#aayuwrites

1) waiting for an email. from whom, i don't know. what i want it to say, i don't know. all i know is that i want it to move me

2) realizing that i was mistaken when i thought that loving someone enough would allow me to write poetry again 3) can't create art that is sublime because my unconscious is blocked, can't unblock it because the nature of the art i'm making isn't sublime 4) rereading old journals to look for patterns, finding none, and somehow finding myself write about the same old shit 5) caught in between being a strong independent woman who is loved, and desperately wanting to write a letter asking for forgiveness, for a chance to undo 6) finding solace in a dog-eared section of Rilke's 'Letters to a Young Poet' that i found hidden in the business section at thrift store  and bought solely because i was hoping i'd find an answer in those dog-eared pages.

A few months ago, that I realised I was turning into my father. I found myself muttering passages from books to no one, disappearing for hours, away from my room, and stopped taking my medication. There were cigarette holes in my sheets— but to be fair, that wasn’t me. It was him, the boy who burnt my sheet. We were sitting on my bed, and he was examining the burn mark he’d just made on my white hotel room sheet, while a track played in the background in low fidelity. He apologized, and I all I had to say was eh. We then sat leaning against the wall, our arms awkwardly fitting into the other’s—  mine pudgy, his bony. Cigarette in my hand, I turned towards him, as he picked a strand of hair from behind my ear and let it fall over my eye. I tried to kiss his shoulder every few breaths, and we abandoned the cigarette in moments, taking a second to put the ashtray on the floor— a cheap blue and white chopstick holder I’d bought earlier that summer. Kissing.

I know with certainty when it all changed. The Tuesday after I gave up my prescription, I cut my hair, and Wednesday, I found that the boy wouldn’t fuck me. We were watching a movie, his head in my lap, and he sat up to shut the screen. I ran my hands through his hair. I always found my hands running through his hair, or tracing his neck, his shoulder. Always, when we were alone. He mirrored my action, but then pulled away. We hadn’t spoken about it, the fact that I’d cut off more than a foot’s length of my hair. I leaned in again, but he got up hurriedly. I must get going, he said, while gathering his belongings— I was used to him leaving abruptly, as he pleased, making nothing between us ever feel enough. Just enough for the people who loved me to notice. I didn't say anything. I never did. I was kneeling on my bed, and I tried to hug him goodbye, but it felt more like we were shrugging in unison. And then, he left. Surprise! He didn’t touch me after that Wednesday night, and it wasn’t hard to notice— an arm’s distance while we were seated, the way his fingers withdrew even before he took the lighter from my hand, no playing with my hair. We weren’t ones for public display of affection. After all, we were only hooking up— our relationship was private, only for our viewing, and even then, it wasn’t hard to notice.

I was already mourning my hair— the result of a nervous breakdown. I was seeking novelty, or perhaps to shred something, be snakelike, and he wasn’t helping. I then used his lack of attraction to make myself feel better about having lost my hair, telling myself that I didn’t exist to please him. But the truth was that I regretted cutting my hair the moment the scissors first whirred schhr- schhr— black blurs falling to the ground, tears in my eyes. It felt like watching myself get murdered. Liberating, yes, but a gross violation against the self nonetheless.

***

I was sent home a few weeks after that Wednesday, owing to a persistent fever, that the clinic decided was way out of their league. My grandmother was convinced no one would marry me if I kept my hair short, as if my hair mattered more than my health. My father, who hadn’t noticed until she had commented, complimented me, and in defence said that the length suited me. That week at home, I used whatever little energy I had to speak to my father, a man I hadn’t had a real conversation with in years. We spoke in long spells of silence, our love for books filling the conversation. I had inherited a lot from the paternal unit, and I was more convinced than ever that I’d wake up one day, suddenly have lost all marking features of my mother.

My friends were too busy to meet, I was too weak to go outdoors, and the world had an orange tinge to it. It felt like sunset at all times of the day— there was a sense of an ending, and I wasn’t dying. My fever broke every night, and I would writhe in cold, tire out, and wake up each morning, my fever back. It was horrid to say the least, and in the few days that I had been home, I cried every night, as three blankets weighed down against me, trying to protect me. All I did each day was reread books from my childhood library, eat khichdi, and lie in bed. I was useless. The world had no room for girls who didn't read more. It had no space for the quiet ones, the depressed, the ones with no energy, and the fever had made me that girl.

I lay in bed, and I obsessed. My attention amplified on everything that was lacking— the boy. In my state, his eyes would haunt me, shiny with a tinge of red, like a rabbit’s. I couldn’t tell if he was a hunter or a kit, for sometimes he looked at me like I was his most precious, and other times, like I was going to die. Soon enough, I’d exhausted what I knew was a conversation I should have been having with him. On one day that I felt particularly well, I went through memorabilia, that a few years ago I had sorted, labelled and stored in a cupboard; the result of a childhood hope, that I would grow to be famous, and that it would all be worth something. A museum of me. Exhibit A: A letter I had written to him when we’d first met. Only a few months before, I’d told him a on a particularly difficult afternoon where to find it if I were to die. Slowly, it didn’t matter that I had slept with him on this very bed at home the summer before. It didn’t matter that he didn’t want to fuck me now. It didn’t matter that he was so far away. I let my general state of apathy take his shape and let it spoon me to bed.

