Prashasti Aryal's Blog

Everyone who gets to know me would, by default, realize that for a long time I have been by myself; and that I don’t know how to live any other way.

Here, I am very careful to not choose the word alone because I am on a quest to change the tone of narrative in my head. Besides, I haven’t been alone, no, even when I have been by myself. I have been away, aside, afar—but even in those moments there have been people around.

My parents, for one, have spent all these grueling years trying to understand me and my multitudes that surface, hide and resurface more often than they should be made to appreciate. Neighbours would ask, Nanu ghara chaina? Aachkal dekhdina ta, and my parents would just tell them kotha ma cha, kothai ma bascha, baira katai jadaina— I’m in my room, I’ve been in my room, I don’t go anywhere. For hours, days, weeks, I’m in my room and I am able to stay within the small space between four walls because my mind is expansive. I have never been a physical being, after all. I live in my mind.

I could be classified as a hermit crab. An alien-looking thing that finds home in its own shell. The extent of that shell has always been very small to an outsider. The possibility that it could ever expand, even just to house a partner, has been null forever—or that’s what I’ve been made to believe by my vices.

I worry sometimes, if the hermit leaves its shell what would happen to the shell? Where does the home go without the inhabitant?

The home comes along, in my case.

I live within myself more than I do in the outside world. I think that is also a reason why I am adjustable—I can make a house out of any given space, make a bed out of every surface—because safety and warmth has always been something that I source from within and carry along, rather than seek from the open world outside. This realization was a slow one, it crept up on me from behind but it wasn’t an unkind threat. It was looming, but never obvious.

The fact that sometimes I’m not there, I’m not here. I am, I want to be. But I cannot be fully present unless I am by myself. What do you call it? What is this, if not homesickness? A continuous need to be hyperindividualistic, be by myself, otherwise I don’t feel like myself. Homesick for a place that is within me.

On homesickness

I have always thought houses should be portable. Ever since I was a kid, I thought I would one day create a foldable house. Collapse its walls onto itself and fold it into a neat two-dimensional layer that I could chuck into a bag. I used to hope the future would hold portable homes and I could carry mine like any other cartoon character with their motifs.

When I moved away, that was when I truly wished someone would find a way to teleport places to people instead. A little castaway, a little lost, I was shattered at having to leave my little crab shell. I felt naked, visible, so seen without that covering to hide behind.

So if I can’t make room for another in my shell…is it so terrible? Does that mean I will be left to my vices forever? Yes, most tell me, yes.

My coworker and I were sat outside one day this summer when the flowers were still blooming and pollen was everywhere. The days now have turned colder, the rain doesn’t drizzle, it pours, and misty darkness spreads over the day earlier.

I cradled my water bottle within my two hands because I feel empty when I have nothing to hold. She was smoking, as usual, pushing the nub into an empty-of-liquid full-of-nubs can of coke. By now I am convinced half her blood is caffeinated cola, her lungs are tar, and her soul is far away. Her eyes are sharp but forlorn too. Even as she sits beside me every day, she is back in her home in Romania, painting her nails in her garden and singing into a mic from the roof to wake her neighbour-friends up. Is that what I look like too? I wonder.

“No is okay,” (Translation: It is not okay) She vehemently shook her head at me. I can never look at people when they’re seriously confronting me about something. “No is okay (for) someone (as young) as you to be alone like this. This is life? Fuck that.” Her English always comes out sharp and bitter when she curses. All things sharp and bitter nip at my skin, swoop inside my flesh and take a jab at my heart. I couldn’t look at her.

She calls herself my Romanian mother. She gripes like a mother would— it fills my heart.

These days, I’ve realized, I look for a mother in everything. Maybe I just miss mine.

A few days ago after I moved into my new place and met my housemate’s intimidatingly kind and composed mother. When she left after a few days and hugged me goodbye— I couldn’t help but tear up a little in secret. Every time she would look at her daughter, a softness came over her features. Her already composed demeanor shifted into something cloudy. Their heads on each other’s shoulders, a comforting pat on the back here, a soft caress of the hair there— such easy display of affection, such comfort in loving someone.

It’s all something I hadn’t had with my own for a long time. My teenage was not kind to us. We’re still trying to repair everything we broke between us.

I’m just not greatly expressive about my affections; and when I am, it is difficult for the other person to interpret. As it stands, I haven’t been a very great pretend-child to this current dynamic with my coworker either.

Romanian-mother continues: “I know what you think,” Her whats and yous mesh together like they are singular, it sounds like whatchu. “No good people these days, your age.” Her no is always nu.

I had bluntly laughed it off then, but what if there’s another hermit?

What if I find another crab in a shell and instead of inviting this crab into my shell, or leaving mine to go to it, what if we just create another covering, over the both of us? A bigger shell that can fit both of our shells and so much more. Maybe we could create a world where unspoken affections aren’t cowardly— they’re just understood in silence.

I also had a conversation with my housemate last Friday night. I asked her if physical intimacy, skinship in general, ever gets too much sometimes, even when you’re in love with the person. I wanted to desperately know if what I feel is normal, that it’s okay to not want to touch someone else most days—not without a layer of clothing in between at least. I wanted to know if a relationship can last, without skinship. I felt like a fool asking and wondered why my curiosity always wins over shame.

The conclusion? I haven’t gotten there yet. Maybe it is impossible to want a type of love, a relationship, where we just let each other be. Where we are more companions than lovers. In which we have our own orbits and we just meet in the middle somewhere. A small collision.

My idea of a perfect relationship dynamic must be skewed, because every time I ask people hoping they would validate this image I have formed in my head about my ideal “relationship”, they tell me the opposite of what I hope to hear. That’s why I don’t know how to be around people who fit in each other’s lives as puzzle pieces— is that fateful union or created convenience? I can never tell. All I see when I look at two people who love each other, in any way, is an ocean.

I can’t swim. When I’m by the sea, all I can do is pick a bench by the sandy beach, sit and sigh. I am afraid of the water, even though waves are beckoning.

On promises

Talking about the sea always takes me back. When I was prepubescent, I saw the sea for the first time in my life on my first out-of-Nepal trip.

Goa—a breezy piece of land at the edge in some south bits of India. Not an island but felt like one. It was still much untouched and pristine back then, almost 15 years ago. When I think back now, it seems like another life that I’d lived and forgotten. Remembering is the only way to relive it, but sadly, memory fails me nowadays. Whatever I remember, I remember them as scenes from a film.

A run down moped that my father drove without a helmet—helmets weren’t really a thing in south India, I’d found out then. It was a different world to me, the first taste of risky freedom. If I reached out with my tongue into the atmosphere, I could taste the salt from the sea, the sweetness of my mother’s happiness as she laughed from behind me on the moped. Sandwich filling is what I called myself—all the goodness between two slices of bread (the slices being my mother and father), everything that held us together in that moment. Us three, on a moped, in the church adorned streets of a humid Goa, without helmets. And none of it was illegal.

Joy wasn’t illegal, laughing with my mouth and heart full wasn’t illegal and my parents turning to each other and sharing a big smile that reached their eyes wasn’t illegal. Goa was the first time I felt freedom. I felt it so deep within me, that liberty, that if you cut me open today and rake away all the flesh, it would be etched onto my bones. Back then, I could see this mark of freedom as tan lines from my skimpy swimsuit on my body.

So much water to be unafraid of, so much air in my asthmatic lungs, so many smiles.

Our heads were always full of salt, all seven days. Whenever I raked my fingernails through my dried hair after a dunk in the sea, they would be filled with white salt flakes. I’ve never loved water since—that was the only time when water didn’t feel overwhelming, when it didn’t feel like an ick and felt like something to glide on instead.

On our last day I made a friend at the hotel swimming pool. All the best things come suddenly, leave and never visit again, but maybe we remember them in such good regard because they stay so short and leave to never return.

Sometimes I still think of her— it was nice to have a friend at last. At school I was an alien, but in Goa nobody knew I sat beside the rubbish bin in class with the only other shunned kid from class. In Goa, I was human. In Goa I was just another kid and I could make friends. And I did. For a whole day, I made a friend. I felt like I fit into the world that day, I felt normal. I wonder where she is right now. If we were to trace back the steps of my sexuality crisis, I think that’s where it would take us. That squiggle-shaped swimming pool.

When we left, I promised the wind, the waves, and even grains of sand that I’d be back again. Funny how the promises I am sure I can keep end up as ones I never fulfill. I never set foot in that land again, despite countless attempts. To keep a promise is to fulfill it before you make it. Before you say it out loud, I know now.

I remember bringing a jar full of sand to give to Aama who I knew would probably never get to see the sea—no, not like I could, not the ones I would go to. I even picked out seashells, encased them and brought the jar home. When I gave it to her to open, the sand smelled putrid. I wanted to bring some of the sea along too, so I had filled the jar with wet sand right from the edge where the land met the water. Magical, isn’t it? I had thought that, at most, the sand would dry out. But incubation was not a concept familiar to me; and who could convince me of evaporation, of any kind of disappearance, from things I’d loved? Losing was never in my mind. Grievance was just a stranger— could’ve been riding the moped next to ours.

