love, vi 💌

I remember how it felt to stay up for our conversations, the way my eyes naturally moved to meet yours when I heard something you liked. I remember you in moments.

Moments I just can’t bring myself to forget. Though time has erased you from my mind, it has taken the me I was with you, too

I always thought war was unecessary and there were enough resources in the world to make sure everyone is fed and has a roof over their heads, but I'm only 16. I was told that is not practical.. So I waited to understand why. I looked everywhere but all I found was opportunities wasted, empty promises forgotten and so many of the people I looked up to not using their platforms.

So here I am trying to use mine. I may not know it all yet. I am only 16. But I know that those poor dogs do not mean to cause harm. They have so much love to give and no one to give it to. I'm only 16 but I can say I'm ashamed of my country for not seeing them.

I'm disappointed but not surprised. How many names have left our mouths when we demanded justice but just forgot about them a few months later? Nirbhaya, Moumita, every sixteen minutes a new name, and yet they think it's the dogs who need to be locked up.

I cannot stand to see the state of my country, but I do know this. I am not too young to see what is broken, I am not too young to want to fix it. I have time. Enough time to rebuild what today's leaders are tearing apart.

There’s a part of me that wants to gather every wounded thing, the abandoned dog by the roadside, the bird with the broken wing, as if my hands could somehow absorb their pain.

But that part of me is not found when I'm the one begging for someone to take my hurt. I feel the pain in the eyes of the circus animals, their dejected longing.

It's only after I've played both roles, the one wanting to help and the one wounded for help, that I understand the true cost of caring in a world where it is never enough.

The more I retreat into these imagined worlds, the more the real one feels like a poorly written draft that I don't have the energy to finish. I fall in love with strangers in these dreams, and only in the dreams am I ever loved back.

There is no proper diagnosis to this condition. Nowhere I can go to talk about the countless hours I've wasted pacing back and forth in my room. So I escape again into these daydreams because in them, I finally get to mourn the person I was supposed to be.

Everyone else seems to be growing while I stay rooted, watching doors slam shut, calling it 'experience' to soften the blow. I watch them from the ground, living life so effortlessly without stumbling or falling. But over the years I've also come to realise that I cannot be "behind" in my own life.

Even though all my growth has been sideways, it would be unfair to call my experience a consolation prize. It's obvious that all that blooms through the snow does so because it remembers how to survive the cold.

The performance is flawless in daylight. How my hands don't shake when I pass the salt, and the way my eyes crinkle just enough to look authentic. I’m normal until I go to bed at night. When I lay awake in the dark, that’s when my real thoughts cloud me. Ones I cannot silence. They don’t follow the rules. They break them and me simultaneously in this horrifyingly beautiful way until I rock myself back and forth, trying to resemble someone comforting me.

No matter how much I think I've healed, will I always have to work harder than anyone to feel what others feel for free?

She laughed, showing her crooked teeth, then asked me how much my braces hurt, and if her teeth bothered me so much that I had to put them behind wires.

In her hand was a half-folded Father’s Day card, the edges soft from being clutched too tightly, her hands were littered with friendship bracelets instead of scars, showing the two people who'd hurt her most. Sometimes, when the light hits just right, I catch a glimpse of her in a glass, wide-eyed, unbroken. And for a heartbeat, I swear she pities me.

To me, it's like someone is handing me a mirror that shows only my inadequacies. Like a perpetual cycle of constant self-deprication, finding more and more reasons to prove to myself that I'm not someone who can be loved.

If you need to truly know someone to fall in love with them, it's unfortunate for any soul who'd want to love me back. They won't be able to, no matter how hard they try, for I've known myself the longest and I've never resented myself more.

I used to think this hunger was ambition. Now I know it’s fear. If I failed as a student, I failed as a daughter, a sister and a friend. Because love, in my bones, still feels like something you earn, not something you’re given. I spent years convincing everyone I was the smartest person in the room, while secretly waiting for someone to expose me as the fraud I knew I was.

The truth is, I didn't ever want to be "perfect". I just did not know how to be loved as anything less.

I've picked out all the possible faults I could see in myself. I tug on my shirt to make sure it doesn't stick to my skin, and try to mirror behaviours, for it should be impossible to be this unlovable.

So for now, I stick to my daydreams and "what-ifs?", reliving this feeling over and over again, because this is what it truly means to be a hopeless romantic. I’d rather choke on the delusion than swallow the truth that love could possibly not be made for me.

She pulls out every white hair of hers one by one but every time it's me who feels the pain of the plucking tenfold. She's the strongest woman I know but sometimes she makes jokes about her age and it's like time is playing a cruel game with me because there's no way my life could ever exist without her.

So sometimes at night, I silently look at her face, try to memorise the lines and convince myself that I have time. I have time to cherish this wonderful woman, to be with her and to be like her. I have time to have a million more conversations with her, to learn everything about her before I happened and to maybe, just maybe, show her how much I truly love her.

I imagine a daughter, with wide eyes full of wonder that haven't yet learnt how to flinch, and of deep conversations that don't start with apologies. I hope that she never has to memorise the sound of my footsteps or muffle her cries.

But sometimes the fear creeps in. What if I take after the actions of the person I get my name from? What if I've inherited that cruelty and it runs through my veins so deep inside that I can't bleed it out before it gets to her?

When that fear creeps in, I remind myself over and over again that: "A monster would never fear becoming one". That's when I catch a moment of rest.

But when it finally came, it did not feel like a sentence. It felt like a key turning in a lock. Like someone had handed me a map to a war I’d been fighting blind. For the first time, my enemy had a shape and my despair could be named.

And with that came the quiet, terrifying relief of being understood. I was not okay... but my problem had a name. If it had a name, that meant there was a cure. And if it can be cured, then maybe, just maybe, I could be whole again.

How am I supposed to go about my day when I know they can read me like an old favourite book? How am I supposed to use my brain when parts of it are occupied by their voice telling me our inside joke over and over again and replaying memories of the places I'm too scared to visit anymore.

It's like lyrics to an old song stuck in your head that you don't remember memorising. I desperately want it to stop, but I just can't help it.