Soon, I stopped obsessing over him.

My fever was gone, and the doctor cleared me to go back to college. I was still weak, but I could go back to being some other girl. A girl other than who the fever had made me. I washed my hair for the first time in weeks, appreciating the ease that new length brought with it. Going back to college felt like walking into the sunset— where I was headed to, I didn’t know. Would this space accept me, after being away for so long? I didn’t know. Would I be invisible to him? I didn’t know. I didn’t meet him for a week after my return, I didn’t even try. I was desperately trying to piece my life back together, to a semblance of what it was before the fever.

Before I had stopped my medication.

Before I realized I was turning into my father.

Before I chopped off my hair.

***

We sat on my bed, white sheet with a burn hole. He was examining it as if he were seeing it for the first time. His head in my lap, me stroking his hair. It was evening, and we both agreed we could do with a cigarette. We sat, leaning against the wall, shoulders touching, both bony now. It didn’t feel like sunset anymore, and the orange had faded, giving way to early smog season.

We fucked.

I came.

He didn’t.

I asked him if he’d fuck me if I shaved my head. He asked if I’d fuck him if he shaved his head. I didn’t tell him that when I was seven, a stranger on a street, bald man on the street felt me up. I don’t think I ever could tell anyone. He got up to leave. I grabbed his hand.

He stayed to watch as I shaved a patch off, not knowing where, what, why. It fell on my white sheet, making a noise that I am certain only I heard. He walked out, and my head felt cold, and I began to cry, scream, but without noise. I felt something wet under where my frontal lobe was, and touched my scalp— a razor cut.

Wait.

I opened my drawer and took out a razor.

Are you crazy?

I dropped the blade to the ground, my head hit the mattress, and I lay, half kneeling, as I tried to dust the hair off. Wisps falling, clumps stuck to my hand. I fell asleep like that, on the white sheet with a cigarette hole. Now bloody too.

See, today I met you after three months

and it was like nothing had changed-

the way you wrapped your arms around me,

or kissed my forehead, or the way we fucked and smiled in synchronicity,

but when we tried to lie next to each other, take one of our famous, all consuming naps, 

sleep so pure, the Sandman wouldn’t dare come near us, we just wouldn’t

fit.

shoulder blades so sharp,

heads to large, limbs that didn't curl towards each other like tendrils towards sunlight. and it wasn’t that you had shrunk, or that i had expanded, 

or that we were any less comfertable,

but i suppose it had something to do with the fact that your heart

was else where, and mine,

for the first time, 

You’re turning twenty in less than a month, and i know that that you haven’t been excited about your birthday since you turned seventeen, and that there is a good sign. When 12th grade ended, something inside of you died. You’ve been wilting. Yes, there has been immense growth, growth i wish isn’t undone, but darling, when you woke up last Saturday and smiled and felt your heart beat outward, not unto to itself, I knew then that that something had changed. You’ve been slipping, more so over this summer, but i am certain that better things await you, both in how you’re going to change and the things that you’ll do as well as the amazing things that are going to happen to you. The truth is that you’re more likely to slip and feel terrible than not, but it’s okay.

 A switch that went off inside of you is on again, and i am certain that you will make the best of it. Your anxiety and depression will be under control and you will rise regardless of everything. I have faith in you baby. You got this. I mean, look at you. You’re a published researcher, you tried stand-up comedy, you’ve lit up people’s lives and you care and you’re trying, maybe not hard enough, but it counts, and i want you to know that. I want you to know that every decision you make this forward on has to reflect what you desire- your desire to change the mental health scene in India, be a therapist, be a good sister, be aayushi. you misguide yourself often and this letter too may be misguided, but trust yourself, have a little faith in this horrible world, do your part- do your best in the circumstances you find yourself in. it’ll be fine. Maybe you won’t go to Harvard, maybe you won’t date anyone ever again, maybe you’ll lose a couple of more friends and have a fallout with the fam, but just remember that you are strong, that no matter the circumstance, you have to stay true to yourself. 

Integrity is key, baby. It’s time to fly, you’ve watered and nurtured enough roots. Fly kiddo, fly high, fly far and away, see the world, nurture your wings, lighten your backpack, ditch the suitcase, declutter, give more love, spend more time with fam, avoid drugs, hold on tight, Work your arse off, mental health above all, chase success, be competitive, but don’t ever do it for the sake of it. Just, just take care of yourself. You’ll learn to be kinder, you’ll learn to be all that you want to be. You are enough, you are, but you can do and be so much more, so do it. Do more, be more awesome, suck it up and kick ass.

Loads of love,

Aayu (9/8/17)