On collisions

I have been in quiet company with myself for 22 years and 7 days now. How could I ever expect someone else to understand this bone-deep need of hermitage? How ever could I subject someone to such terrible, lonely love—which is the only one I can offer? I will disappear into myself very often— why should anyone wait for me to get back? Why, when I cannot guarantee to make them the home I come back to? These are all questions I am constantly plagued with when I think of myself in the context of romantic love. One that lasts into marriage, through grief, and creates a home that lasts through some storms. I am always quick with a rebuttal when I am placed in the context of romantic love: Mero lagi haina. It’s not for me, I told my mother on a call.

But the idea of love, as I age, changes. Evolves along.

At eighteen, I thought love would be all encompassing, a raw bud, a sudden thunder strike, a lavish storm that leaves nothing within me unchanged. I thought a lover would be someone unafraid, someone who would grab my hand in public spaces, someone who would laugh with their eyes and wipe at my teeth when I smile if there’s a little something there. Maybe the girl in a long white skirt at my favorite bookstore in Thamel, or the guy standing next to her. I thought love could be someone I grew up with. It was bitterly platonic yet all-consuming. It was music and arguments and learning through trial-and-error each other’s boundaries and routine. It was to realize that it wasn’t love at all.

At twenty-one, love was independence, love was everything I touched, everything I could see and appreciate— love was a form of gratefulness. Of life itself, of myself, and the existence of everything that exists. Love was me walking through a park with a dear friend. Sharing a kiss with a stranger in an unfamiliar place. Watching a squirrel skitter along on a tree. Ripping into a bhogate with my bare hands and dipping it in sugar and spice. Love wasn’t just a feeling I felt, it was something I was pregnant with. I thought it was something to radiate, something to grow in me. It was within, and it felt fleeting too because one day, it would have to be birthed out.

At twenty-three, I think love could be a part of my daily routine. As simple as breathing in air. As simple as internet in everyday. A ripe fruit. Or the plant of aloe vera I own that sits at my desk and soaks up any sun that visits through the blinds. Love feels less burdensome of an idea now— it’s how I imagine love should be. Its prowess is the same, intense and burgeoning, but the weight has lifted tremendously. It is easier to carry when I am in love with myself first. It is easier to love someone else when I know who I am, what I love, what I want. In knowing myself, I can love others. At twenty-three, after 5 years, I am thinking maybe it’s time to give it all another chance.

I enjoy my own company far more than I would anyone else’s, but in moments where I feel like a mature person who has grown into sensibility, I feel I could do everything I have ever feared— to love without being afraid, to love when people are watching, to enmesh our orbits.

My deep hermitage is no longer a keep-out sign, it is just the way I live. A home I own that is within myself. I welcome others, I welcome you. I welcome love and I welcome friendship. Maybe we could build a bigger hermit cave in which all of us can fit, and then I could show you— the calmness with which I love and why it feels like a collision.

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i spent the night in my bathroom.

the urge to escape is overwhelming, that’s how i know i’ve gotten worse. rarely do i need to physically withdraw from everything around me and cocoon myself into the smallest, darkest place i can find and feel safe and locked away in. and what other space than my very own bathroom floor?

i began withdrawing into bathrooms when i used to live with a friend. we shared our space and privacy. but sometimes, we needed our alone time and so she would retract to the balcony, and i would sneak into the bathroom.

i still haven’t given the habit up, it seems, because even though i no longer have a roommate (yes i do miss you, tawishi), even though i live alone, i seek privacy for myself today.

there are no cameras in my room, no knowing eyes in the walls, no presence beneath my bed, no love on top of it. my accommodation is a stark, honest picture of a lonesome youth. of pervasive loneliness that is so hard to romanticize, yet is so easy and familiar to fall back into— as if it is the arms of a mother.

if i’m alone in this room, then what am i hiding from? what scares me so much in this empty room, that i would rather spend a night with my back against the bathroom door in a dark, matchbox of a toilet space?

i only have space to place one bathmat on the floor. i sat on it until the darkness seemed light and easy to navigate like daytime. i could draw the space from memory if you were to ask me right now; i think i looked at every grey shadow and silhouette for hours, just sat on the bathmat.

on my phone, i found a video of me from two years ago. i had just finished my undergraduate degree and had moved back home, with my parents in kathmandu. i was in my teenage room, standing in front of the mirror, trying to zip up a dress in the back. the caption on the video wrote: i look disgusting, i need to change my body.

the thing that made me sad about it was the fact that i looked like i always have— somewhere muscled, somewhere fatty; just midsize like i have been forever. the realization that self-perception could be skewed so deeply came to me like the chill of freshwater. i was fucking awash with a grief so strong for the person i was looking at in my phone screen.

after scrolling through a few more videos, i found another video that tugged at my tear ducts, making them sting. i had begun recording between a crying session, it seemed. i was younger in this video, more innocent. i hid my face from the screen, but the tenderness in my voice was a dead giveaway of the grief in my heart. the voice of past-me spoke so hoarsely, so low— i never realized before how evident pain can be in my voice sometimes, yet i fail to recognize it myself still to this day.

“i just want to say— i just want you to remember, you as in me— i just want you to know that i’m so sorry, i am so sorry for everything.” past-me said. well, attempted to because i was a blubbering mess, barely coherent.

i cringed at the video. i wonder what had driven me to record such a moment. the caption read: i just want to remember, i am so sorry to myself.

i was still me back then. i had just seen (albeit temporarily) who i was, what brought me peace. i looked at other videos of me from back then and i could barely recognize the person on screen.

what condition is this? forgetting oneself— isn’t it the most gruesome murders you’ve heard of?

the me today on the bathmat feels just as much, i don’t suppose i’ve changed a lot. i still feel so much about everything and it is tiring to be me. i bore myself to death and i feel too much.

what a delight my twenties seem to be.

cardiff central. a small second-hand bookstore. reminded me of delhi.

going through the first pregnancy scare because a man i didn’t know took liberties with my body yet again. battling a new kind of loneliness in a new country— realizing how conscious one can be of their skin color, how easily one can give themselves up just to fit in, to pass. realizing that my friends are, in fact, boring to me and so out of touch that every conversation is excruciating, because i have to sit and listen to beautiful young women in the prime of their lives drone on about the most abysmal thing on earth i can think of— boys.

if i were religious i would say heaven help us all, but i find no hope for society at present, and neither am i, thankfully, religious.

the world is wondering if we’ll have a chance to reach 2030 because nations are at each other’s neck, everyone actively hates each other, and barbarians are killing children and more youth are at risk of being homeless, and yet the most interesting insights we share over a cup of coffee seems to be about the surprising talents of a young mans great abilities to be, well, a disappointment.

i am fed up. yet i don’t know where to begin change. i need actual conversation, actual talk. about how books and poetry have become business, how writers have become plenty and the good ones are being buried beneath consumerism and smut-disguised-as-romance in writing that couldn’t even be called mediocre (who the fuck is publishing these people? why has the art of storytelling become a rotten hobby? the term literature is taking its last dying breath as we contemplate the psyche of a guy who doesn’t know how to boil water); conversations about the world, about how greta thunberg’s mention decreased in the media as soon as she began actively supporting palestine, about how some people are under the impression that she has “left the climate change discourse completely” and use it as counter argument.

i want to yell no whenever i sit down at a dinner table with these friends i’ve made in the past six months. yet, yet. i feel so helpless. it is the first time i have had a friend group. it is the first time my dinner table has been so full. i am such a coward i cannot bring myself to change the course my life seems to be taking.

what is keeping me so stagnant? what keeps me from moving the way i want to? what keeps me from being who i am infront of people on this side of the world?

i despise wasting conversations on men, i despise wasting time doing nothing noteworthy, i despise being stagnant, but more than everything, i despise my inability to take control of my own life. how has so much changed in such a small time?

i have become a bystander. the one who keeps quiet. the one who looks away. the one who tolerates.

i don’t think there is anything in the world i despise more than being who i am today.

who, rather, what has stolen my voice?

and to hide from who i’ve become, i retract away into small, dark spaces often where i know there will be no watchful eyes. no one perceiving me. that is the only way i think i can cope with the mess i have created of me. by forgetting i exist, even for a moment. by disappearing physically for however long reality permits.

i have always been good at living with disappointing others— with letting down their expectations of me; but i don’t think can live with disappointing myself.

the one expectation i had of me, the one project i have ever managed to finish turned out to be a poor attempt at making a good person out of myself.

