what is reality, really?

It is about a year and three months since this day.

I don't know when it happened, but my surreal world became my reality. The U.S.of A became my reality in these last two and something years.

I loved everything I knew I would love, and some more. I hated almost everything I knew I would hate, and some more. I faced everything I knew I would face, and so much more. If before coming here, I thought I knew all the emotions and feelings I was capable of, now I know that that spectrum is impossible to define. If before I thought I was worldly-wise, now, I know what the word actually means.

But, come the end of my studying, my original plans loomed in front of my eyes. Taunting me. Asking me if I still wanted to go back to India. Firmly I said yes. In a few weeks the firmness kind of disappeared. I found myself floundering for a hold here. Then, the universe reminded me of what I had always believed would be my happiness.

Home. India. Mumbai.

And now, Two years and two months and twenty days later, I find myself returning back home. To India. To Mumbai.

And now, this, right now, feels surreal. Leaving my life here and heading back. Goinf back to where I was two years ago. But going back as a different person. Because boy, I sure have changed. I know what worldly-wise means now!! :D

is back.

It's been a while. And somethings have changed around here. Some old posts have "disappeared".

I figured, since I was starting afresh after 6-ish months, I might as well remove the traces of what embittered me enough to stop blogging. And not talk about it ever again. So this is the last you will see me mention of the dark days from last august to the much brighter days now.

I toyed setting up a new blog. Hell, I even started one. Two. Or maybe three. But came back here. Cause these are my roots right? If I do ever shift, I will forward the link from here. So I feel like I just packed my roots to a new place and did not uproot totally and set somewhere else.

I've been craving to write. Itching even. I formed posts in my head during this hiatus, and then pretended like I wrote it with the imaginary pen in my head and then dismissed the thoughts. And lost those posts forever. I know, sad right?

What's new in my life will follow in posts to come. Slowly. But the one major change around here is gonna be this - I love my readers. Seriously, I do. But for my well being, and world peace and such, I am going to write like no one is reading. I am not going to depend on readers, I am not going to count on them or write for them. I will just write. For myself.

Because writing is second nature to me. And while in the past too I wrote with reckless abandon, this time around, I bared my soul a bit too much. And sometimes, the universe loves the game of Soul Football. So, I will write keeping my well being in mind. Everyone else will just have to fend for themselves.

Can we??

Can I wrap you up in a song and make you the song itself?
Can you hum to me, that song?

Can I look behind one more time, because I am sure you will be there?
Can you see the sunshine within me?

Can I scold you to my heart's content, because you know I am just doing it to irritate you?
Can you keep making that frustrated face everytime I say something completely irrational?

Can I whine to my heart's content to you, because I know you wont judge me for it?
Can you keep trying to fill that void that has just opened up inside me? Some day it will fill..

Can I keep shopping for those little things that you don't even know you will need around your house?
Can you keep surprising me in all those little and small things that you do?

Can we keep forming these little traditions of ours? These little things which is always what you do, and these other things that are always my doing...

Demons, the real ones..

*The post before the last one*

Normally her demons arose in the night. They turned the normally flippant, brilliantly blunt and straight answering girl into a blubbering, confused and sobbing girl. The world knew her as a very arrogant and collected person. She bounced back from all her problems and issues didn't she?
She did, but at night, when she was alone, sitting in the dumpyard behind her apartment complex, she wasn't all that brave. She could not even introduce herself to her demons. That part of her which she was unaware about. Which she had not been introduced to. Which she had not met. That part of her she dint know about.

She needed to see a shrink. She was sure of that. There could not be two parts to her. A demon that made her eyes tear up randomly. That made her begin every night with hours of crying. The part of her she knew, would not, could not let the world see her crying. Would not accept to the world that it was her weakness, her sign of indignity. Her fall.

Except, now, that demon had become so powerful that it came out in the day too. When she was around people, in front of them. She tried to supress it with silences, with blankly staring away into nothingness just so that her eyes would not well up with tears. Because one roll down her cheeks was never enough, it was a saga. Sometimes it would start in the class, sometimes while having dinner, sometimes while doing her laundry and sometimes when she was stretched out on the couch witnessing a happy moment. And she was slipping away into being powerless.

