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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