“freedom is not free” a bench at oystermouth castle

years ago, therapy told me one stark-naked truth: i am a control freak. i have obsessions and compulsions so strong that if i don’t do things my way, they’re no good. and of course, that i shouldn’t kill myself because, well, i will be missed. ha.

the therapist had put his hand into a fist and shook it infront of my face. the same face i had watched on my phone, sitting on my bathmat. “this rock, i see you as this rigid rock, unable to open up to things, unable to let yourself enjoy your own life—” the therapist had told me so easily, pulling away the ground under my feet. he had solidified the one fear my sixteen year old heart had harbored— yes, the problem is and has always been me.

now that i am almost done with my master’s degree, more than halfway done with paving a similar career path, i see that perhaps he should’ve used a different approach, perhaps used a less…insulting metaphor. or maybe i should’ve told him what his comparison of me with a rock had done to my self-image then and there.

i should’ve told him, “please don’t say that, it hurts my feelings”, and we could’ve used a socratic questioning method to get to the core schema of that feeling, but i was only sixteen, so i didn’t, because i looked towards older people for advice on how i could change myself, my life. how i could be good and turn everything around.

goodness, what a fool.

there was nothing to turn around. i was sixteen. life had begun early for me but i was still sixteen. i knew nothing, yet i thought i knew everything.

i can never forget that therapist. almost seven years later and i now see myself as a massive boulder. eroded to smoothness outside, but still a rock.

i do have good friends online, people i can have the kind of conversations i want with. a most welcome and relaxing respite from my reality.

one of them sent me a picture from a highrise building, overlooking the city of, what i think was, munich. beautiful, compartmentalized, divided into well thought-out chunks— clear patterns of urban planning. the kind that most of nepal’s infrastructure doesn’t follow.

i wondered then— we’ve created so many rules for the ground, invisible perimeters which we call borders, between nations. yet, we look at the same sky. the sky, endless, free of borders, undivided. aren’t we all the same in the eye of the sky? what divides the sky? then why have we divided the ground and ourselves so? why do we want to eradicate each other’s existence?

i fear the poets and songwriters and artists so far have been wrong. love is not a strong enough force to battle hate. love is not the strongest emotion in the world, love does not have the ability to change the world.

power does.

that is the sad truth about not just the contemporary world, but also history i reckon. forever it has been. the saddest truth about being human isn’t that we are starved for love and affection— it is that we bow to power. we give everything to wield it, we are slaves infront of power and those who use it over us without consequence.

there is a thin line between love and hate, surely there must be one between power and exploitation? power might divide the sky tomorrow. power is driving us from our homes driving us further away from love. yet very few of us do have any power to stop that from happening.

i have felt wronged for being born human many times, but today i properly mourn for all of us. today i pity us all. power will ruin us. it is ruining us. where can we hide, where do we retract to to hide from this truth? that no amount of love could begin to save this world.

What a crazy few weeks I’ve lived. Thanks for reading! Leave a comment if you’d like, I’d love to hear from you.

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my flatmates are packing their suitcases. i can hear the couple giggling and pulling off their luggage from the tops of their shared closet. my own suitcase is frowning at me from under my bed at this very moment— i don’t dare to keep it atop my closet, in fear of being under its accusative glare all the time. i haven’t touched it in months. i likely won’t touch it anytime soon. i neglect it and try not to think about how neglecting it is, in turn, neglecting myself.

i can hear them walk and talk excitedly around the flat as they get things ready for their vacation. i’m not listening with intent, their happiness is simply seeping through the thin walls and getting to me. i think they are possibly also getting things ready for their house-move that will come soon after their vacation. they are renting a big house out of the city— a while ago they told me, delighted, that they ‘even have a front lawn!’—just the two of them and their own private space to do whatever with. i am happy for them, they seem like the kind of couple that’s a team and can do whatever they set their minds on. now they have a place to call their home.

i used to have a space like that before i moved here. it was a small space, much smaller than this room i have right now, if i’m to be honest. this is a matchbox, yes, and it feels empty. but my space, ergo a similar matchbox room, i had filled it with so much life that it could breathe by itself. i had shoved everything i loved into every crevice, every corner, onto every wall, every bit of floor and ceiling i could reach, and made it mine. my very child, i had birthed it and fed it all the love i had absorbed from the world. i made it a museum for my experiences— you could walk in and see exactly who i was when i was 13, all the way to 20. it’s a gallery of thoughts and feelings i could visit anytime. a monument i could keep adding on to. a living art piece. an ever expanding space within four walls.

it was my space.

and yes, maybe (read: certainly), i have a hoarding problem, because there is no logic behind collecting the pull-tabs from the cans of sodas i’ve consumed; there’s no need to collect the wrappers of new things i’ve ate and enjoyed; the bills to places i’ve eaten at, with people whose companies i enjoyed; scribbling date, time, and place, on a napkin i wiped my mouth with ages ago— 2019, bricks cafe, 20:34 pm, with mamu and papa. and the napkin paper still has a stain of whatever i ate on it, and the pull-tabs are just tinfoil rubbish, and at a glance to anyone else it is ugly and unhygienic, but when i look at it myself, it’s a feast of memories waiting for me to come to it with a hungry stomach and an empty soul that has forgotten all the good times it has lived through.

i’m not in my space now, this is not my room, i merely inhabit it. i tried to make it my space but trying to live minimalistic has taken the whimsy out of my soul and i think it was a bad decision (i know it was a bad decision) to ever think that my soul that thrives on a feast can live on crumbs. i know now that i am not made for the minimal, i can never be full on less, can never live without the feel of my soul tightening at the seams due to the pressure of how much happiness it stores. and maybe it is making me sick because i haven’t felt that feeling in a while.

my room has always been an extension of what i feel. from the state of it right now, i’m in shutdown mode. the curtains are drawn down. the light is turned off. the daylight knocks on my window and i ignore its presence the same way i’m trying to ignore the absence of tightness at the seams of my soul. at this point, my suitcase might even be begging, crying at me to find a place that feels more homely and less lonely.

i miss having a home. i miss my space.

i want to paint every wall a different color and make nasty murals on it again. i want to hate what i’ve created so much that i create something else on top of it to hide the original creation, and hate it a little less. i want to have things to work with again, my hands are creaking, they’re in need of wanting to do more, make more. i want to strive for originality when there is none left. i want the desire to come up with new things, knowing that i am the very result of two different people— i am not an original being, hence, i cannot create something i have never known.

being an amalgamation, a mixture, how can we ever dream of being distinct, or original? every thought is secondary, every development is an idea that was birthed by someone in another corner of the world already. the fruits the trees bloom come from the soil which derives its nutrients from the death of many rotting things that were once alive.

it is a cycle. it refreshes, yes, but it is never born anew.

so even if my dorsal vagal system is taking a break right now, it means that it’s nothing new. people have experienced this before, heck, i myself have experienced it before. it’s nothing new, it shouldn’t be this serious. but who’s to convince my deflated soul that happiness will come again soon, when it thinks that the very act of deflation will lead to its demise?

writing makes me happy. writing anywhere, anyplace gives me a temporary illusion of being blanketed in a safe, sturdy, productive environment and it feels like a home. as i write this, i am thrumming with the things i want to say, my neurons have finally fired up because i’m writing, typing. the tips of my fingers are tingly when they make contact with the keyboard and lift up to reach for another letter. this kind of tingling sensation— 15 year old me used to dream, hope, beg, i would get to feel when i meet ‘a soulmate’.

i was wrong, clearly. because soulmate turned out to be not a living, breathing person but an action. it turned out to be the act of writing—anything, whatever, it doesn’t matter as long as i write. as long as i write, i am dissipating and receiving love. my soul is inflating a little. it doesn’t matter if any of this is original, it doesn’t matter if i am not the first person to feel this way, or talk of the act of writing as a lover this way.

even if unoriginal, it stems from passion. i will teach myself to ask every time i am berating myself for being unoriginal now— how does it make me feel? if for any moment i think that the answer might be legendary, alive or anything similar, then it would be worth doing.

honestly, maybe i’ll draw up my curtains now. writing has made me feel like this space is a little more my own. even though there’s barely any objects that account for the same feel, at least i have successfully rejuvenated the vibes with a quick write-purge session. i should pull the curtains back up. the sun here sets at 8:30 tonight anyway, i can still greet the daylight. maybe my soul will thank me for it. i still won’t be looking at my suitcase, though.

i know a white-haired 84 year old man who sits on his bed for most of the day and radiates love out of his bones. his hair is usually tousled, very fluffy after the shower his carer gives him, and he puts on his glasses, sits on his bed, and waits for me to visit.

sometimes he remembers me, sometimes he doesn’t. that’s what his dementia does to him.

his last name stems from irish gaelic and means descendant of the little scholar. i think it fits him as well as the collection of ties he keeps hanging from his closet door. he asks me often if he’s the last room i have to visit. he asks me if he can help me in any way. he asks if my work is too difficult. he asks if i would like a cuppa.

he’s a bright and cheerful old man, you’d never think he is 84.

“i am 62 years older than you! that’s an awful lot of years, love, isn’nit?” he says. i laugh and agree. he then speaks in a tongue i don’t understand. he tells me, tempus fugit.