Her skin was behaving like it was over-exposed, her eyes looked like she was drugged. Her body frequently burned up to a fever. Was everything alwasy never good enough? or was it just that she wanted too damn much. That there were two parts to her, the demon and her. Together, they wanted a lot. Needed a lot. Expected to get a lot.

Which is why she started on back-to-back episodes of Scrubs.

alone

"Go," he said. And sent her off. All alone to face her demons.

A quick unfinished story

Friends Forever. Turned into blossoming infatuation. Forever couple. Is it love? Maybe not yet..

Distance, misunderstandings, arguments, fights and lies. A couple broken before love could happen. Friends again. Happy for each other's happiness.

He falls for someone again. She is happy with someone else again. They are happy in their own worlds. What could be, is a question and a doubt that will forever remain unexplored. A chance meeting, a stolen kiss. Nothing more, back to their happy worlds.

Kids turn into adults. Turn of maturity. Time for permanency. He is thinking of marrying his girl, she is still looking for love, although just happy with someone else.

A sudden encounter. It tears her up that his intense feelings for her are now for someone else. It tears him up that she was never this happy with him. A stolen night.

A few days, stolen from the world. Guilt. Knowledge that this could work. All it needs is effort.

But its too late now. Back into the worlds they built. The doubt, the question will forever remain incomplete. Because just a few days are not enough. They were forever friends. The forever part had magnanimous implications. Torn souls, forced into being friends.

Not happy as more than that, unhappy at less than that.

Striving to love myself..

The first time I was told I was ugly, it was my 11th birthday. I had worn what my mother had picked out for me, checkered shorts with a silver belt, and a black tee-shirt with something silver on it- I was quite skinny that time. You know you dress well in school for your birthdays, distribute chocolates? When I was doing that, my so-called brother Amey, pulled me closer and said

"I know I shouldn't say this to you today, but you look ugly. Why are you wearing that?"

I never wore that outfit again. I steadily gained weight that year on. Sometime when I was 13, I had my first crush, and the guy told me I was beautiful, and I did not believe him.

When I was 16, I was in a theatre group. I was one of the youngest there. The two other sixteen year olds were reed thin, I was, by now, plump and chubby, as everyone would call me. Obviously I never got the main part, until in the end I was given one as charity. One guy who was dating one of the reed thin girls, once remarked out loud,

"Girls just look so breath-takingly beautiful with wet hair."

The three of us had just come in from the pouring rain. We all had wet hair. We all looked at each other at this statement. The guy smiled and then after a pause said,

"But not you Pragni, your hair is horrible, how can you ever look good"

I have been out with models, a dangerous looking guy, an ok-looking guy, a gayish-looking guy, intelligent guys, rich guys, one player or casanova and one semi-celebrity too. But I have never believed myself to be worth them, physically or looks-wise.

I hate it, and I hate admitting it, but everytime one of the guys here tell me I look beautiful, I pause for a moment. That pause is to convince myself that even if I don't think so, maybe they do. They are not saying it to please me. They are not saying it out of any obligation. They mean it.

Till a really long time, everytime someone told me I looked good, my instant reaction would be "yea, right" or "Stop kidding around?", until one day, R got really angry with me and told me that he wouldn't say it if he dint mean it, and I d better start believing him or saying it out right that I did not trust him.

I said, "I don't know what other reaction to give!"

Said he, "Try thank you. It normally works."

I did not believe my thank you's after that for a long time too.

It's just recently that I have admitted to my being very very conscious about my body. About my self image. And admitted it in front of friends and now publicly. I know this is not going to liberate me. But maybe, somewhere along the line, I will be re-introduced to my self-esteem. Ironically, I do not lack in the department of self-confidence. Funny how I have made that thin line so thick for me.



P.S - Last two days of the pills. I promise this confess all mode will stop then and so will the sappiness.