journal.coffee

Nothing mattered you know? Nothing but the proverbial plate, and me putting too much on it, every day. It was who I was as a person, and nothing could change that, and nothing else mattered; nothing but the plate mattered—overflowing, unending, infinite.

“You look exhausted, man,” they’d tell me. “Yeah, I am,” I’d nod a bit and smile. It didn’t matter if I escaped to the sea or to the mountains or even outer space because the plate would go with me, and before I could stop, it would make itself known. It wasn’t the end of the world. It was much more.

Everything I was happy with, everything I was grateful for, everything I despised, everything I wanted to end—it was all on the plate. I just had too much on it. It wasn’t all bad, just too much, all the time. I couldn’t go through it all, and clearing it only made space for new things.

I learned that life was the proverbial plate and that there was always too much on it. It could never be empty—the plate. And not just for me, it was too much for all of us. That was the beauty of it. The plate was everything in itself. We’d keep braving our way through it trying to clear it, hoping for an empty one when we’re done. We were never done. No one was ever done.

Once we accepted that, though, life got easier. It got simpler once we understood that life was about braving the plate and not about clearing it, that we will always have more on our plates than we wanted, and that someday, the plates would eat us alive.

All my life I’ve been leaving you behind, love. I left you on the promenade as the otherwise raging sea lay calm and watched me walk along amidst the crowd, smiling, perhaps for the first time in a long time. I left you as I unboxed a shoebox full of memories and found a dried-up rose in it; I left you as I put the rose into the pile labelled: discarded. I left you as I lost myself in the city of chaos, picking up random fights in bars or sometimes, buying drinks for everyone on the floor. One action not too different from the other, both of them making me feel something again. I left you in a drawer in an otherwise empty apartment: the only thing I left behind as I packed my life together in eleven neat boxes. I left you at the airport as I boarded a flight to a place called home, visiting it for the very first time again. I left you as I sat in a café, staring blankly at a chair that reminded me of the last time I saw you, years ago. As I sipped my coffee and stared out the all familiar window again, I let out a sigh and chuckled. The joke was on me. You see, all these years, I’ve been leaving love behind, love, but tell me: what else could you do when you’re left behind yourself?

I’m often asked why I take things so seriously? Why do I try to find the only song that could fit on a moment? Why do I run around finding the best bits to make a story that I personally believe in? Why do I require everything to be wrapped up so neatly towards the end? Why do I continuously try to close the loop? Why do I look at life in not years but journeys and arcs?

I have just one thing to say about that: why not?

You see, life is terrible and painful for each person. God is dead, if there ever was such a thing, but I don’t think that was ever the case. The point is that it’s all probably pointless. We enter here without a say or choice or volition of our own, and then we’re supposed to carry on? How are we supposed to do that, and why?

So, when everything is pointless, and nothing makes sense, I find a narrative. I find a tune that goes so well with my closing the door on an empty apartment that it has to fit. It would be unjust for it to not do that.

I look at things as if I was lost in a daze—staring—as if I didn’t belong in the scene and was put there, because I was, and all of us were. So, it only makes sense to look at all this as a story someone else wrote. Aren’t we just characters in an epic anthology?

I imagine montages of my friends doing whatever they do when I’m walking outside. It plays like a movie in my head. Me making coffee has to be so precise that it demands to be on canvas. There’s no other way.

That’s what life is all about. There’s nothing else. You do things. You do things well. You make sure you value those things. This is my way of valuing them: I romanticise the fuck out of everything.

I don’t change cities; I go through a journey of transformation. I don’t get my heart broken; I get on a rollercoaster of change. I don’t pack; I selectively leave things which aren’t a part of who I am anymore behind. That’s who I am, and who I’ll be going forward.

My life is my art, and it is for my eyes only. Everything you see is an interpretation. The true piece, the honest work, the magnum opus is in my head: safe and sound.

That’s the only thing I have that I specifically chose in this life, and I’m never going to give it away.

I wonder why it was when something started ending, the way we looked at it changed all of a sudden.