“time flies,” he says, “in latin. tempus fugit.”

he teaches me a new word or phrase whenever i visit him. he tries to. he does, when he remembers who i am, who he is, where he is.

the first time he taught me a word, he asked me if i knew what gonk meant.

recently, i was with my flatmate and we were looking at the mother’s day special section in big tesco. there were animal themed cutesy trinkets and cards with bad puns on them. they had big gnomes and other decors strewn around. one of the gnomes with a long, long hat was labeled as a gonk.

a rampant laugh had bubbled out of me. “what an odd name— gonk.” i had said to my flatmate and she had forcibly laughed along, a little uninterested.

the image presented itself from my memories when the old man posed the question to me. unsure, i asked him if it was a type of garden gnome. he shook his head, not invalidating my answer completely, but told me it meant ‘to take a nap’ in british slang.

“i’m going for a gonk, that’s how you say it.” he taught me. “when they overwork you, just go up to their faces and say i’m going to take a gonk, and none of you can stop me! and take break, love.”

he is the sweetest man, always smiling; always looking to do something; sometimes whistling a cheery tune in boredom as he goes about his day, wandering around the building. i wonder if i could ever be like him in my old age. i wonder if i will ever reach eighty-four.

“come back next weekend and let me teach you something new.”

“i’ll look forward to that,” i had said, very happy and a little unsure.

when i visited him next weekend, i hardly thought he would remember.

but he did.

tempus fugit, he taught me.

time flies. oh, yes, it does.

“have you been caught yet?” he asked looking over outside the window. there’s a bird/squirrel feeder fixed on the window, some peanuts and grains on it. no bird or squirrel has ever come for what is offered.

“caught? what do you mean?”

“do you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend?”

my chest had bloomed at the inclusivity. i think i audibly choked on air, a little. my heart was suddenly very loud in my chest.

“no, not yet. probably never.” i said to him with a breezy laugh to sound casual. it is what i always say to people. to myself.

“oh, you’re still very young! you have a lot to live. you’re only twenty-two.”

gosh, twenty-two? when did i get to twenty-two? yesterday i was in my teenage bed with my knees pulled up to my forehead, going through the throes of sixteen. primary sensorimotor system, the mesolimbic system and amygdala— all caught on fire. and now i am twenty-two, with a premature baby that is my frontal lobe.

“believe me, love. it will happen one day, when the time is right. you just have to wait. tempus fugit.”

tempus fugit.

he’s right. it has been flying. from 17, 18, 19, 20, 21— time has been fast forwarded and it hasn’t paused. i don’t know where the remote is. i don’t think i have ever been in possession of it, ever. these years have passed me by without my knowledge, and so will the upcoming ones.

he’s lived 84 years. a whole human life. an entirety of emotions— he’s felt. he’s also studied sociology at some point in life, he says. he’s lost his wife. now he’s at a nursing home waiting for death to promptly come to him.

the weekend after that when i visited him, his memory needed a little coaxing but he got there eventually. he taught me a saying again.

in latin, of course.

amantium irae amoris integratio est

he said, if you ever fall out of friendships or relationships, then i should renew it with a hug, with love.

i thought it was just a phrase, something that mattered to him most.

however, i found that it’s from a poem. it’s called amantium irae by richard edwardes

the literal translation of that stanza is: the falling out of faithful friends renewing is of love. however, the old man told me that it means when falling out of old friendships, renew it with a hug.

then he said, with his index finger pointed towards me, “remember this, love. always. if you ever fall out with someone, renew it with love.”

relationships shouldn’t be so easy to give up, right? how have we become so stagnant when it comes to things like love? emotions that are big enough to change brain chemistry, emotions that are so overarching that it makes you want to be better, do better, live better.

how do we give up so easily on it now?

all i could do was dumbly nod my head and say a string of ‘yes’s in response. all i could think of was how relationships, bonds, friendships, love itself has changed its meaning since when he was 22— in 62 years.

tempus fugit, indeed.

i was excited to see him this weekend as well. we greeted each other as usual, and i asked him at the end of my visit, “any new words or phrases for me to learn today?”

his eyes lit up, and so did my heart, because he still remembers.

“i have a latin phrase!” he told me, and i thought ‘oh another one?’

but when he said, “when falling out of old friendships, renew it with a hug.” i felt myself deflating.

he remembered but not enough. i smiled at him, i think i was sad.

i told him, “oh, i know that one. do you know that it’s a line from a poem?”

no, he said, he didn’t know. “i’ll bring it for you on paper, next weekend when i visit. would you like that?” i asked. and he gave me an enthusiastic response. he thanked me, but i should’ve thanked him instead.

i hope i remember him forever. and i hope, one day, he remembers only love and forgets all grief. i hope all of us do.

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I.O.U. (Self-Pride), 1929-1930 by Claude Cahun

at some point in life, i stopped feeling comfortable in being.

a girl, woman, lady, female? asexual, bisexual, pansexual, just queer? too high functioning to be neurodivergent, too different to be neurotypical? where do i belong?

i don’t know what it means to not know my own body, my own mind, my own self. i don’t know what to tell my mother when she tells me that i’m a girl too. i don’t know what to say when she asks me if i think i am not.

i should feel comfortable in my femininity, in my body, in being me. but i don’t. i have never. and unfortunately, i don’t think i ever will escape this feeling of unbelonging.

The Broken Column, 1944 by Frida Kahlo

frida kahlo painted a self-portrait titled ‘broken column’ (1944) where her body stands upright with a brace although it is torn apart and untethered, with pinpricks and a morose barren background, depicting the physical and psychological traumas that she endured. it’s almost like trauma is an entity that lives within her body, is a part of it now. kahlo went through many, many pains in life and her art is a clear showcase of that. but i also like to think that she knew that body houses pain, which is why, despite being gory and detailed, her art about body trauma has a wondrous aspect to it as well, the colors are vibrant and seem as unreal as they are real. i have never related to something as much.

what’s incredibly motivating to me is the knowledge that even whilst she endured the pains, even on the hospital bed, she painted.

Frida painting in bed, anonymous photographer, 1940. © Frida Kahlo Museum.

the body knows how to keep score, and the body knows how to tell a story.

there is always some heat within me, this fever in my bones, right below the skin on my cheeks, right in the middle of my chest— and it blooms outward trying to swallow me whole. sometimes it wins, sometimes i do.

my body has not been mine for ages now. it has been an object, a liability, perhaps often a source of desire, or a tool to use when in need. but it has never been my own. i ask myself these days— you have been an anchor for tired bodies to lean on, but where does your body lean? do you ever even let yourself lean?

how often do we listen to our bodies? i, for one, rarely do. because how else do you live in today’s world without neglecting at least one part of your life out of sustenance, health and love? i neglect two of them, religiously.

i choose to neglect health, and love chooses to ignore me. it should be fine as long as i can sustain myself, right?

well, wrong, apparently.

my body is not the same as it was when i was all lanky limbs and awkward smiles and battling the throes of puberty as a teen, or even newly twenty with a raging identity crisis. but now twenty is past me. i’m older, and slowly, my body is letting me know that i need to treat it like the home it is. it’s not just an exosuit of flesh and bones for my nervous system but a whole living being that needs love and maintenance.

as i grow older, i see that more often my memory fails me. i am no longer everybody’s reminder machine, i can no longer remember my own meals. and as i grow older, i notice how fatigued my body has become. gaslighting myself into thinking i’m mentally strong worked, but i cannot gaslight this body to think it’s doing alright.

sometimes it’s my ankles, other days it’s my big back. something hurts. everyday. and it is no longer my heart. hurting even in my sleep tells me that my body has forgotten how to rest properly.

my body remembers, it keeps score. and i have treated it unjustly, with carelessness and spite. i have looked at it and frowned, i have poked and pinched, i have harmed and scarred, i have punished it more than i have cherished.

what’s more is that, i have never felt present in the present. i am never there, my body and mind have divorced each other. they are no longer on speaking terms. my mind does everything in its control to make sure i continue to hate my body.

The Anthropomorphic Cabinet, 1936 by Salvador Dalí

“does it really feel nice to be in a real relationship? do you really become each other’s halves? like, you know, when you’re hanging out and then at some point you think, ‘oh i just want to go back to my room and be alone for a while’, does that ever happen when you’re in a loving relationship? or do you just, sort of, morph into the same being, same body?” i asked my friend this today.

she said yes, it’s really nice. you forget everything when you’re together. the idea of another person being half of you is so fulfilling, so satiating, and you morph into a single being eventually, with two different bodies. two puzzle pieces, one solution.

it made me think that maybe i have to be halved to find love. can i not be whole and still attain it? so, before loving someone i have to love myself, but if i love myself, i shouldn’t need love from elsewhere anymore? life gives me myriads of paradoxes to uncover. it’s unfair.

you know, a few months ago, someone i grew up with, not together but rather adjacently, told me he wants to worship me. when those words bubbled up in the textbox, a loud, rampant laughter escaped my throat and my cheeks burned a second later.

it’s impossible to want me in that way. it is impossible for someone to be genuine when they say those things to me. my mind tells me and i agree. i think that is my curse— that the words i long to hear from someone with utmost love, are thrown out into existence casually, with all ingenuity one can muster. they lose all meaning i have assigned to them. they are ripped away and torn apart to shreds at once.

you see, things like dating, hooking up, and everything else has too many criteria. i have never been able to meet them. not once. nowadays, i see that it has become more a chore than passion-fueled effort. much like people’s relationship with their own bodies.

it’s very mechanical. the same rigid mechanics i feel in my body. left leg forth, right leg forth. palm open, palm closed. mouth open, mouth closed.

my body is a robot, yet it fails at what it was designed to do.

i cannot open my legs and invite pleasure, i cannot let down my guard and show someone my beating heart, i cannot house anything in my womb, i cannot create a home out of myself— for me or anybody else.

maybe i am a faulty manufactured piece, a reject, a failed attempt at creating a human being out of myself that functions well.

maybe, truly, i am the problem and everything is wrong with me.

