Re-bumbleblossom - Blog Posts

I have met the demons in me

At first, they came as a resort to the discomfort

Now they seem to haunt me

day and night.

While I sit at my desk and start crying,

they seem to add fuel to the fire

I see them running around in my head,

stomping my feelings and fears

I see them running around in my house,

I see them sipping tea amidst the chaos they seem to have created

I see them everyday; I see them everywhere; I see them in me.

I see them breaking glass and walking on the shattered pieces

I meet the devil in me everyday

Bon Appétit

I haven't tumbled here in a while. I haven't written a story in a while. Not only that, but I look at old poems and think of storing them somewhere. I look at the ways in which I have narrated stories and I save them to watch later. I look at the scribblings at the back of my notebook, but before I could finish reading them, the to-do list from the front pages start haunting me. Furthermore, I open my laptop to look for some inspiration to write, you see I haven't written in a while. But then I lose the confidence to write. The “Tha ka dhi mi, tha ka ju nu” notes my roommate sings for the kids of her classical dance class rings in my head as I try to find a subject to write about. The tabs open in my laptop reminds me of the work I have to finish before the dawn of tomorrow, because Human Resources has asked me to finish tasks and have a new reporting format. But then I want to write. I want to write the same way Julia cooks in the film Julie and Julia; or is it Julia and Julie. It's my favourite film, and yet I keep forgetting the name.

I try to play a film in the background, some music that plays through my phone, Excel sheets and presentation decks, phone calls and emails. I'm multitasking, I tell myself. I've been multitasking for so many years, that somewhere I forgot how to perform just one task at a time.

I'm making tea and there's an episode of some random show playing in the background. I'm doing the laundry and there is music playing from my room. I'm bathing and in-between shampoo getting into my eyes and trying to balance on one foot I hear Sheldon Cooper explaining the theory of asymmetry.

I'm also a mental health professional, while I keep telling my clients to not google their symptoms, I struggle to restrain myself from self diagnosing.

The phone chimes and I know it's my best friend from miles away telling me her day went equally bad and at the end of the day we'll video call each other just to say “Life sucks (Exclamation point)”

I know I'm deviating from what I started writing about, I have no idea what I'm writing about. I think of sending the link to my partner once I finish posting this, but then there is a voice in the corner of my head that says I'll not post this, that I'll do Ctrl+A and click delete.

I know I shouldn't. It's after ages I decide to write, why shouldn't the world see it. At this point, you would be wondering why did I break into a new paragraph, do I have something to say? Am I changing the subject? Maybe yes. Because as I write this, I think of the first post I made somewhere in October 2017, and I can see the spelling and grammatical errors on that post. Not saying there aren't any now. By this time, all the above paragraphs have 5+ errors. The multiple grammar tools on my windows have come up, shooting red lines on the error. I ignore it for now. I can proofread much later.

So, what am I writing? I'm writing about not writing. I'm writing about having hated the urge to get my writing validated from strangers online, who have now become acquaintances. I'm writing about how my Instagram page is now non-existent and my Tumblr page had long died. But I will still shout to the world and tell them that I have gone back to writing, that I will write on a random day after a random period of time.

Adiós reader!

I woke up to bad news today,

I slept with my head spinning, when the world and my cozy little cocoon, both shattered.

I saw the disclaimer on the Instagram story.

Yet, I choose to watch it.

I twisted and turned in my bed, my last alarm rang. I had to leave or I'd be late for work.

I drag myself to the shower, the drops of water started dripping, my shoulder getting drenched. Drop by drop. Like people falling off an airplane

I came out, wore my cutest shirt, a gift from a rather someone. My eyes went moist. I picked up my hairbrush, hoping to brush more than my hair.

I packed my lunch box, made a face when there was upma for breakfast, ate cold cornflakes watching something funny on Netflix.

I rush to office, take my laptop out. The charger that'll sustain the day. My red thermal coffee flask with the black coffee for the day, the blue book and a pen I borrowed from someone.

