myspirals

[myspirals]

i think we, as a society, put too much weight on the importance of first impressions. any first impression you have of me is more you than it is me. it’s what you’ve made of me basis the five seconds i gave you. an impression is just that, an imprint, easily washed away by the waves that follow soon after. this is not who i am, this is who i was. and who i was is of little consequence to you. who i’m going to be is much more important and just as much nuanced. anticipate.

[myspirals]

if you want to hate me, hate me loudly. tear my skin but look me in the eye as you do it. i’ll bleed but only enough to soak half my sleeve. hate me in secret, leave a scab for me to pick, and i’ll peel myself open like a pomegranate.

[myspirals]

why don’t you talk more often? // i talk. // when we speak, it always feels like there are words suspended in the air between us. like you’re on the edge, about to say something, but you never do. i keep waiting. // i’ve never been one to speak excessively. // is that what you think i’m doing when i go on and on about my day or my thoughts on the right time to buy someone flowers on a date or my stand on world wars? am i.. what do they call it these days.. yapping? // well, yes. but it’s okay when you do. it’s more than okay, it’s imperative for me that you do it. // and i don’t deserve the same from you? you think i’m okay with talking ‘excessively’ about my day as you ‘hmm’ and ‘ya’ your way through it? // no of course not and if you feel my silence as something that irks you excessively and without end, then i will work on it. but even in love, people have strengths and weaknesses. you are so meticulous and detailed about the way you describe things, you could make dostoevsky jealous. i, on the other hand, prefer the written word. you exist in my journals, in my notes, in the letters i’ve written to you. letters that could make kafka swoon, btw. we have our mediums, we have our languages. isn’t love the effort you put into learning these differences exist? // yes, it is. but we cannot limit ourselves to the mediums we find comforting. if it’s easy to do, does that make it the only correct option? is love not meant to be uncomfortable at all? is love not the effort you put into making up for the differences? a letter i write to you, an hour you speak uninterrupted with me, is that not an expression of love? “i saw where you were and i wanted to be in your company, so i came. hi.” is that not love?

[myspirals]

i feel...

a laptop, a meaningful task, an urgent timeline. crashes. screen turns off and then the light returns. blue. loading screen. device needs to be updated, a decision was taken. everything’s on hold but the update is frozen at 67%. in between a state of needing to get big things done but having to repair self. stuck.

a car, loud music leaking through an open window, a tire in a pothole. wheels spinning, growing claws to grab onto something. ac is still on, music hasn’t stopped, but car hasn’t moved in a while. in a state between functioning but not moving forward. stuck.

a thought, loud, whirring noises heard by friends. lost. to the chase of another. is stressfully being recalled, being retraced to the exact situation that created it. still exists, hazily, in sentences: ‘i’m forgetting something’. in between a state of being remembered and forgotten. stuck.

[myspirals]

A set of things to know about me:

A propaganda I will always fall for: ‘it’ll work out’. Who am I if not delusional? Who am I without my hope? // In my spare time, I’m an inventor. Big hobby. One crazy invention: the insane possibility of being too much but still somehow remaining inadequate. // I love when it’s raining. The streets, empty of so much but overwhelmingly full still, are my counterpart. // I love walking. I love when there’s so much wind in my face as I walk, they morph into arms and cradle my head, pat my back, carry my wishes to the right seller. // I’m the ultimate consumer. Capitalism’s dream boy. I have my eyes on these yellow shoes right now that people won’t let me buy :( // My favorite color is pink, my favorite things are green, and blue (also the blues) has been running into me a lot lately. // I am made of melancholy. If people are made of stardust and stars really carry the wishes of people, mine must’ve carried wishes born of grief of a thousand people. // I am also made of fear. Who am I if I don’t ask myself: it has to get better, doesn’t it? Oh my god, what if it doesn’t? It must, it must. Must it? It must. I am made of fear and consequentially, I am made of hope.