Gradiva, 1931 by Salvador Dalí

they say that the body remembers an implicit memory of trauma after it happens. i believe it to be true for myself. i have moved from one country to another, and moved from that country to another again. all in hopes of being able to sleep in my bed without feeling like it’s shaking.

but i can’t leave this mind and body behind, i bring it with me wherever i go and i am forced to live in my mind and body.

it worked for a while, though. the relocations. the trauma from april 25, 2015 that still remains in my body has now been rescinded to an extent. but sometimes, some nights, it takes back control. i forget that i am not in my home in kathmandu; i forget that i am not in my teenage room that is no short of an art gallery, really; i forget that i am not sleeping on my low bed with a hard mattress that, once upon a time, shook, shook, shook with the tremors of constant earthquakes.

my mind likes to believe it is in a homely, warm place. my teenage room was the opposite, but my mind takes me back there often when i am asleep. sometimes, the earth in my dream shakes. sometimes i am half awake and i feel my bed shaking. but the bed shakes because i am shaking, and i mistake my own tremors as an earthquake. my body remembers the tremors, my feet remember to jump out of bed and take me to the door, my hands remember to grapple with the lock, the door handle, and my eyes, they remember to remain open.

it never lasts for more than 10 seconds. but 10 seconds is very long when you feel alive in every millisecond. once when i was still in kathmandu, i made it out of my room in those 10 seconds before i came to, standing right at the top of the stairs. who knows what i would do if it lasts for longer next time? who knows where i would go, what my scared body would try in order to save itself from a threat that has left long ago? it will be 10 years this april. 10 long years have passed, and yet, the 10 seconds feel longer every time it happens.

most times when it happens, i wake up mid-way. last night, i was standing mid-step in the middle of my match-box accommodation with my arms over my head. whenever it happens, i try to calm my body down because it has convinced itself of a danger that isn’t there. i lay myself back on the bed and my mind begins its journey on convincing my body that it’s not an earthquake. the ground isn’t shaking. you don’t have to rush out. you are not in danger. you don’t have people to save. you don’t have to save yourself. it is not an earthquake. this is a different bed. this is a different country.

it’s like counting sheep, the monologue. i fall asleep again after that. the days where i don’t have to shudder and cry myself to sleep due to the broken body-thing i am becoming, i feel lucky.

Survivors Guilt, 2024 by Timothy Colomer

i do know that bodies keep score. my late realization of this fact has cost me heavily. my body has so much to score that it has now lost count. i feel sorry for it. immensely so. this part of my mother’s womb, i wasn’t able to care for it very well. i still don’t know how to take care of it properly. it is still someone else’s more and less mine.

there are other times when i am idle inside and out in my body. no dopamine rush, no low mood, just an omnipresent neutrality that makes me feel as though my body has been carved out of stone— cold, unfeeling, impersonal. but at the same time, i am running somewhere. not physically, but i am in flight, i am fleeing myself, this body. but i am running within it. i don’t know how to break skin and tear out of myself.

i would call it executive dysfunction in clinical lingo, but in order to see myself as more a living-being and less as thing-that-needs-treatment, i think of me as a lake deep in the woods nobody has yet wandered into. stagnant, incorporated into its own ecosystem, somewhere hidden deep within majestic trees, growing impatient every passing day.

when i am human, i look at myself, at my idle tired body that houses my spirit, and i feel guilt so deep that it brings me to my knees.

earlier tonight, i came back after a whole day of being with my friends and just fell to the ground after i got out of the lift at my floor. i couldn’t even make it to my flat, couldn’t even make it to the door. my body gave up. the stockings i had on and the carpet under my knees dug into my skin. i didn’t know why i was on the floor. being in a human body feels like that most of the time to me.

but when i am lake, i look at myself and see still water waiting to be disturbed. the same way an artist needs a muse, like the skies need clouds and stars, like dewy morning grass needs the sun, a still water lake needs a skipping stone to be chucked at it. so, being a lake feels more hopeful and less morbid than being just a human with a body. being a lake allows me to wait, it allows me time. it’s like waiting for something to throw me out of momentum, waiting for someone to throw skipping rocks and break my surface tension. it’s exciting.

your body is everything but your own. it is part of your mother when you are held in her warm womb, it is just a vessel to be fueled for many years to come before it becomes an object, before you even begin to learn about what it means to you. when blood drips between your legs and your breasts grow prominent, your body will become a ripe fruit that other’s would want to devour. crows would come pecking, and your tree can do nothing more to shield you. before you learn to exist for yourself, before your body becomes your own, everyone stakes their claim, takes authority over it. and by the time you realize that you should be taking care of not only your spirit and mind, but also this house that you have neglected for far too long because you never felt home in it, it is too late. you already have become a lake. your body is not your own. and you are left on your knees on the floor, wondering what to do with all this skin, all the bones and flesh, and all that you feel.

Roots, 1943 by Frida Kahlo

more often than not, i think of running. i flee when it is time to fight or flight. i run. always. forever.

from who? i don’t know. from where? i don’t know. all i know is to run, all i have done is run. ever. even as i sit here on my bed and write this, i am running. there is no destination, there is no purpose. but i am running. and i am out of breath and my chest feels so heavy that i need to beg it to stop, but all i can do is furiously type. i can do nothing more. nothing but run.

from being just a human, from feeling, from being perceived, from possibilities, from ends, from confrontations, from grief, from love. because why would a lake need all that? i am not human, i am lake. i don’t need to be human. i am okay the way i am and i am allowed to be a lake. a lake that feels human, a human that feels like a lake.

i am a lake and eventually a boat will come, or a stone, or a thirsty bird. something will come and it will snap me out of my stillness. it will create a ripple within me and force me to stop and look at myself, it will stop me from running and help me take a deep breath.

there used to be a few herons that frequented my lake. confident, proud, and jarring. all my friends were herons. they stood on the edge and watched. i sent a small ripple so the water could touch their feet, a silent plea, but the herons almost drowned. and then they all flew away— afraid.

there was a cloud that attempted to hold my lake in its cradling arms, once. it watered me, and i happily mixed with its rain. i never knew if i shuddered in pleasure of its company or at the pain of my own dilution. it was an almost lover. i was fascinated with him, he was under the impression that i was not a lake at all. he had a perception of me that i didn’t have of myself— he thought i was human and put together, even. i ended up pushing the cloud away, we could never be together, so it didn’t matter. it was easier to tell myself i was being reaped, used for some benefit, because it was easier than facing the truth: that i wanted him, and i wished he would stay forever, but we both knew he was a stray cloud. i was a place to create a home out of, i was somewhere one could belong to and he liked his life as a wanderer, he didn’t want to belong anywhere. oh, how painfully i wish i could be a cloud too.

there has been nobody else since that has come close to my body.

don’t you also think that a lake longing for a companion is a bit pathetic? a little morbid too, i’d say. because only catastrophic events can create another lake. it’s not worth it. nobody else should ever become a lake.

yet, yet, yet, i long.

i long for another lake to be created out of someone so finally, finally, i can have a companion, a partner that can understand the layers of being human and, simultaneously, a lake.

you exist, but you don’t. you are a human being who is also a lake. and all of it is within your body.

this world has made your body a lake, and it is no longer your own body. slowly and surely, though, you and i, we will learn to take care of it.

if you understand what i mean by all this, if you feel what i do, i am so deeply apologetic to you and angry at the world. but, i am also extremely grateful to have found another lake, because, here, you are my companion and i am yours. thank you so much for reading.

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picture this: a compact laundry room. busy. staff working in a flurry. matching the edges of towels and folding them. once, twice, thrice. into a neat square. doing the same to bedsheets. clothes go on hangers, innerwear in drawers. dirty laundry divided into three and thrown into the washers. three dryer running.

everything has a tag, a number. a number each for the person whom it belongs to. no names exist here. only numbers. as impersonal as it can get.

in here, an old woman with drawn eyebrows applies lotion— nursing the hands that keep her fed. in more ways than one. her glasses have left a permanent indentation on the bridge of her nose. she looks at me over those glasses pointedly.