I sit down, let out a sigh, and switched on my laptop to an array of emails to reply to.

Why are people working beyond work hours I wondered, maybe I should too, I thought for a second.

The sticky notes on my laptop reminded me of my two other jobs, with broken earphones, the day drifted without music to shush my thoughts. Someone passes the hallway wearing the same perfume that a boy I knew wears. Shattered promises, lucid dreams fake smiles and bike rides all rushed to my head.

In a rather larger, emptier office I started communicating to innamimate things and cleared the notifications of burning forests, dying animals and women in veils.

I haven't been able to eat. I haven't been able to sleep. My head questioning everything everyone did.

While I've come back to my rather comfortable room, cold milk, gazal songs and some cigarettes I move time to another day for some better food and strong coffee.

My phone beeps, i slide the notification and lie down on an empty terrace with sounds of traffic, a dog barking on the corner of the street and a thousand thoughts.

Wounds

While I cry myself to sleep once again.

I look up and the clock says 3am.

It's been a while since I've had a proper sleep cycle.

While somedays I sleep by 5 or 6 in the morning,

The other days I don't sleep at all.

Sometimes it's the haunting loneliness that blares up as a wound

Other times it's the thought of people I've lost

Friendships and love forgone, most times it's the fear of missing someone again.

While I delete contacts and mute statuses on social media. I still go back to my gallery to look at pictures of us together.

It feels like bandaids on wounds I only revisit again.

Sometimes I stalk the ex who left me for someone else

Other times it's the once bestfriend I'm sure who doesn't remember I exist.

Telling myself I'm better off without toxic people in life

I hug my little panda doll from when I was 10 years old

And cry myself to sleep, thinking of all the wounds my people gave, all the people I've lost and those who left me behind.

I close my eyes, the cellphone chimes.

It's all a vicious cycle again

Image from: Razia @a-small-startup

The mirror

Tiny little toes, 10 little fingers and she learns to stand.

With that chubby cheek and the diaper, it was more like a duck racing around.

She starts running because, she might fall anytime now, and wants to cover as much as possible.

She turns around and finds this beautiful little kid staring back at her,

Looks up and finds her mother staring at her,

She rushes to hug her mother, but her nose hits the solid screen

The mirror.

She doesn’t realize then, that at one point in life she’ll hate looking into that

The mirror.

High school was supposed to be fun

Crushes and girl gangs were the things shown on those romcoms

She hates those movies now.

While she developed early, her breasts were her biggest enemies

The girls in her class started calling her names, and

She felt guys only liked her for that

Every day she looked into that opaque thing and hated every inch

The extra skin, being fat, and those stretch marks

She hated them all

The Mirror

Being a young lady

She covered every inch she hated with layers and layers of cloths

While her mother told her that she should lose some weight and not eat more

Her grandmother constantly reminded her she would never find someone

Then came the era of being woke

Where you were pretty DESPITE being fat

She looked away from mirrors

The pores on her face, the short hair, and the dry lips

Nothing seemed pretty DESPITE being fat and dark.

The mirror only mouthed what she told

She was never nice to herself

Today, she wakes up, wears the same white shirt that she wears for meetings

Looks up at that mirror and looks into those eyes

Those eyes had known that fair and lovely was not what she seeked

She did not have to feel pretty despite fat and dusky

She was pretty with those curves and dark skin

She wears the khol on her eyes, slides into the shorts

Tucks that strand of hair

And lets out a smile to herself

And to all those years of hatred

She saw those little toes and 10 fingers

And smiled

The mirror.

Image from Razia @a-small-startup

The window

If only you could open doors that would change things,

Sometimes like how you think of running far away to those places you never know of

Those meadows and sunsets you have written about, you've read about, you've thought about.

I don't know about you, but I have.

I have wanted to open that window to the perfect home I've imagined.

To that home, where amma and appa had figured out things

Where my older brother wasn't threatened by my birth

Where I wasn't threatened by that hand that made me uncomfortable.

Where my screams would be heard through the window.