Everything appeared to move in slow motion the minute you realised a relationship was ending, a friend was moving away, a loved one was sick, you were switching cities; as soon as we realised change was afoot, we saw things differently.

Somehow the every day cup of coffee became beautiful, and the songbirds became your best friends, and the laughter that was jarring once became the sweetest song you heard, and the aggravating arguments became things you just smile blankly at, and all the anger turned to mush, and your dying dog’s fur became the softest thing you’ll ever touch, and that last smile in a café became your favourite one for all of eternity.

As if we were programmed to save the most important memories—without knowing which ones are important—as images imprinted in our conscience, forever. As if there’s a switch in our heads that flips and an alert pops up, saying,

Look carefully, and make sure you register that smile, that sunset, that apartment, that sound, just all of it; it’s the last time you’re looking at it and experiencing it for the rest of your life, and even if it feels like the worst thing in the world right now, you’ll miss it when it’s gone.

And we did. We missed it all, once it was all over. The worst parts too. Especially the worst parts—sometimes, overlapped with the thousand good ones, images painted over images, like something out of a Dali painting which shouldn’t make much sense but makes sense nonetheless.

And a collection of “”firsts””, neatly filed into folders, geotagged and timestamped, arranged in the drawers of our personal archives, ready to be opened and make us smile, whenever life seems a bit difficult. It works too. It always works, and it comes on its own.

It’s as if we’re programmed to take the best out of everything, to be optimists. Perhaps, that’s the secret. We are inherently an optimistic species—the reminders to stay so etched in the workings of how we store memories.

Perhaps, that’s why we’ve survived for so long.

Sometimes, I’d wake up and sit up straight on the bed, thinking. I’d be in awe of reality, of life. I’d sit there, eyes wide open, a smile running across my face. I’d sit, dumbfounded and amazed at life and the fact that between all the large questions that we continually pondered over was the everyday.

We were here, we didn’t know why, and that was it. That was the game. It was the best choose-your-own-adventure ever made, and we chose so little, usually. It was our only shot at finding answers, not sitting around in a chair, ruminating over stale, dead-end questions. I could do everything, I thought. I could be anything, and all I had to do was get out of this bed today. That’s it.

I talked to others about it too, and more often than not, they’d look at it with the lens of their own mornings, and they could never see it with that clarity. The clarity I sat in surrounded only by a ruffled blanket, as the sunlight peeked in from between the golden curtains, calling me out to play.

Damn, the opportunities we had to learn from history, to be here right now, to make the future; we could only hope to contribute in some meaningful way for everyone else to ever come, and for everyone else already here. Our legacy was not a gift of a plan or a specific goal; our legacy was in the gift of hindsight, dots connected long after we’re gone.

Was it any lesser of a purpose? To make sure you didn’t waste the day in front of you. To be kind and understanding. To exhibit your inner virtues, whichever they may be, with honesty. It was the greatest purpose of all. That was the best thing you could do, hopefully, for anyone else down the line, anyone who sat upright in their bed, feeling a surge of energy run through them.

And so, I spent my days trying my best to turn those mornings into afternoons and evenings. I talked to others about it too, and they said things like, “You can’t do everything, man, that’s crazy.” And so, I’d nod and look at them. Then, I’d look past them and at the open sky, just so blue and wide and infinite.

Then, I’d tell them: watch me try.

People want so much in life, you know? I’m not like that. I’m the most unambitious man you’ll ever meet. I don’t have a lot of goals. I have one—the café.

I see a misty hill, and the rain pattering, softly. I see the dimly lit street lamps, rusted and trying their best to illuminate the foggy, winding path. I see a wooden door with a bed of flowers nearby, standing between the shivering blue cold and the golden warmth inside.

I can hear the faint music emanating from it; it’s very specific. I see the counter, and I see myself behind it. Tired, somewhat old, slightly dejected with life but also, relaxed and slow and grateful. I see a few people inside—the regulars. Who else would come to that lonely hill?