[myspirals]

there’s a darker part of me, a meaner part of me that often questions the love i get. i get a long hug one day and none the next and i become certain i’ve screwed up. i’ve broken things. they’re irrecoverable. four friends walk out together, each possibly heading their own way, and i ask: you’re going to the same place, aren’t you? i’ve convinced you against my company. i read into things, extending what was once a good habit into an ominous one. one message left on seen, one ambiguous reply and i immediately strap myself to my bed, weigh my thoughts down with noise, trying to do anything but think further about it. it makes me feel like i’m walking with a brick in my chest. i’m constantly looking for what will tick someone off. how can you love me, why must you love me? i don’t have answers, so i’m sure you don’t either. you don’t, do you?

the softer parts of me, the parts that loves these people back, begs me to stop being so cruel. they hand you a part of themselves, they give you something you’ve always craved, and you choose to doubt it? fuck you.

[myspirals]

i’m watching your favourite movie tonight. i’m reading your favourite book. wearing your favourite colour and scent. i’m carrying love and a little confusion for you in my heart. i’m sipping on my sipper scarcely throughout the day and applying lip balm excessively, as you would. i’m taking more auto rides, listening to more hindi songs, reading up on topics you’ve introduced me to. an article comes on my feed and i’m asking myself: what would she think of this, what would she ask others about it, would she smile more or raise an eyebrow or tap her feet uncontrollably?

i set on a quest to find myself but found you instead. wanted to become more me but became more you instead. someone far far away looks at me, takes a picture, and texts you: thought of you.

Just as well. The more you I become, the more I will show myself love.

[myspirals]

Love is about the silly. The silliness of gifting them a weird bottle. Of taking an unnecessarily longer way home. Of recreating their favorite movie scene. Running through an airport, honking your car in front of a library to catch her attention, accidentally breaking their window when you try to tickle it with a rock.

The silliness of seeing them everywhere - this cat i ran into, you should check if she’s your twin. Of hearing them - even when you’re sitting in a deep silence, alone. Of wanting to love them, even if they were to become a worm, even if they believed in ghosts, even if they didn’t like your favourite film - ‘you will watch it over and over again till you love it as you love me’.

The silliness of knowing when they need you and showing up. Of picking up their favorite pick-me-up dessert on your way home from work. Of always carrying an extra jacket, an extra chocolate, an extra bottle, an extra toothbrush and look silly, but be ready for when they may need one and don’t have it.

Love is about the silly and that’s why it is such a serious matter.

[myspirals]

My bad memory is something that’s always troubled me. How much of it is suppressed, how much forgotten, and which of the two is worse. As an exercise: I want to attempt to remember the first flower I can recall seeing, so walk down memory lane with me.

I got a new friend flowers today because they asked for it. I appreciate when people just tell/ask me things. I got myself two sunflowers last week and purchased a third for unknown impulses. Good idea to get yourself flowers till something blooms inside of you. I remember rejoicing when I spotted a flower store on my way to the office in October 2024. It had always been a dream to have easy access to pretty flowers (non-metaphorically). I got my first batch for the office that week and a friend bought a vase to keep it. The vase is never empty. In March of 2024, I bought my first tulip ever for Unnamed’s birthday. Love is an underrated return gift.

My grandmother passed away in 2021. There were a lot of flowers in the house that day. Three years before that, I remember intensely wanting a phone with a good camera for ages and I clicked red, blue, pink, yellow pictures of all the trees in my neighbourhood when I finally got it. My phone didn’t have a gallery, it had a garden. School, 2013, a rose hidden in the front pocket of my bag, waiting to be given to a different Unnamed. Parents’ anniversary, 2010, my dad got my mom a bouquet. I didn’t know then that flowers have a deadline.

2002, a picture. I’m 6 months old, sitting in dirt, naked. In my hand, a flower. I don’t remember this moment but there’s proof of its existence.

Good example for myself to acknowledge that regardless of my memory, things (good and bad) have happened. Regardless of if I can tell a story, I have lived one.

[myspirals]

There are fancy dates. Long dresses, small servings, hand over mouth laughter, the heat of a candlelight unable to make a dent in the over-air-conditioned room. There are simple dates. Linen pants, a shared diet coke, fingers intertwined, confusion on if it’s the wind making you sway or someone’s gaze. And then there are dates you experience when you’re in love. A simple sandwich. Half single cheese, half double cheese. The tomatoes removed from one side, stuffed into the other. The joy of making it together. She sits on the counter top, you oscillate between operating the hot pan and teasing the beautiful person. Your habit of always keeping the bread in the fridge, hers to write down the meals of the day on the food board. Infatuation, attraction, connection - you progress from one step to the next. It becomes love on the first day your routines mix.