Where when I cried, I had a hand to hold on to.

Where I did not run away from, I did not ignore calls, where my memories of childhood were not fights and hatred.

That window which did not show me trying to kill myself

I dream of building that home, where I am safe, I am heard and I am wanted. But now when I do, I feel like I'm caged inside the cocoon that I have build shooing away people. While then it was being in a house that wasn't my home and now a home that feels like a house.

Sometimes, someday I will open that window where I will have a painting hung on the wall of a meadow, a framed picture of people on my bedside table, and my bookshelves across the bed. Someday it will contain a hand that will embrace me and a shoulder to lean on to.

Image from: Razia @a-small-startup

The cozy space

My granny used to tell me this story all the time. When I was a kid and used to get upset, I would go hide in the cupboard where she kept all the blankets and cry. That seemed the coziest space of all. I was known to be the cry baby, otherwise nicknamed the sensitive one.

Growing up, every time I had a fight with my older brother I cried at night sleeping between my parents, without them having even the slightest idea of what I was doing. My pillows were heavy each morning and not a single soul knew.

Teenage years, filled with loneliness made me associate emotions with things. While that small piece of the broken cup, and the earring my best friend gave and I lost one. The school uniform, the English textbooks which had stories that made me love reading, everything seemed to be a part of something big.

Having had to live with other people in college, the shower became that cozy space, where I cried while the water ran through my face, while I looked radiant; no one knew what was happening.

Moving cities I continued carrying the same pillow everywhere, it seemed to have known all sides of me and all stories of mine. While the pillow turned heavy, it also seemed to be the only thing to hold on to

These days, sunsets are the cozy space, evenings filled with some music and leading to nights I can look forward to. The time with myself along with some tea I make, mostly disastrous. I seemed to have found my cozy space. The corners at buildings and the empty roads seem to have grown to be cozy spaces.

Image by: Razia @a-small-startup

I look through the window, to find many other buildings.

While I'm lighting my candle, sipping my chai

I see a hundred other things that's going on

A man maybe in his 30s sits infront of a laptop and works all day, he sometimes cribs and get up, but the call holds him back and he gets back to work

I see this young couple from another window, who have fairy lights and white curtains.

Every night they are in each other's arms having a movie marathon

I look away and my eye lands on the woman who has 2 children running around her all the time, while the toddler paints the house with his crayon the other child plugs in the headphone and sits for class. I see childhood smashed there in front of screens and I let out a sigh.

I wonder if someone looks through my window and sees me sometimes dancing to the tunes, and other times cooking to the same tunes.

While sometimes I try to get some work done, other days I wake up in the afternoon.

I wonder sometimes if someone looks through my window and says, that girl has always music to muse to.

I wonder if someone knows that I plug in to my earphones all the time because I can't be left alone with my thoughts.

I wonder if someone sees me through my window and wonders how days in my life are.

When someone asks me how my days go, I have no answers, because there is no more a normal day, a routine or a purpose. There is nothing I look forward to, or something I do.

A normal day in my life isn't normal anymore.

Image from: @a-small-startup

Hot summer days are the worst time to go on a drive, but I still decided to go on one. I thought maybe the AC in my car and the sunny sky would be a better change in comparison to my cramped room with humidity hitting the roof.

It was one of those days where I was eagerly waiting for the summer rains to drench the soil and let out a cool breeze.

As I keep driving, without a destination, nor a map to guide me through, taking turns as my brain tells me to and my heart wants me to.

I stop at an empty road, waiting for the 30 seconds on the signal to pass so I could head to the place I didn't know of.

That's when it came, the thunder, the lightening, the wind the breeze the dark afternoon and the darker clouds.

The radio tells me it's some cyclone, my heart tells me it's the first of summer rains.

I pause, I don't move an inch. The clouds starts pouring, the heavy water droplets on my car roof hits my ears, I scroll the window pane, and let the rain drops fall in.

My face now wet, my head filled with a hundred thoughts, I make a U-turn and head home.