I watch myself talk to people about life and engage them in conversation about all sorts of ideas. I see my younger self in the boy who visits sometimes, alone yet comfortable. I find myself never missing or forgetting the coffee each person likes… or tea, for that matter.

Then, I watch as I tell everyone it’s closing time. I see myself retiring to my living quarters, right above the café. I clean up and fix myself some sort of dinner. Then, I begin to write—nothing of significance, just musings—irrelevant words, not too different from the ones you’re reading right now.

Why then do I keep running, doing as much as I can right now? It’s precisely because I see the café, vividly. It’s almost as if I travelled ahead in the future and got a peek through the window. But, I don’t know how to get there. I feel life will happen, and I will get there when I do.

So, when I do, I want to be able to talk to those regulars, and I want to be able to share stories, and I want to be able to offer them books and coffee for chump change. I want them to run into the door to seek warmth, and I want them to find it there.

And so, here I am, the most unambitious man you’ll meet today doing everything in his power to remain just that. I need all these stories, and I need this life, and when it’s time for the café to pop up, I’ll know. It has come to my realisation that one always knows when the right time for something arrives.

Anyway, would you like a cup of coffee?

Hey, let me in you on a little secret—I don’t write about everything. Promise me you won’t tell anyone.

You see, I barely write about anything I experience at all. I can’t put words to things I don’t understand, and I understand very little. Everything anyone sees is a glimpse, as if out of a window on a stormy evening.

So, when I recently started to talk about love again, it worried a few friends. Of course, it should. If history is any indication, it doesn’t go well for me when that happens. The funny thing is that they don’t understand because they don’t know our secret.

I can write about it now because I understand what I felt. It’s the pile of considerable paperwork that I’m only beginning to sift through. What have I been doing alone, you ask? That is what I’ve been doing. I’ve been reading between the lines of every moment, finally, and understanding what happened.

So, now, when I think about everything, I spill. I spill like someone who has not spoken for too long. I spill like the glass of wine that once fell out of my hand and smashed against the tiled floor. I spill like the drop that managed to escape the glass as it hit and shattered, thinking it had a better fate for itself, as it landed on the white wall, stuck, forever.

I’ve been moving like a well-oiled complex system of gears which has just started to move, cog-in-cog. As if it was stuck because of a stubborn, broken piece of metal in the corner, hiding away slyly. As if the piece just fell out of its own, exhausted with its pointless mission.

I’ve pumped words about love out lately because I finally managed to patch the little holes on my heart, here and there. It’s all as good as new. So, I will keep the words coming. You see, now that I talk about it all, they’ll know all of it. They’ll know everything that happened years ago.

But I hope you can keep this little secret of ours. That writing is a craft for those who are terribly slow. It’s always running behind life as it happens. I hope I can count on you. Don’t tell them that they don’t know what they don’t know. Maybe, someday I’ll spin words about what’s happening now.

Until then, mum’s the word.

This evening, last year, I wrote about a cup of coffee. I wrote about how I spilt that coffee on myself. You see, we’re sly, those who call ourselves artists or you know, at least try to put out a good metaphor, once in a while. The cup of coffee was a relationship. It was a relationship that had just ended amidst what was, even by the end of last year, the worst couple of weeks.

I was vulnerable, trying to fix things with myself, there was a new health issue, there was persistent pain in my right leg, and goes without saying, the ever-present general overwhelm of life. Honestly, I wasn’t doing so well. So, when I wrote about the cup of coffee, the metaphor, the relationship, I omitted a specific moment. It didn’t fit well with the metaphor.

You see, between spilling the coffee, feeling that intense burn and getting a cab, there was a moment when I stood still. The lid that had become loose and spilt the coffee on me was lying some six steps away from me, my shirt was dripping of hot, scalding coffee, and I stood there. I was sobbing. I stood there for what seemed like a really long time. I lost track, actually. You often do when you lose everything else.

I remember, no one stopped. No one picked the lid. No one asked me why I was crying. So, I did what I had always done — I took six steps. I picked the lid up, I zipped my hoodie up, and I walked outside to get a cab. Then, I came home, and I wrote about it, hoping to put a good one out that day. That was the one thing I knew I could still do.