“no, no. not like that. you do it wrong, other way you fold.” she scolds me often in endearingly broken english. i wonder what she would say to me if i spoke her language. how untethered her tongue would get, how alive her vocal chords could become, how free she could be.

“do it like i do,” she says and i want to tell her that if she has a certain way to do things, then i do too. if she folds outwards, i fold inwards. in more ways than one. there’s a storm within me. huri.

it’s christmas eve. we work relentlessly for 10 hours. i fold my way. she does hers.

in here we are a little more than staff, a little less than machines. human, but not quite. robot, but not quite. there’s moments when we both fold inwards sometimes, though. we lock eyes and we understand. we’re both human in that moment. then the moment passes, and we continue our toil again.

the woman has lived a long life. nothing scares her, so she smokes three packets of cigarettes a day. even when her coughs sound like the worst noise i’ve ever heard a human produce in my life.

she’s worked relentlessly for eleven long years in laundry. unlike me, she knows very well what happens to hands when you don’t put lotion on them often. she knows what happens when you don’t look after the hands that keep you fed. so she gives me advice every so often, and i learn.

knowing clothes is easier than knowing people. in a year or two, you can remember every single clothing owned by a hundred different people but you can barely understand a single person in those years. even when you try your darnedest best.

“clothes are easier to be around than people,” she takes her first drag in. when the puff of smoke leaves her lungs, she closes her eyes, leans her head back as her body relaxes into the chair. it reminds me of a teenager having their first smoke, experiencing the hit of nicotine in their brain. how everything slows down, eventually stops, and something is taken off of a heavy chest. i lick my lips and i can almost taste it. i don’t miss it.

the smoke from her lungs blooms upwards. a wind comes around the corner and cradles the smoke in it’s arm like a mother and takes it away with a smile, like a gift.

“i know what you mean. they’re just clothes. they don’t expect anything from you. you can just read their numbers and know them, but people don’t come with numbers.” i always laugh when i talk like that. when i feel like i’m verbalizing things that should strictly be kept in a written format. that these things can only be ingested along with a narrative and should not just be thrown during casual conversations. i feel foolish so i accompany my words with a breezy laugh to make it seem…less. less of everything.

she just nods. and that’s the end of the conversation. and our break. we get back to work.

in the room of impersonal everythings, i think for a long time about everything personal.

i long to be known, i tell myself. i’m human, i tell myself, even though life aids me in forgetting sometimes. i am just like other people.

she’s older. she’s lived a whole life i haven’t witnessed. and i’m twenty-two. if i take off my glasses, nobody will know i wear them. possibly a quarter of my life has passed, if not less. i have experienced nothing i would like to remember on my deathbed, which means i have to work hard to collect experiences. big or small, i need to hold them in my fist and never let go. i need to put them in my pocket until they grow. like a child, i have to nurse after them— make sure they don’t turn sour as they age. put lotion on them from time to time. i have to make sure they’re grown enough until one day i let them go and they can live on their own in the world, without me. experiences which morph into meanings. meanings that i can leave behind. long after i’m gone. meanings that matter.

if i stay away from humans and sit with clothes all my life starting now, how will i be known? how will i know? how will i remain human and collect experiences and learn what effort is, what it means to know and be known someday. you can’t know a person in a year or two but surely you can create experiences. you can create meaning as you continue to learn people. and i think that’s enough for me. the effort means more to me.

people i meet these days tell me i’m sociable. ha. but even though i don’t feel like i’m functioning properly on the inside, i’m glad i look put-together on the outside now. after being told the same by three people who have nothing to do with each other, i’ve decided to believe it. i believe that the anxiety within can stay held within, that i can absorb it within, that it will not reach out its claws and hurt any experience i build, or any person i put effort into knowing. i refuse to just be something on a hanger or a drawer with a number tag on it, i refuse to be someone who’s only going to read those number tags, forever, so early on in my life. so i choose to believe that i can live different lives on the outside and inside. both of which is me.

and who knows, maybe someday, one day, when the time is right and everything is in place, and i am so deeply in love with myself that i can barely stop from wanting better things for myself, unable to hold myself back anymore, maybe, then, i will see that someone else wishes to know me too. and who knows, maybe, then, they’d want to know me even from within.

and i will be known.

really, it’s time to let myself be. i’ve survived for long enough, it’s time to live. a new year is coming, and i’m never big on resolutions because i’m not resolute. i am easily influenced, i am easily carried away if anything comes close enough to hold me— anything like the wind, or another person. and i sway. there have never been resolutions, and there will never be. but, but, but. i will want this year.

i will want more, and i will be more, and i will let myself live. huri will rest. huri will become a wind that cradles everything with affection. even if it is as fleeting as the smoke, i will hold it between my two arms and i will pull it close and i will love it. with purpose. as a choice. i will love it even if it will disappear in a while. i will create meaning.

i’m just like everyone else. all of us want to be known. so someone has to begin with the knowing. and i will begin this year. i will come out of the launderette and i will be out and i will meet people and they will see me on the outside and think i am put-together. i will love them even if i won’t know them for another day.

people want too much, and people want to be known, and i will begin with knowing them. unafraid of effort, unafraid of the giving, unafraid of the brewing gentle love within me and everyone else that can so easily turn into a monster. and even when it turns into a monster, i will love it relentlessly. i will put lotion on its hands and i will feed it.

i am gentle. i am love. people are gentle. people are love. and i will love people. i will love you.

i will be the wall you can tiredly come to lean your back on, a resting place. you can slide down, hold your head in your hands, and i will hold your back. you don’t have to be anything. you don’t have to do anything. i will love you simply because you are. just as i do with myself. because you and i are people and we want to be known. and i will begin now.

happy new year to everyone. cheers to experiences, cheers to learning. it’s not the end yet.

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pinktoe something something, under a reddit thread dedicated to endless guesstimates about the true lyrics within cocteau twins’ songs, says: “their music was never about conveying narrative…just enjoy the wonder!”

and i was hit with nostalgia of something i recently lost.

my worldview.

it transpired many months ago. sweet kathmandu, dusty roads. a busy saturday afternoon. two optometrists trying to understand why my left eye is the way it is. sat infront of me was my father with his glasses fixed on his head, looking at me, as i tried reading the letters with an eye closed. one by one.

e h c k

o p t d

c e f l

z o m— no, n. oh no, maybe that’s h. or w? no—

the optometrists looked at each other. the test barely helped, they said. another test required, they said.

next, i sat on a small stool. a fish tank about six feet away from me. the big machine was pressed to my right eye. they took their time. it took time. i felt guilty. another thing, i thought, yet another thing wrong, out of order.

i had looked at the fish tank, with my out of order eye as they asked us to wait for the results. someone will be there with me soon, they said. someone will tend to me soon, they said.

and i sat. looked at my father on his phone. his back was a little hunched over. all the years he lived, the years he lived now behind him; rest atop his shoulders like trophies. i wondered if i would ever be able to put my years on my shoulders with pride someday. probably not, i told myself. probably not, my neck and back already hurts with the burden. i have never known to make the best of my years.

the fish tank. i looked into it until i was called back inside. i looked and looked and looked. the fishes took their turns staring back. small, insignificant, and rather naive-looking wonders underwater. they were ethereal. the water lit up in different colors once a while. there were plants dancing inside and small pebbles jumping around, looked like something out of a hazy dream that you reach into but cannot grasp. more ghibli, more magic but somehow more real.

it might be surprising to hear, the doctor told me, but your right eye doesn’t see the same as your left. your vision is worse in the left, and each part of your left eye has different refractive errors, which is why the test took so long.

anisometropia is what the first one’s called. the latter? i don’t know. neither do i know why my left eye runs on its own mind and mood. maybe my left eye is my father’s daughter. sometimes a wall of blur, sometimes simply transparent.

they gave me prescription glasses with more vision correction. i couldn’t part with my older glasses, so i put them in my bag. don’t hoard, don’t hoard, don’t hoard played in my mind.

they told me to take a walk around the building. i went around once. twice. and felt exposed somehow, strangely. the glasses were supposed to expose the world to me, but i felt like someone had taken away the blanket i used to hide myself beneath.

i could see. the correct world, the real world. the world i never knew i wasn’t seeing.

i could see pen marks on a chair that was a few feet away, i could see the sharp edges of the building— no longer blurry. the blur went away. the blur which i never knew had existed. i went and sat in front of the fish tank again. and this time, i saw…just fish. their little gills and the texture of their skin, the way small air bubbles popped out of their mouths and surfaced on the top of the water. it was just a fish tank. the pebbles were just pebbles. the plants, just plants. the fish, just fish.

it was time to leave them behind. my childlike-haze covered vision, the wonderment that came with the blur, the need to see past the blur and the bittersweet inability to, now all gone. my father’s shoulders were just shoulders, my hands were further and more textured than i had ever seen them. they looked worn.

if i had seen pinktoe something something’s comment back then, saying enjoy the wonder, don’t look for a narrative; if i had seen it right there as i wore my new glasses— more powerful, more clearer— i would have pushed my new glasses up onto my head as well. i would be my father’s daughter. i would see the trophies on his shoulders, i would be able to throw away my old glasses, i would see not fish but magic again. i would let the blur swallow me.

months have passed now since then. these glasses are just another burden. their weight propels me forward and i hunch. like my father but never like my father. always unlike but so like him. all i bear are the burdens i have created out of small parts of myself. my years? only years. not trophies. my worldview? shifted.

but tonight. the cocteau twins sing in my ears again. sea, swallow me.

tonight, i will read pinktoe something something’s comment once again before heading to bed. and tomorrow i will teach myself to push my glasses up on my head. just for while, just temporarily, just forever, just always.

i’ll let myself see magic once in a while. the world is prettier when it’s perceived through opacity. it’s more magical when seen through a blur in the lens, one which you cannot drive away. whatever they say— the less i know the better. i don’t know, therefore i am not.

i’ll just let myself enjoy the wonder.