I play loud music to shun the voices in my head. I stop at a tea shop, ask for a strong filter coffee and lit a cigarette, the radio yet again tells me of casualities due to the cyclone and my head tells me it's just the summer rains.

Image from @a-small-startup

Have you ever felt so lost

That the only company you find is the smoke from the cigarette

And when the bud touches your lips, it's the closest you've got to open your mounth

To spill out words.

You come back round and round,

To the same place, you think you're lost at

But you're back where you started.

Maybe you're here

And that's where you should be.

You vent to the open sky

The smoke comes back and hits your eyes

And the bud that burns your lips.

Sometimes the solitude is the company you want

And the company you want waits for you

Somewhere lost in the same circle.

You go back and they turn the other way.

You're lost finding them

And they're lost hoping to find you.

Sometimes you think you wanted this

And other times you think you don't.

Sometimes you don't have the energy to do it

And when you do. You don't find the people you pushed long time ago.

Sometimes you feel this was how it was supposed to be.

And other times you don't have the energy to undo any of it.

Only if life was as easier as control Z

And a fresh sheet pops up and you can write it all over again

Why is being strong so romaniticised.

Why is crying and talking and being yourself considered weak?

Why is letting go difficult

Why aren't we given time if it's difficult?

Why is being you so suffocating

Why can't you be you?

.

Why is romance so fragile

Why is it that you need someone?

Why can't you cling to pain

Why is ease so easy?

.

Why can't you whine

Why can't you complain?

And Why is that you can write only when you are in pain?

.

Why is your healing

Someone else's pain?

.

Why is your time not at their time stamp?

.

Why can't people know we're all at a different pace

In our journey towards ease.

.

Why is it difficult to see someone cry

And not just be.

.

Why do you want everyone to smile even beyond that pain.

.

Why can't you let the pessimism

Go away on its own

.

Why do you guilt someone over healing

Why do whine over someone else's pain.

.

Why can't you trust over time

To do the healing.

.

Why can't you love the pain and the sorrow

And embrace the person

.

You don't want change you want remedy

You don't want ease you want comfort

.

You don't want serenity you want pleasure

You guilt others over your guilt

.

You ease others over your ache

.

It will all be right

Just no more wrong infront of you.

.

Let's put up a brave face is it?

Half hidden, half in the light. My tangled legs wanna leave all this behind and run.

Run towards the light. Towards the peace towards serenity.

But my legs are struck,

they're bound to stay,

no one has locked me in,

but my legs are pulled back

and they are asked to stay.

They are told to finish what I'm doing.

Half in the darkness and half in light, my legs want to run towards the ocean.

Walking down through an unknown route, expecting to get answers to some unsolved arguments in my head. When you stop and unexpectedly see these lights on a store, you realize that sometimes it's nice to have a little glitter, to see those lights blinking in an empty road, it was nice for a change. Maybe a little perspective, some self introspection and fairy lights can make you smile.

All to come back to bed and put yourself to sleep weeping. Maybe this too turned out an escape route. 

With mountains climbed

Stars gazed at.

It's been a beautiful week of all my life.

With friends made, and friendships bonded

I don't know how life could change.

People talked, laughed, had a merry go ride.

This has been where relationships redefined

New ones made

Judgements broken and new ones made.

Love to all the people and all the memories.

To the good and bad triping

I've always been alone. Especially at nights. The loneliness strikes hard on nights I cry, screeming into my pillow. In those pitch dark nights the one gleam of light that fills my room slowly and beautifully is the moon. Irrespective of how it is, where it is, the moon comes to me. Through my window the comfort I get is the warmth of a mother and the company of a friend. On moonless nights it's as if the moon hands me over to the stars, they shine so bright and I wait for the moon to come to me. I wait for the moon to come to me.

It just feels like yesterday that I packed my bags and came here.

The baggage of memories and sadness of leaving one place had just struck me then

And today here I am bags packed.

Goodbyes said.

All set to move to a new place, I don't know where

All set to go somewhere and start all over again.