So, when I was talking to an acquaintance today as I sat in my apartment, doing nothing but sipping coffee and staring outside my window as it drizzled, and when they asked me, “”So, what are you chasing these days?”, answering spontaneously with, “Nothing, man. I’m just… slowing things down for a change” made me smile and remember that moment.

The moment when I took six steps, on my own, picked the lid up, zipped my hoodie up, got a cab, got groceries and came home.

Funnily enough, I lost that cup sometime later, without even realising it had dropped out of my backpack. It was a great cup, but it never seemed to fit just right, you know?

I was taking a walk the other day when it started to rain. I didn’t stop, though. It was drizzling, and I was okay with it. As I walked, I saw society trying its best to revive itself. I saw the neighbourhood coming out for whatever excuse they could manage.

One idea led to another, and before I knew, I was on a train of thought I couldn’t quite grasp. There have always been pandemics. There have always been wars. All of history is the same thing all over again, and again. It’s a terrible cycle. The further back you go, the more you see that it’s all the same.

So, what is it all about? What is it that’s demanded of us? What is the large question?

Perhaps, there’s something terribly wrong that we’ve been doing all this time. Perhaps, none of this matters anyway. Maybe, it’s some simulation where they change just one little thing and check if it works then scrap the attempt again. Who were they?

I kept asking myself all of these questions as I continued walking. Then, it hit me, quite literally too. A vehicle hit me as I crossed the road. I got up, dusting myself off. After an exchange of apologies, I shrugged it off and continued walking. It was then that I realised, though.

Perhaps, the grand answer, whatever it was, wasn’t in the grand questions but was in what’s right next to us. We could ponder over and wrestle with the broader questions as much as we wanted to, convinced we were doing something great. The fact would still be the same: that we’d miss what was right in front of us.

Perhaps, the most significant issues in history have never been about the grand struggle of the human collective but rather how oblivious each one of us was to our blind spots. We never see danger approaching because we’re too distracted, too lost in thought, too busy and full of ourselves, and too great in our heads.

Maybe the answer was in each person being fully aware of themselves by themselves. Perhaps, that’s when we’d become a better collective after all. When all of us know where we’re going, individually, when we don’t get involved in proverbial accidents, and when we don’t commit errors easily avoided.

Maybe it’ll be then that history would stop repeating itself.

I was doing the dishes tonight, and I thought of you for a wee second. That’s how I thought of you now. It just came all of a sudden — no warning, no alarm. Nothing changed at the moment, and I didn’t lose myself like I used to before. It’s been years now so I guess that’s natural. I thought about you and where you were, and for a second I wondered if you thought about me too, sometimes. As the water kept running on my hand, I paused and thought what time it must be there, wherever you are, but I was too tired for all that mental gymnastics. I thought about you and started toying with this idea of whether you think of me like this too. You know, just innocently, when a thought comes and goes all on its own. I scoffed at the idea a second later. The water was running and so I continued doing the dishes.

I guess, that’s what I don’t like about it, you know? The fact that I am alright. That even though it felt like it for a while, the world didn’t end. That even though it felt like it did for a while, time didn’t stop. That even though it felt like I did for a while, I didn’t stop moving. That life went on, and that I am in this apartment now, doing my dishes and listening to the music we once danced to, and not thinking of you because of the song anymore. That, everything is okay. That you’re somewhere else, probably asleep or wide awake or I don’t know doing what, and that I couldn’t care less. That’s what makes it all real, I guess. That’s what says it really happened. That you and I once did dance to that song, and that we don’t anymore. I guess that’s what I’m not a fan of, you know? That’s what bugs me sometimes. That it all really happened.

Some part of me knew they were right, you know? That I wasn’t going to be great.

I wasn’t going to be great at all. They’d keep telling me it isn’t that easy, and they’d keep putting me down asking me to be better, and they’d just keep being right all the time. Maybe, I didn’t even want to be great in the first place, and what was greatness anyway?