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expired lipstick, clothes with the subtlest of holes that go unnoticed at first look, maggot-infested chocolates and malicious threats delivered with a smile— these are the gifts we have received over the past decade.

oppression takes many faces.

this is one of them. it’s very deliberate and subtle. ugly, conceited, and has put itself up on a shrine like a narcissist who is afraid to look below and see that the shrine is just a chair. might be bejeweled, but just a chair to sit on.

it gazes upon my clothes, one shoulder exposed, electric purple bra strap showing, my trousers covered in strawberries and chocolate jam from a few years ago whose stain is more loyal than a lover. it’s gaze on my unshaved legs, no better than a mans; my fingernails chipped and half-covered in washed-away cheap nailpaint whose fumes can get me high (probably). it looks at our faces, me and my family’s— smiling and without complain. it assumes a good life, a hearty life, a more than fulfilled life, a wastefully rich life. it’s not rich but yes, it is more than what other’s have, it is enough. it is privilege even though it doesn’t compare to the privilege they have.

pity. disgust. wonder. amusement. four it’s. four different types of gazers, thems.

pity brings me ratty, old, torn clothes, “here, i brought this a while ago but it doesn’t really fit me. i wore it once and washed it.” it’s okay, i don’t mind. almost all the things i use as mine have hardly only been mine. even the air i breathe is borrowed. i don’t mind, i wear thrifted clothes, i don’t want to contribute to over consumption, i want to be happy with less, want to be creating more than consuming. but, but, but.

unusable, of a color i hate to derogate but want to, clothes that nobody would choose to wear— that you didn’t choose to wear. clothes that are a way of reminding my parents that they’re not doing enough for me. clothes that you think i need. clothes that are so evident of cruelty disguised as kindness, clothes that i do not need, clothes i never asked for.

is it a gift if it makes me feel smaller than i am?

disgust gives my mother an expired lipstick. sitting on our table, as family, as friends; disgust eats the food my mother prepares. disgust is a guest and she sits and laughs with us, humors us. before leaving, she chucks a gift to my mother. it is a lipstick, later identified to have been expired and the expiry date tampered with so we couldn’t figure it out. but…why? why would you hurt a woman who feeds you?

is it a gift if it comes from a devious, neglectful heart?

wonder brings things more like a cat. wondering how the receiver would react: a dead mouse, a twig, an acorn. for me, however, wonder brings me rotting food on a pretty tray, served as a hearty meal. it stinks when i open it and i have to try not to gag. but i have to thank it with a smile, “thank you, thank you for being kind enough to look at expired food and thinking of us. thinking, ‘i should give this to my neighbors’.” wonder brings me stupidity because why did it ever think that someone’s waste can be another’s meal? trash could be treasure, sure, but only the ones that are less exploited. if you’ve reaped all benefits from something, then what’s the point of giving it away? it is as good as waste.

amusement lives for itself. amusement tells herself that she’s being nice and tender to those around her, those who have lesser things in life compared to her. amusement wraps herself in gold and silver, dances at her sons lavish wedding, then goes to her backyard, picks up a rock and gifts it to people around her.

don’t give me things you didn’t want to use. don’t give me the love that nobody else agreed to take. i don’t agree either. i have love, i might not have a lot but i have enough. my house is not a dumpster for all your failed attempts. they are not asking for gifts, we do not need gifts.

gift for the sake of giving— i don’t need it, i never asked for it.

my mother can make her own tint out of flowers she grows, she doesn’t need your discarded lipstick. i have parents who buy me my clothes, with the money they work hard to earn, i don’t need you to give me your torn clothes in front of them and an audience. do not oppress them with your thoughts. my parents are enough. what i have in life is enough. i don’t have the same privileges as you, but i am privileged enough. i don’t harbor greed or envy. i am not in need. and if i will ever be in need, i will turn to those who have housed me, who have fed me, who have clothed me, who have raised me, with care and compassion. not you, never you.

take back your food and chocolates, your clothes and makeup. we don’t need it. we just want people who care enough to ask if we’re doing okay, we want people who we can invite to our house without being in fear of judgment, we want people to laugh with over drinks at the dinner table, we want people who hear what we say and not the language we use.

i have enough, even if it seems like i don’t, to you. please, keep your pity, wonder, disgust, and amusement to yourself.

it’s not that i don’t love gifts. i do, oh goodness, do gifts make me cry. actual gifts, real gifts.

a person i barely knew when i moved to a new country where i knew nobody, shared a cake with me saying i should celebrate my birthday even though it has passed. that is a gift.

friends from across the world text me, stay up until late and ensure to listen to me whenever i have things to say. they remember me, keep me in their mind, they laugh at my unfunny jokes and they include me in their lives. that is a gift.

someone i’ve never met sent me their books through courier, trusting me enough to cherish the things they send. the books now are cozily living on my bookshelf back home. that is a gift.

a friend from school whom i haven’t seen in years sends me boxes full of things they think i would like. small and big, serious and unserious. whenever possible, we send each other these boxes whenever we’re geographically closer. a boxful of things we gather throughout the year, things that remind us of each other. that is a gift.

someone in school i loved like my other half spent time and energy on handmaking me a giftbox full of reminders and memories. i cherish it like a piece of my own heart. that is a gift.

clothes i received from people who care for me— i’ve grown out of them, i could never fit into those pajamas again, but i cannot part with the idea of those people thinking of me as they shopped for something i would like, that would look good on me. that is a gift.

give me love. give me affection. materials become gifts when they have love and thought poured into them. charity is kindness when the giver does it with empathy and perceives equality as being human. give me those things— give me all your thoughts and your passion and concern and time.

keep the kindness that makes you feel better about yourself, to yourself.

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alcohol.

a funny thing.

people seem kinder and their smiles less deceptive. my feet don’t stick to the floor anymore and my heart is not dormant like it is usually. it beats and i feel it, i hear it in my ears and i get reminded of the fact that i am here, i am alive, that i live. so i begin speaking.

i seek conversations with people. most people who live alongside me today are scared of conversations. they love drawing lines. heck, i love drawing lines, establishing boundaries. but not when there are substances in my bloodstream, making friends with the cells within me.

“what floor are you on?”

“fifteenth.”

“nice to meet you. what’s your name, what can i call you?”

a breath. hesitance. wandering eyes looking for an escape.

“i don’t want to say.”

oh. that’s okay. “what do you like doing in your free time?”

“uhm, actually, maybe i’ll go get another drink.” they say and they flee.

that’s okay. maybe it seemed more like an interview than a conversation. i’m still working on that. that’s okay. but if i don’t ask, how will i know? and if i don’t say what i’m thinking, how will they know? shit, maybe i’m being too me. maybe i’m too asian.

you know, i’ve never had to notice the color of my skin this way before, to constantly be reminded of my roots. of course, it is my identity, it is a difference, but does it matter more than my personality or my skills? i’ve never had to see my skin as something i have to hide as much as i can. to ‘pass’. maybe from the behind, maybe from fifty-feet away. but i can never ‘pass’ can i?

never before has it mattered to such a major extent that my first language is nepali. but it does now. do they even know how much trouble it is to learn english and master it in a house where nobody speaks it but everybody pretends they can? do they know what it feels like to be nepali and not be nepali enough to people? to love english but know that you’ll never be a native, and hence, naturally, below par and unable? how could i ever begin to explain the ways in which i used to destroy myself in order to feel closer to a language that was never supposed to be mine? that should be foreign, but feels so dear?

honestly, i see it. between others and me. we are so similar at our cores, everybody i’ve met so far. we have had varied experiences, however, we all derive similar learnings from life. yet, yet, yet, yet. why is it that we get stuck on the surface when we should be going beyond? far beyond.

do you know that now, every shortcoming of mine presumably stems from where i have stemmed from?

“maybe everyone from nepal is like them.”

i forget a word in english and automatically someone says it, “that’s okay, you’re nepali after all.” i appreciate you trying to be nice but no, i’m forgetful. it’s not my roots. it is me.

maybe. maybe not. i’m not much different from the mass of youngsters in a country where we have nothing. i think i may be even more underachieving, underambitious and overly stupid than them. in a country where our government betrays us, where our land betrays us, and where we betray each other and ourselves.