The same sadness burries me of moving out.

My eyes are moist

Heart heavy.

I don't wanna move again after having made so many friends and memories here.

I don't wanna go.

But yet again I'm set on another voyage.

Goodbye to this place and to all the people I love.

To all the roads I know, to all the places I've been to

And to everything else.

It's goodbye once again

Life turns upside down in just a matter of seconds.

I have made friends and enemies here,

Where I envy and love certain people

I do hate a few.

In just a day I’m leaving this place

Packing a lot of memories and moments

Which is heavier than my luggage.

I have made some friends for life

Whom I might not call everyday

Or think about all the while

But the place they have in my life is irreplacable

I have always been scared to let people get close to me

The fear of being vulnerable

The fear of getting so close

That if they leave I can’t survive.

Very few people make an impact when they leave

But only a handpicked make an impact staying.

Today when I count those few I’m glad I have them

But I’m scared of leaving them and going

I’m not just gonna miss them

I’m gonna miss their constant presence and the impact they make

I wish tomorrow never ended

Because the next dawn is an end

To a lifetime of memories and joy

Now I realize that moving out is indeed sad

I don’t wanna go

I don’t wanna go…

I never saw her like this before.

She has never been so vulnerable before

.

I never knew that an old chord like this

Would stir up so much.

.

I have never heard him like that

All so messed up yet so clear about what was going on.

.

They should both just go on

Move their separate paths.....

Actually they have.

.

It's just old chords like these.

Because

Some voices just brings in memories

And some people bring back a smile

And they are the ones like that.

.

And they would always be like that.

No matter what,

Some times, some things, and some memories never change

If this isn't what it is, then what is it that it is? Or what would it be that it is? Just tell me what is it... Or what it would end up in..?

😶

Doors closed from behind that never tend to open..

The doors behind whom is the person with the keys

Those doors....

How I wish you had told me before that these doors would never open...

Rather you promised me keys to eternal you

Of all the fake promises and lost love....

I wish I had known you even better. Known you even far.

I wouldn't be standing here today not knowing which way to go. Whom to trust.

I wouldn't be here having lost all faith in life

And turned cynical towards all.

I wish I had known you before.

Before all of this could have happened..

- Razia

@argumentsfromwithin hope I did justice to your poem. And ya if anyone wants to take it further. Please do..

Open ended…

(Please finish my poem!)

There are days…

That turn into weeks…

These months that have become years…

How long have I been waiting for an answer…

A solution to the fears that keep me awake at night…

there’s an odd bit of advice you see that was offered to me…

A tid bit of knowledge used to express an emotion…

This feeling we’ve all been looking for…

An answer behind closed doors…

-c.S.

By: ArgumentsFromWithin

(Please write your own ending and share! I can’t wait to read them!)

When I saw you standing there holding that doll in hand, innocence in eyes. It felt like I knew you from before, I felt you were a part of me. I couldn't sit there anymore. You're eyes were pulling me towards you. I didn't even know how I stood up and walked to you but I find me next to you the next moment.

I asked you if you'd come home with me and you just held my hand in a jiffy as if you were waiting for me to ask that.

The next thing I know I've filled out the form, told them that it's you who is gonna be mine. And you're home with me.

Now that's love at first sight for me. To the last word.

I'm literally shivering of the cold breeze here but it's also making me feel better for some reason from all the ache in my heart and the confusion in my head

When you were my 12am friend now don't call me just for the courtesy. When you talked to me endlessly now don't talk just because I called. I've always come behind you all the while, now don't expect the same. If you want you talk otherwise just don't. You can't force forgiveness or love. I've done more than my part now it's up to you. Don't worry about me being ignored it isn't new to me.

The endless ignorance in life..........

You can't mess with my head and then say I was wrong. You can't tell me I'm amazing and then stop talking to me.

That girl I know

The solicited aspects of life turns on

Accepted mores of life goes on

But still there persists one constant thing

That isn't ready to go with change...

Change itself.