Still, there was something in how I felt, something that I couldn’t stir or shake off, and I knew there were others like me. As much as I knew that it wasn’t true, I couldn’t not believe that I wasn’t destined for greatness. It didn’t serve me to not believe in the myth of myself, and by extension, it didn’t serve you.

So, for your sake and for mine, I have to keep believing. I have to keep doing what I do. I have to continue this little war of mine that I wage from a desk in a tiny apartment, sitting down until the myth rings true or until they admit that it is, in fact, easy. Until they acknowledge that you just sat upright every day, and you put in the work, and that was great in itself.

I think they keep telling us to stand down because they don’t know what we know: that greatness comes from the legend of you, the one you keep telling yourself over and over, every day. That it has nothing to do with them. That greatness has nothing to do with monuments and relics. It never did, and it never will.

Greatness was all about the every day. It was in the myth of you that you kept telling yourself even when nothing made sense.

I couldn’t tell you how it felt. I can’t do justice to what I saw when I did. You had to be there to see it with your own eyes. I was a part of the greatest generation in the history of this sorry planet. We were all a bit crazy, all of us starting little rebellions from our bedrooms.

We pretended to play by the rules during the day. We pretended all day long, and we laughed, and we cried, but at night, when the door was shut, we sat in front of dimly lit screens, making art. It was our Renaissance.

It was our street in Florence. It was our cosy café in Paris. It was much more, so much more than that. It was an unprecedented revolution of epic proportions. It was when “art” was realised for what it truly meant: expression.

It was the Silicon Age of Art. I really can’t tell you how it felt, but we were, in our own way, infinite. We were forever. All of us combined, creating art together. Art was free, art was out in the street: in every home, in every room, in every screen, and in every head.

We were all artists. We all had something to say, and we damn well said it, every day. No one in the world, no one in the past, and no one in the future could ask us to stand down because we wouldn’t, and they knew it. We were there, we were then, and we were ready with our crafts in our hands. All of them knew it. All of us knew it, too.

We were all in it together: the grandest collaboration of all time. Some wrote, some painted, some shot, some clicked, some danced, some sang and some talked. Some of us would be remembered forever, and some of us would get lost within bytes and bytes of data, but we couldn’t care less.

All we wanted to do was tell them how we felt, and we did it every day, as honestly as we could. It was the greatest generation on Earth. All of us creating cluelessly, all of us creating ruthlessly, united by the dimly lit screen at night.

Art was no more, and everything was art. Nothing mattered, and everything did. We were millions and millions of people leaving our legacies behind every day. We were the greatest generation of all time. We were infinite. We were art.

You had to be there to see it.

People tried too hard to define other people. It has taken me all my life, up until this very moment to say, “no, this is you trying to put me in a box, the existence of which is the very thing I oppose.” I wasn’t a strictly bothersome person, but if there was any rebellion in me, it was to not pick sides. That was my fight, and I believed it to be a good one.

I loved everything, and I loved everyone, and I was not going to sit around explaining it all. There was no point explaining. There was nothing gained from trying to tell others what I meant, and those who understood, did it all on their own. They understood that I refused to be put in a neatly drawn definition which I couldn’t have known myself.

Truth be told, I didn’t want to know it either. It was a fool’s errand because I was, like all people and things I knew, too infinite to be boxed-in to one opinion or one perspective. We were all only a speck of who we could become.

There were days I’d wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and not recognise who I was myself. I woke up anew every now and then, and from that moment on, I was a different person. I believed in different things, said different things, and did different things.

It was beautiful to me, all that potential in all of us. It was the only thing that mattered, and the only thing I thought people ought to think about. All else was, in my honest opinion, a desperate attempt by desperate individuals to make sense of something they could never understand. So, that was my fight. A fight I’d fight silently for the rest of my life.

Well, at least, until they’d pronounce me dead one day. Yet, even then, I’d live on in these words, and so, even then, they’d be wrong. That was my rebellion.

