What do I write to you?

Let’s talk about what should we talk about today.

I write to you today about my utter dilemma about what to write about. Good heavens, I am sorry, that’s quite the beginning to the post; just throwing you in the deep end, no easing, no warning, nothing. Please allow me to explain as I walk you through my predicament.

Perhaps, after months of nothing, since I am suddenly showing up here now (I have been somewhat around on my Instagram, so do follow me there if you’d like to not be surprised by my sudden and erratic posting:@musingsofawhimsicalsoul) I should talk about what i was up to in these past few months. Since  I last posted in November, that would be exams in December, a very gruelling college schedule January onwards, a concussion(from a kick in the head, so quite the story), all the pre-internship things and my first ever job interview(with Google!) in February, turning 21 in Corbett National Park on a family vacation in March to finally today, April 1st, my last day of (now, online) classes, which gives me the time to write to you.

Me with my surprise birthday balloons on March 10, it is so crazy how much things have changed in such little time??

Or maybe, I can’t post anything without addressing the current climate and situation that we all are dealing with. The COVID-19 pandemic, its impact on our lives, the lives we have already lost, the brave souls in essential services fighting to make our lives easier on the frontlines and just how much it infuriates me to see people not taking this seriously. Should I be cautioning you and spreading awareness about flattening the curve? Should I talk numbers and how anxious they make me as we look at the rising numbers every day from the midst of a 21-day lockdown? Should I talk about the fact that even as I say all this, I am feeling so incredibly guilty for how comfortable I am to be in my home with my family and living life with not much of a hindrance? Should I be asking you to think of the less fortunate, the ones who are affected the most? Should I ask you to donate, if you can, to food banks or to government funds, to aid small businesses, to think of the people in your employ or the ones you take rent from?

The coronavirus curve we need to flatten, found on the CDC website.

Should I acknowledge my privilege in being able to sit down and write all this down for you? Or, should I talk about how scared I am of the uncertainty regarding our future, where the world we would be after this is over? I am scared of the economy I would be inheriting. How, as someone who is supposed to find a job in the upcoming year and has no idea what will happen with my internship the economic ruination this will bring terrifies me. Or perhaps, my hope that we all are kinder and value each other and just appreciate the little things much more?

Simply put, should I be talking about my fears for our present or the future? Or mundane things like how I am going to pass time now that my college is over? Perhaps, I should be distracting you from all this uncertainty and negativity, bring you my regular scheduled(Yes, I see the irony here.) content. Maybe you’ve had enough of all the negativity and just want to escape. So today, after 4 months of nothing, in the middle of a global pandemic, I ask you, What do I write to you?

THIS POST’S QUESTION: This is a unique post,the entire post itself is a question,so please,tell me,What content do you want to see from me? Comment below with what you think about it,I’d love to hear from you!

The Last Goodbye.

Lets talk about loss today.

Today, I diverge from my usual optimistic and happy demeanour to talk about something else: Loss. Losing a loved one. Death. Today, I’ll be saying many things I’ve never ever put together before or said and it will be more morose that you expect me to be. These days, there is a lot of negativity in the world, lots of terrible things happening to good people and I hope that if they ever read my words, they find in it what they need most right now. Hope. I’m a firm believer of  the saying, “Hope is the only thing stronger than fear” and that’s what I hope to offer. This will be different than my usual style of writing, because this time I’m writing to make a difference. This is something I feel I must write, in the hope that they do a little bit in the lives of those who’ve lost everything.

For me, death was a foreign concept for a major part of my life. I’d hear about people dying, read about horrible killings in the papers but I’d always, due to my great luck, assumed its something that happened , over there, far away from me. Call it my naiveness ,luck or just a normal thing, that’s the way it was. That is, until it happened to me.

I celebrated my 13th birthday with a few of my close friends, a small party during the exams. I just turned into a teenager and the world was my stage. My paternal grandfather also came to visit, like he did every birthday. He even got me a gift on his own which was new and something he usually didn’t do, he would normally get us money to buy whatever we wanted. It was a magazine that was really difficult to find and one of my favourites, that along with my favourite pen. I loved it, hugged him and thanked him. Usually, he stayed for a few days when he came even if he didn’t plan to, we’d make him, because we liked being with him a lot. But this time, he left the next day itself, he had some work to do and I let him go due to that. The day after, that is, two days after my birthday, my grandfather, my grandpa was shot during a road mugging .In broad daylight. And he, my favourite person to argue with, the person I talked to about languages, the person I taught new things like phones was gone. Just like that.

When I found out, that evening, I was suddenly faced with something I had never faced before : loss. And it was sudden and totally out of the blue. I felt like I was in a bad dream and it wasn’t ending. I knew I was in pain, I was breaking but what caused the cracks to spread and take over ,is the pain of your loved ones around you, who are completely destroyed. The way I saw my parents that night will always haunt me. It still does. It was what, magnified my pain manifold, not the loss of the person but the pain of the living.

That is when I learnt many lessons. One, that different people have different reactions to loss. Some choose to not talk about it and try to act like it didn’t happen, for their sanity and to try to live the life as they know it. I’m one of those people. I ,for all the talking I do, do not talk about my loss. How it hurts. The memories. I just shut off entirely. There are others, like my mother, who talk about all these things. Who truly learn to live with it, or so it seems. Of course it hurts them, but they acknowledge the pain and accept it, which is braver than I can imagine to be.

I also realised that what people say about death is mostly false. No, the person does not continue to live in your heart or anything similar that romanticises the loss of a person. You feel like they’re just across a door or simply a phone call away, but truly they are just gone. Poof. Let me use a absurd metaphor for this. Imagine if your favourite book was suddenly deleted from the world. All copies just vanish and its gone. You can never touch it again, read it again. You can read the quotes you have written down, the words you remember from it and draw what you remember of the cover but, you can never ever read the whole book together ever again. What you do realise is though, that even if you  feel like it hampers you functioning and you can’t imagine existing now , you cherish the fact that you read it ,you  value the memories you have with it and what all it had taught you. You wouldn’t give that time away for anything nor would you wish you never read it. Slowly, as time passes ,you begin to put your own pages back together. You order them, paste them together. You put yourself back together although it takes a while and most importantly, you must remember you can never be the same again. It’s a sign that it mattered, that it took away a piece of you. But the important thing to remember here is ,that even though you aren’t the same now, you’re a you you never were and you’re just as great. You can still spread happiness and be happy, you can learn to live with it and eventually you’ll make peace with it. And even though its now gone, you will always love it from the bottom of your heart.

That’s what you’re allowed to do. The person may not exist anymore but you can still continue to love them and value them. And we the world, the people that share a planet, value the victims of the horrible things happening in the world these days, the way I’ll always value my grandfather.