“you’re shitting me! you don’t have tacobell there? how about a mcdonalds, surely you have one of those.”

no, new white friend who grew up without cable tv and with ipads, we don’t. we barely have walkable roads, does that come as a surprise? we have such different lives, have had such different upbringings, it is understandable to some extent— the way they react. it may come as a surprise that their basic life, which they find so massively uninteresting, is an unachievable dream to many in another country?

on another note, i’ve been looking for work these days. they might look at my skin and say no, i fear. oh well, maybe that’s not why they will say no, maybe that’s not why i will be rejected at all. but the first thing they will see is my skin. and my skin is not like theirs.

before i present my résumé, i present my hands. and my hands are dark, my nails are darker and i can’t help but want to hide them, hide myself.

internalized racism, is it? internalized oppression? but why, when i have never directly been oppressed before? i read an article the other day— even people born in the uk, who have a south asian or african ethnicity (honestly, anyone who identifies as poc) are always called back less for job interviews than white applicants. i don’t understand. i can’t get myself to. neither do i ever want to understand the reasonings, the whys and hows, of what might make someone discriminate against another.

i don’t understand most of the concerns people my age have these days. i’m over so many things already that sometimes i think if i should care more, should try to be more like a 22 year old. someone chose to wear flipflops to an event, with their toes out, so you won’t go out with them? they’re too tall/short? they’re wearing too much/not enough makeup?

what is the point to thinking and discussing all these things? do we really not have anything better to do with our times, do we not have better things to be conversing about? i thought people living in bigger and more privileged countries would have better outlook and opinions.

oh well, not much i can do about it.

now, moving onto alcohol and me.

a funny pair.

we scare people away, we seem jarring, people laugh, some find us fun and naive, some don’t see us at all because we’re invisible to them. it’s not all bad. but it’s mostly humiliating the morning after.

we are a sad pair, though. one without the other is a lost lover and sometimes i feel like my genetic predisposition finally has had an opportunity to shine, on it’s way to onset. we’re still doing better than most other toxic relationships of our time, i think? that has to count for something.

i might never make it. here, especially, where i have to learn how to walk around the city once again. like a newborn i have to learn to exist, to survive on my own in this new place which runs differently than the place i come from. i might fail and go back with my tail in between my legs, i might never make it as an adult anywhere. and i can’t even seem to hold good conversations with people.

it’s tiring. i’m tired.

would being a cishet white male save me? i’m not one and i can’t be. (neither do i want to be, ew, imagine the amount of ignorance and hate i would have to harbor, ew ew ew).

that’s okay. i’ll be nepali. and i’ll be darker than them. and i’ll possibly die on this hill of trying to make people pronounce my name correctly, trying to be friends with them, when they don’t really intend on sharing their names with me.

that’s okay.

hello, readers. i feel like i should add a note here because i have complained about many things which might offend some people. these are my experiences, yes, but i don’t have hate within me for anybody. i have friends who are different than i am, who never watched cable tv, who see me for who i am, and i cherish them very much. we may have had different lives but we see each other’s cores. however, it doesn’t mean my experiences deserve to be invalidated just because many words spoken to me by people during abovementioned interactions have come from places of no ill-intent. it happened and there might be a reason why they happened. or there might not be. all i am doing is wondering. so this is just a quick reminder for you, that this place is somewhere i document as much of my life as i can— and that includes interactions and how i perceived them when they happened. i have no ill-intent against any group of people or their choice of lifestyle. i have better things to do than hate or discriminate. do what you want, make yourself happy.

thanks for reading this horribly written issue, i am not in the right state of mind. plus, it is almost three in the morning.

love all of you. thank you. goodnight.

my first night in wales was cold. coldness seeped in through my skull, parting my hair and brain and made house of my whole cranium. cold, cold, cold.

seventeen days later, the coldness has left. there’s no warmth either but i am not shivering or tired. even if i am, i tell myself, who is not tired? who isn’t crippled with exhaustion? i tell myself, i am a tree. a tree that cannot be, will not be, tired of reaching down into the ground with my roots to source and absorb nutrition. as an extension of my existence, i have to do these things. it is my duty, it is what i am meant to do as a human. i am not allowed to be tired. the duties of the world will always find a way to be fulfilled. and i am a human being and as a human being my duty is to live.

that night, i slept. somehow. woke up fifty times in between but i tried to sleep. it was cold. and the wind… the wind was just outside my window.

someone asked me once, recently, a stranger who was kind enough to me the first time we met, “do you get inspired by the environment when you write?”. and i didn’t know what to say. i never revisit my writings as a new reader. i am always their owner, the source of all the wailings and never a reader, so i had never thought of critiquing my own writing from the perspective of the reader. does my writing talk about things around me a lot?

i am aware i write about a love i haven’t had the pleasure of finding, perhaps might never find. but why is it that when somebody mentions love, our mind goes to romance? what shameful derogation we put love under. romance is the least passionate love out of all, in my opinion.

i told the stranger whose name i will surely forget in the coming months, “i write about love mostly, but it’s not the love that comes to mind. it’s all about the environment, anything and everything happening around me. loving it and hating it. loving the growth within me, within others, and loving the act of observance while hating the sensitivity it takes to absorb the world into myself. so you could say that everything i write is inherently about the environment.”

why was i talking like that? why was i talking like i knew the first thing about being a professional in the field of writing? how disgusting of me. how pretentious of me. how unnecessary—

the stranger hummed and leaned across the railing, seemingly pleased and comfortable. “you know yourself. that’s kind of cool.”

a couple was fishing five meters away from us. the woman caught a fish but it was too small so she flung it back into the sea. a few drops of the splash touched my cheeks and forehead.

what?

“what?” i laughed, “no i don’t, i don’t know a single thing about myself. and ever since i’ve moved here, i don’t even recognize who i am, who i am becoming.”

the stranger had nothing to say to me. we simply looked at the dark blue sea, the orange, pink and purple sky as the moon crept higher into the horizon and we stayed silent. i had never thought that the size of the moon could look so different based on which corner of the world you’re in. here, the moon is bigger than anything i’ve ever seen. and sometimes it turns red and i am reminded of my teenhood.

it’s a secret i share with the universe. whenever i see a red moon, i look down at my feet and fight a smile. it’s something to live with. a small rush of dopamine, a little thing to laugh to myself about.

it is true that i am becoming somebody i do not recognize. this is the second time this is happening, but the only difference is that when it first happened, i was healing. it was betterment the first time and i had parts of myself i wanted to hold on to, parts of myself that i liked and never wanted to forget. but now i’m changing outside just as much i am changing inside, and i cannot foresee any of it.

this time, i don’t have control over how i evolve. how my 22nd year on earth changes me is no longer a secret i share with the universe. i am not in control and i am forgetting things i would like to hold onto forever about myself. i am becoming sloppy. it is like witnessing my own death. it is not sad, but it is not comforting.

humans must live, and we must evolve. that is our duty. still, the wind can be scary and the nights can be cold. and it’s alright to complain sometimes…isn’t it?

that first night, i was scared of the wind for the first time. there’s a small gap between the window and the window frame when it’s closed. the wind passes through the crevice and it whistles and howls and wails. it sounds like a woman in distress late into the night. it feels ominous every time it happens. and i am up on the 11th floor, so it happens often.

that first night, being awakened by the wailings of the wind for the nth time, i wrote this:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedthe wind doesn’t howla void does.creeping through crevices, the windattempts to make a home out of a void.but voids are meant to be emptyand winds are meant to never stay.so the grief of failure elicits a sounda cry which sounds too humanethe sorrow of a void that could not be a homewhistles out into the nightand the void never complains.remains a void, just as voids are supposed to be.the wind takes pity and speaks on its behalfcries and howls and tears the skies apartbut it is, after all, only a winda soft caress against the skinand it can howl but in the endit is no better than a void. invisible and easily forgotten.two of a kind, the void and the wind.they’re nothing but rudimentsgoing unnoticed— the purpose of their existence.the wind blows into the voids heartis unable to ignite any partand the void is yet unspeakingbut the wind is loud in its grief. it knows it has to leave.when it does, the wind is fast on its feet still the void will never speak.the force of their shared grief is what makes us believe that the wind howls.but the wind doesn’t howlthe void does.

i started a story between the wind and the void but i fell asleep in between writing. when it was morning, i had caught a bad cold (fresher’s flu, they call it) and the poem was incomplete, unkempt, all over the place, and i never touched it again.

i was no less cold that morning, so i went out and sought things that would fill my voids.

i might not recognize myself when i look in the mirror anymore, but i am less cold. more uncertain, yes, but certainly less cold.

it counts for something, doesn’t it? it’s alright to complain about it today, isn’t it? does it make me any less of a tree? am i straying from my duty?

if the wind cannot make a home out of me, maybe a void can.

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