Maybe many years from now, I’ll take a walk along the promenade in the city where it rains a tad bit too much. Maybe it will start to rain. Perhaps I’ll rush to the petit café nearby as I run for shelter. Maybe I’ll slip and stumble on the slippery, pebbled yard.

Maybe, I’ll bump into you.

“Hi,” I’ll say and stand there, dumbfounded, at a loss for words that would otherwise form too cleverly on my tongue. You’ll look at me for a second, dazed. Perhaps, in that moment, you’ll decide between pretending to not know me or giving me a long-overdue hug.

Maybe, you’ll decide on the hug.

Maybe we’ll take the table outside, hiding under the shelter. Maybe we’ll decide to talk about life. Maybe we’ll be awkward and not know what to say but knowing us, I’m sure we’ll start blabbering.

Perhaps we’d start right after we said goodbye.

Maybe, we’d tell each other the stories we’d been saving for years, hoping for this little coincidence, knowing to some degree that it was bound to happen.

Maybe, I’ll ask you what you were doing in the city, and maybe, you’d tell me you just wanted to visit. Perhaps you’ll ask me the same, and perhaps, I’ll crack a joke about taking the train only because I knew you’ll be there.

Maybe, we’ll laugh as the rain would stop.

I wonder if we’ll decide to keep sitting anyway. Maybe, we’ll sit there for hours, until it’s closing time, and maybe, we’ll get a takeaway in the final call, only to walk along, together.

Perhaps, it will all make sense then, and perhaps life will have all been worth it till then.

Maybe we’d look back at life and how it unfolded. Maybe we’ll laugh about it all as we’d sit under the night sky, staring at the sea, together, sharing stories until the sun starts to rise.

The possibility, the maybes and the perhapses make me wonder, though.

I wonder how that morning would feel. I wonder if we’ll sit together till the sun rises. I wonder if we’ll even get that takeaway. I wonder if you’ll decide on the hug. I wonder if I’ll bump into you. I wonder if I’ll even take that walk. I wonder if we’ll ever be in the same city.

I wonder how life will unfold until then. I wonder if it will even unfold at all.

When I was slightly younger, I’d often hear a word in my ear. It would appear as if by some divine intervention, and I’d rush. I’d rush to write it down. I’d rush to record it somewhere. I did not want to lose it. It was my stroke of genius, I thought, I need to see this through.

So, in my selfishness, I’d take that word and build sentences around it. The sentences would become paragraphs, and before we knew it, we had a semblance of a piece of writing.

I still hear the words, even more so now. I hear them when I’m sitting by myself, exhausted, listening to the rain patter on the window. I don’t move a muscle anymore. If there is anything I’ve learned in the past few years, it’s that the right word comes back to you.

The right word is meant to arrive, knock for a bit, and now that is the trick, you don’t open the door. You never open the door because the word has to grow. The word has to find itself first before it finds you, and so you let the door stay bolted as it rains outside. A while later, it leaves, but you don’t forget it. You know it will come back.

A week goes by, a month goes by, and sometimes, years go by, as you keep sitting by the door. Then one day, there it is, there is the knock. The knock isn’t as panicked as it was earlier. It’s calmer, softer. The word knows you’ll open the door. It knows you’re waiting for it, and you were, in fact, waiting for it.

While you waited, you’d grown as well. You learned that a word of passion was useless if it didn’t know where it belonged. You learned that you had no role in this. Well, beyond the role of the one who puts it on paper. You were just an agent in this thing that was larger than you, much larger.

There was no divine intervention. There was no genius. It was all about the right word, as it had always been. It was never just about the right word, though. It was all in how the right word arrived. That was the undisclosed secret.

The most well-kept of them all, protected by all those who had ever managed to put an honest word down through the course of history, and trust me, just one was enough. One honest word was all it took for you to understand the truth.

It was never about you.

The human heart was fragile; the soul more so. It seems everyone was broken in some way. There were no people around me. There were just broken shells, frantically looking for pieces to complete themselves or for a reason behind their cracks.

