ll leave you broken; I’ll leave you scarred. The truth that I shall paint across the walls of your mind will be so dreadful that you’ll never be able to look at it, or look away from it.’  So there were two truths and one lie every three lines but was I writing the truth?

Not just my story.

This story starts in the middle. Well, a little before the middle, because that’s where I am right now. My memory is really bad so it’s better I write it this way. No pomp or show. It’s just a story.

Edit: Well, it’s not just a story. It’s my story. It’s my best friend’s story and my enemy’s story. It’s the story of that girl who pushed me intentionally because I called her an attention seeking idiot. (I didn’t just call her that. Don’t judge her. That one is really interesting though.)

So its a story about a lot of people. And a story for a lot of people. I’ll try to make you cry, and I’ll try to make you laugh. There will be some moments you’ll want to bang your head against a wall thinking, “What was she thinking?! How could she be such a-”

Well, that’s what I am hoping for. To make you feel something. To make this story as much yours as it is mine.

Why am I explaining myself so much, you ask? Well, that’s me. I’m confident, yet insecure. I’m not ashamed to tell you that I seek validation, but I’m ashamed that I do. And I hope that this, me being vulnerable, brave enough to be so in front of y’all, gives you the strength to do the same.