"lady lazarus"

trigger warning: graphic details of suicide attempt and all that.

(not that anyone reads this blog 😒, but still)

"you don't deserve to be loved" - these words nearly burst her eardrums. so much so that it even drowned the cacophony of the whizzing local trains from under the bridge that summer night. she had had enough. her mind was beyond exhausted. too exhausted to even feel the pain.

standing on platform one of dadar station, she narrowed her eyes when she saw two blinding headlights shooting off from a distance. a virar-bound fast train was about to fly past the third platform soon without halting at dadar. she climbed the stairs of the bridge (a bit hurriedly) to get to the third platform. she thought hopefully plunging in front of a fast train would be a quick way to go. but by the time she reached the platform, the train crossed it. she was tired to even feel bad about this missed opportunity.

she boarded a borivali-bound fast train from platform three instead and sat near a window seat staring blankly at the adjacent tracks which were now blurry and looked like a fast-moving ladder. she shut her eyes. all she could see on the dark curtain of her shut eyes was flashes of traumatic memories. flashes of the mental and physical abuse she went through when she was a child. flashes of how pained and shattered she was due to her broken and damaged relationship. flashes of her disinterested parents motionlessly staring at her. flashes of how she was sexually abused and bullied since her young age. flashes of how she turned out to be a shy and introverted person due to her not so idyllic upbringing. flashes of the heartbreaks she suffered silently. flashes of not being able to share her pain with anyone since her childhood. the flashes were forming into a storm so severe that she thought her mind would drown itself to death. 

she opened her eyes. no, she wasn't crying. too tired, remember? she got up and stood near the footboard of the train compartment. it was moderately crowded for a 9 pm train. the train was soon approaching andheri and was whizzing past stations it was not supposed to halt. this speed should work, she thought. again, her eyes were blinded by the headlights of a train approaching from the adjacent track. just the right time to jump for a quick mince, she thought. she took a cautious step back, so she should quickly be able to plunge herself on the track as the opposite train soon approaching.

as she was about take that plunge, with her toes all ready, a woman tapped on her right shoulder from behind and asked in an extremely bored tone - "andheri utarna hai?" 

she blankly stared at the woman, who got a little annoyed after getting no response from her, and then stood in front of her and blocked her path.   

just then she heard the lady on the speaker say - "krupaya dhyaan dijiye, ye borivali jaane wali fast local, andheri ke baad sabhi sthanakon par rukegi."

the slow train ran excruciatingly slow after andheri. 

damn. missed it again. 

no, there was no epiphany after this moment. again, she was too tired to think about anything. she suddenly missed her bed a lot. all she wanted at that moment was to lie in her bed and stare at her bedroom ceiling which was now used to her vacant, purposeless stares.

she rung her doorbell. her father, eyes still glued to the tv, opened the door while listening intently to what anup soni from crime patrol tv series had to say. her mother was in the kitchen rustling up dinner. 

she went to her room. kept her office backpack on the chair, shut the door partly and plopped herself on the bed and was blankly staring at the ceiling of her dark, unlit room. the comfort of her bed and her dark room were the only things that made her feel less lonely at that moment. would have missed this if i had jumped tonight, she thought.

"do you want to eat dinner?" her mother interrupted her thought as she asked from the other side of the partially-shut door.

"no" 

"why?"

"had it in the office"

"ok, good night"

"good night"          

the day of death should be special, she thought. may be on a birthda... and her exhausted mind drifted to sleep.

midsummer rain

soiled clothes

disheveled hair

chaotic mind

blank stares

on a pitch dark road

with nothing to lose

chasing death 

which might meet me soon

midsummer rain 

reminds me of you

grey skies bleeding 

i feel blue

 

think of me 

when i'm gone

kiss me goodbye tonight

might not see morrow's dawn

down the rabbit hole

as i spiral unraveling

miss me a little, will you?

after my clock stops ticking

some of the best writers are born in may - ray, bond, manto. 

the only thing about this month i love. and obviously not that i was born in it. 

but somewhere here in this space of virtual world, i would like to believe that i, may be, am an average writer. that i may fall in the category of writers, too, for starters.

i read somewhere that it's the best thing to be a writer's love interest, because the writer will dedicate their words for you or may be turn you into his/her muse. but do all writers introduce their work to the person they were written for? or just keep their written word alive and not let them die in some virtual black hole of the internet? i really do not want my poems and texts to see this day. not that i'm enthusiastic enough to go all creepypasta on the person by asking - "hey... would you like to read a few poems i have written for you?" 

sometimes i wonder how strange our minds work. it always chases things, people and feelings which are mysterious, tease us and are clearly unrequited. but here, writers write about them. just to arrest them in their words which would at least stay closer and never leave them. doesn't matter if it makes sense to others, they know deep down in their pounding heart, who those words are meant for. and may be, if that person reads it, may be somewhere deep down, they know that those heartfelt words were meant for them. 