Some hid their chipped paint by coating over their decaying colour. Some borrowed pieces from others leaving them incomplete instead. Some gave up, altogether.

It was a shitshow of ceramic clay dolls, all broken, all falling apart, walking about like creepy marionettes in a play without a script. Their threads intertwining and taking some others down as collateral damage. What mismanagement!

Everybody improvised, everybody was in on it, and no one talked about it.

There was no audience. It was all too deplorable and exhausting to watch. Sometimes, some of them found pieces that fit perfectly all on their own. Those were the lucky ones: the ones who didn’t destroy others to complete themselves. That rarely happened, though.

On a normal day, all of them were snapped, broken, fragmented. They still went on though, finding pieces. I’d just stand in the corner most of the time. I had a few pieces left in me but a lot of me was broken too. I had no interest left in finding any. Not anymore.

Now, I preferred watching instead. I’d just look at them all, going about their business, shard for shard, heart for heart. There were so many broken people in the world, you couldn’t stop counting, and they all made it, eventually. I could make it too, I thought. I just didn’t know how.

What a shitshow.

“Are you going to write full-time now?” They ask me every now and then, and I don’t know what to say.

I wonder if they want to know whether I’ll make money off these words. If it’s that then, to their disappointment and to my misfortune, these words aren’t worth being printed on a page, or maybe they want me to put more words out and more often.

However, I don’t keep anything to myself. It is pointless to keep something to yourself. What good will come of that? Of course, once these words are out, they’re not mine anyway. They belong to everyone, as they should. They belong to them all, as they should.

Tell me, though. What good is life if not shared word-for-word?

Isn’t a moment wasted if it’s not turned into a metaphor? Aren’t heartbreaks pointless if they don’t help another heart heal? Isn’t laughter unnecessary if the joke is never told? Even a breath is futile if it fails to take another’s away.

With that in mind, I write. I may not always put it down, but trust me, I write.

I write when I’m doing the dishes, hating every bit of it. I write when I’m taking a walk, looking around frantically. I write when I’m making coffee, watching the water bubble over. I write when I work on a problem, pulling my hair out of frustration.

Every breath I take is noted down. Every thought I have is neatly filed in a cabinet. I curate my emotions and put them out for display.

I write when I miss my mother, and my father, and my brother. I write when I’m on the phone with a friend, longing to see their face. I write when my heart is broken every year or so. I write when I’m drunk, losing myself in crowds only to feel less alone.

I write when I’m on the floor sometimes, as the moon shines brighter than the sun does on some nights. I write when I’m so peachy, you can see me hop around in happiness.

You see, I’ve spent my life making sure there’s always a story or two to tell, making sure there is always something to put down, hoping it helps just one person feel something, feel at home.

I don’t know what to say to them when they throw the question at me every now and then.

You see, I’ve been writing full-time for a long time now; it is life that I’ve lived part-time.

Sometimes, after a long day ended, I’d just lie down on the couch. Tired but trying not to fall asleep, staying awake intentionally.

The apartment, dimly lit with lamps on the lowest brightness possible, would be on that cosy-cold — a sweet spot of eighteen degrees on the air conditioner. Some chill, electronic, rhythm and blues track would play in the background. Its low beat reverberating throughout the silent flat in a silent building in a silent neighborhood on a silent night. A cup of freshly brewed tea would sit on a coaster on the table right near the couch, wafting its aroma towards me.

I’d have nothing but some sleep in my eyes. No dreams. No goals. Just some sleep and a lot of exhaustion. It was then that I let all that control go, and unclenched my body and mind, and let out a huge sigh. The sigh would almost always be followed by a smile. Not a full, cheerful smile but somewhere in between not smiling and smiling. It was the smile of contentment. It was the smile of enough — of I did enough, I was enough, I have enough.

Then, I stared at the ceiling and I kept staring for an hour or so. This was my moment. It was mine alone. No obligations, no things I had to do, no favours, no one who needed my help, and no chores. No one wanted me right now. No one asked for my assistance. It was in this moment that I didn’t even need myself. In this moment, I could just be. I could just exist. Weightless. Powerless.