There are aspects she claims about herself

There are aspects she says she's not

But like everybody says

At the end of the day all she wants are eyes pleased

And people happy.

I haven't known her well

Even after knowing her for the past 21 or so years

She seems to be a confident, clear and sorted person

And the next fraction I see this trash of a person

She messes up everything just by over thinking

Everytime I tell her to shut up at unnecessary conversations.

Still she spills the words and poof! Goes everything

There are people who know the playful side of hers

And yet there are others who know her as rude and disrespectful

She throws up tantrums and sits up angry

And then there are people who now her as the quite and composed one....

I know her of not just flesh and bone

But rather deep inside

Of all these sides and more

Of all the broken relationships

Of all the complaints from childhood

Of all the fears from life....

I know her like no one else

But sometimes even I have a set back understanding what exactly she wants

Because she holds back from everything she needs

Having so much going on in her head

But still putting them all behind

And regretting of that one moment she takes for herself

Spending that one penny on her

Going that one extra mile.

I feel sorry for her if nothing else

Because of the heart that she holds

And the world she tries to put together

In the end she lands up letting go of herself for others

Why is one particular thing interconnected to so many particular things that to have one particular thing all other particular things must get in order to that one particular thing....

Me, myself again

Dear "whom so ever it may concern"

I just read a letter sent my you, a long well a long lasting letter. It said from someone who loved me unconditionally once upon a time. How did our love fade away, how did the love turn into unconditional hatred. ? How?

Well, some questions can't have answers and I know this doesn't too. But you had become everything I wanted you to become not for me but for yourself. You started being the best version of yourself and I'm happy for you.

I just am not able to realize, just not able to comprehend how it all changed.

Which reminds me that everything is turning upside down in my life, everything I thought would remain constant is changing.

I'm in a city I never thought I'd return back to. This city where I have spent exactly half of my life, this city which has given me a lot of memories both good and bad, joy as well as tears. It holds a lot of people I love as well as hate. This city is accused of having changed me, this city has shown me everything I consider a nightmare.

This is the same city I thought holds a lot of people I hate but turns out I don't hate them. It's the same city that thought me my lessons for life. Which thought me to rise, to learn and to stand out. This is the city I hated as well and I sweared I would never return to. But again this is the same city that made me laugh again.....

So dear Mr. Who I'm happy that you're happy, don't blame the city coz every city unfolds a lot of layers in us like mine did to me, and how yours is doing to you.

From,

Someone

I'm constantly struck between yesterday and tomorrow losing today. I'm struck between the old me and the future me not knowing what I am now. I'm struck in this vicious circle getting lost everyday and try to find a way out through small things everyday....

A long ride, Sufi songs and a lot of people brought this thought out on a moonlight night....

I don't express love in the right way

I don't say the right thing at the right time

But I have never been fake

Nor has my love been a hoax.

.

Just because I'm not like the rest of the world in being all sweet and cheesy

Doesn't mean I care less

.

I AM THIS WAY

I'm Adamant, Loud, Curious, Sentimental, but that doesn't mean my soul is bumbling.

.

These are traits in my character that are not so good maybe, but look there are other "good" ones too.

.

If my adamance is bothering you

Let it be.

.

If me having an opinion is smothering you

Then you are suffocating by your own thoughts.

.

I may not be the apple of your eye

Or the centre of you're world.

Guess what

I don't want to be.

But how can my mere presence bother you

Just because we hold a past

.

I'm not agitated just with you,

But by a lot of people around me.

How can you judge me so easily even after knowing me.

You're so wrong with your calculations coz your decisions aren't always the right.

.

If you still say I have a problem, then be it

Coz my problem isn't that big a deal

All I do is care too much and love too much all the wrong people at the wrong time to whom I have never been significant. Ever.

.

I'm glad your smile is above my scar.

I'm really glad.

The more you start gazing at the sky the more stars you see. The more you talk to a person the more they understand. The more you be you the more people like you. The more you give time for others the more the give you. It all starts with you

My thoughts on a starry sunday