 

i heard this word today - serendipity. it left me wondering, is it serendipitous to be associated with a bunch of good people who help troubled souls like me? or may be my desperate need to kintsugi my damaged mind brought me to them. you see, they quite lovingly and generously offer you a space to talk about your feelings; off load, they call it. they tell you how important it is for you to look after your mental health too. it is indeed good of them to care for the whole bunch and their concern comes from a good place. but how should i tell them that i've never learned how to do it? finding the right words to express my feelings, is something i have never done for almost a quarter of my life. like me, there are several in the group who are unable to off load. ab kya hi kar sakte hai?    

listening to them gives me a faint delusion that i matter to them. but do i really? i'm not sure. all have their own battles to fight and demons to tend to, especially with this pandemic fucking with everyone's mind and health. who has that mental space to accommodate my pain? and why burden them with one when they are dealing with their own shit? to this they say, don't feel guilty about it... how can i not? would only make me feel worse by doing it. it already does when i try to share some of it with n. there is a funny sounding word for this - conundrum.

besides, how healthy is it to connect with someone, for whom, you know that at the end of the day, you won't matter much. of course, they would talk to you, but how long would they be able to offer you their mental space? won't they have their own shit to deal with? you'll never be exclusive. is it narcissistic to think this way? or is it simply heart-breaking, especially when you massively fancy one of them? won't it further mess with your already fucked up mind? 

urgh.. why do i always become so cranky in may?     

this blog is turning into my pensieve now... not that anyone reads it anyway. 

fucking birthday month arrives. what if i die on my birthday? wouldn't it confuse all? whether they should celebrate or mourn? how long will they miss me? a few months? probably a couple years... then life moves on... i'll be long forgotten... until my birthday comes up again and they would marvel on the fact that i left the earth to join the stardust, the same day i was born from it. then again the same old routine... 

sometimes i wonder, what purpose did i serve the humanity by staying alive? sometimes, even the love of the close ones suffocates you when it doesn't understand your pain. it's not their fault, though. how can you walk straight on a pitch dark road? 

best would be to use an obliviate on them and erase my existence from their lives... i can't though, can i?    

anyway... good fuckin night

'wish you were here'

she lit her cigarette like a mia wallace from pulp fiction poster, took a deep drag and blew out a huge trail of smoke from her nose as she looked at several faces arrested in small digital squares on her computer screen (video calls, duh)... and here from the other side of the screen, as i watched her... i felt a bit dazzled... as if i'd inhaled that smoke she just blew out. her presence was indeed intoxicating. please cut me some slack, i had seen her after a long time. 

while her eyes darted from one box to another, smilingly, laughingly, occasionally contributing to the banter of the meeting and very obviously oblivious (try reading these two words aloud at once :P) of my presence, i safely hid behind my display picture which did a great job at not revealing my emotions. not that anyone, including her, was interested in knowing where my eyes lingered. 

she wore black today. black - the color borrowed from the night. the color where my mind takes refuge in. the color which resembles the walls of the room which guards all of my secrets and pain. 

was this not enough that her iridescent eyes were radiating an embracing warmth of blue. blue - the color borrowed from the daylight sky. the color which resembles the roof of my garden when the sun shines brightly. 

there, right there, i felt drawn to her like a rumi to a shams. 

no, i'm no rumi, and she is no shams, but the bond that tied them together, i felt, we could have one like that.

when the meeting was nearing its end, my eyes lingered a bit more on hers, arrow hovered a bit longer on the leave button, unwilling to click it... just to smoke in her image in my mind... a bit longer... like the drags she took from her cigarette.         

Disclaimer: No non-fictional characters were harmed in the making of this post.