So I did just that. I’d lie there, on the couch, breathing — in and out — slowly, until I dozed off.

Life. You go out with a friend. You stand at the bar. A stranger joins you. You talk about stuff. You agree. You disagree. You clink some glasses. Some beer is spilt. An hour goes by. Let’s do this again, you say. The spirit is cheery. You exchange numbers. You never meet again. Goodbye.

Life. You’re walking. You see a café. You walk in and to the counter. A hello to the barista. They remember your order. You bump into a person. Sorry, I didn’t see you there, you say. It’s okay, she replies. You wait for your coffee, together. You ask a dumb question. The conversation flows. You exchange numbers. You never text again. Goodbye.

Life. You pack a backpack. You go to the mountain. You meet a merry bunch along the way. You talk to them. You reach the ocean. You tell them everything. They do the same. You call each other friends. You gaze at the sky with nothing but stars. You camp in the desert. You exchange numbers. We’ll stay in touch, you say. You don’t. Goodbye.

Life. You run into an old friend. You learn where they are. They’re doing great. Small talk. You realise it all works out for everyone, eventually. You talk for some time. You tell them you gotta rush. They tell you they’re busy too. Let’s make time to meet, you agree. You exchange numbers. You don’t make time. Goodbye.

Life. You’re stuck inside your house. The world is in flames. The day is almost over. You don’t know what to do. You lie down for a bit. Tired is an understatement. The apartment stays quiet. You play some music. You recall it all. You open the contact list. You scroll up and down.

You start typing.

Hi, life never allowed. I’m sorry I never really got back to you. I don’t know if you have this number or if the one I have is correct for you. I just wanted to say it was nice talking to you that day. I hope you’re doing okay. Take care.

Life. The phone stays silent. Maybe, they switched numbers, you tell yourself. You fall asleep. The phone beeps once. The phone beeps twice. You don’t budge. It stops buzzing. You wake up in the morning. You check your phone. You smile. Sorry, I fell asleep, you type. Let’s get in touch soon.

You never do. They never do either. Goodbye.

Sweetheart, I enjoy it, you know? I enjoy waking up alone and having no one in particular make coffee for me or wish me a good morning or a good day. It is freedom. It is freedom in not knowing how my days go because I don’t have to talk about them. I enjoy the comfort of my own company now.

This is somewhat new to me. I’ve stayed alone for most of my life without much say in the matter. Yet, this time, it’s deliberate. It’s not my situation but a choice. I’ve chosen to deliberately keep my heart to myself this time. Forgive me, please.

It seems, I lose my agency when I’m in love, love. It’s all downhill from there. I’ll rely on you for a day, then a week, and then, you’ll hate me. I’ve learned, I don’t understand love yet. Everything I was taught about it was wrong, and it is only now that I’m beginning to understand it.

Sweetheart, life is hard, but asking you to pick me up every other day is even worse. I’ll be fine but I need time. I need time to become whoever I’m trying to be or fail in the attempt. I can’t drag you through that. I can’t drag anyone through that.

I have to spend every day looking at my reflection, and stare at it for so long that I’m coerced into liking it. That’ll be a start, at least. The world did a real number on all of us. They forgot to tell us that you had to be a whole first before you gave someone a part, before you gave someone your heart.

It’s the movies, love. It’s the damned movies, the damned books. It’s the idea that there is someone out there who would magically fix our lives and us. They made us believe in fairies, and turned us into monsters instead. It’s only now that I see the curse. I have made up my mind to get rid of it.

So, I’m taking some time off. I’m taking some time off from the movies, the stories, the legends, and the heartbreak. I’m going to be by myself for as long as it takes. I’ve learned, I can’t love myself through you, or anyone else. I want to learn to do it on my own.

It’s been a collision course of broken hearts, love. I’m only beginning to fix mine. I’m sorry, my heart has been broken for far too long, but I’ve learned it’s no excuse to break yours too.