How nice it is to make a sandwich, to do so with your favorite person,, and to look at the food board that reads “last day for the bread, so it’s sandwich day!” and know you can call it love.

[myspirals]

we live in a cruel world. a harsh world. a world that is made for one. the costs placed just high enough that you have to stretch to reach it, the supply just low enough that you have to crouch. wars everywhere, trying to get to someone you love. heartbreak running rampant in the streets. everyone asking, screaming, deafeningly “but what about me? i come first!”

in this world that is trying trying trying to make you stand alone, what a great act of kindness it is to yourself to make friends.

when you stretch, how kind to allow someone to lift you up. when you crouch, how nice to have someone cover the corner of the table. how sweet to have someone to shield and to have someone use the broken pieces of their heart to fill the gaps in yours, to say “you come first. where you stand, my queue will always begin there.”

my friend asks me, with a twinkle in his eye and playing cards in his hands, if i believe in magic and i say ‘of course i do. you’re right here.’ friendship, the magic trick that makes a cruel world wonderful.

[myspirals]

i don’t remember much from my childhood but on my eleventh birthday, i remember when my friends and i were in a mall, playing on a ps4, when suddenly they decided to run and get me to chase them. this game turned out to be more fun than anything on the ps4. during the chase, they rushed up an escalator. by the time i stepped on the escalator, they’d reached the upper floor. when i reached mid-way, they took the escalator going down. i immediately turned and started running down the escalator i was on.

i think the feeling i had then, as i rushed down the escalator, is something very similar to how i feel when i see you now. i’m out of breath but stuffed with joy. my smile lines don’t cooperate when i ask them to cool it and not flinch. i try to remind my eyes that it’s day out but they start sparkling regardless. the wind is on my face as well as the eyes of everyone but who cares? as long as i can catch you.

[myspirals]

the end of a day belongs to me in a way that a start of the day never could. i could relive the same 4am by waking up early but it wouldn’t be the same.

at 4am (when i’ve been awake all night): i wonder about everything. about the variations of myself i’ve always wanted to be and how many of them i could live within 24 hours if i just set things in motion. about love and how it oscillates between feeling like the wind on your face to feeling like you’re eating your laptop whole. i curse myself for being who i am and request myself to be kinder to me. i re-do all the moments i’ve lived, i live all the moments i haven’t yet, i ponder on how time spends all its time finding ways to be mean to me. as someone who has never really belonged, at 4am, i belong.

at 4am (when I’ve just woken up): all i wonder about is the idiot that cares for early bird stuff.

[myspirals]

So frequently, the people I love scoff at me (affectionately) for how I don’t put a case on my phone. ‘I could never’ they say with the cutest head shakes or covering their eyes with their palms. But I’ve always been like this.

I’ve always been one to want to experience things for exactly how they are meant to be experienced. I’ve never considered longevity or ROI. I could be more careful but where’s the joy in that? I could be stoic but I’m textbook chalant. Could be less hurt, less anxious, less shakes-leg-at-108-kph. I could put a case on my heart and protect it from the scrapes and nicks and bumps that cover it.

But will I ever take it off my sleeve? Haven’t yet and hopefully never will. For me to catch the wind in my hair, my head needs to be out the car window with the risk of running right into a lamppost.

[myspirals]

my favourite love stories are told through the smallest moments. darcy flexing his hand after helping elizabeth get onto the carriage because how dare it let go. marianne staying online on skype as connell sleeps and connell sleeping deeply because the presence of the person you love has more warmth, weight, and comfort than any blanket could offer. virat impatient for the smallest glimpse of anushka as if he has spent longer waiting for her than he has for the trophy. a couple that has fought for the entirety of the book experiencing a moment of communication where they’ve said comparatively little but expressed everything.

does this bias for the smaller moments come from a personal experience or lack? have i only ever received noise?

no. i recall some softer moments. time to reminisce.

[myspirals]

life has always been an attempt to find your way back to something.

for the love that vanished from your home, you checked all the lost’n’found boxes the world had to offer. ‘knock knock, are you in there?’ you asked the friendship box. ‘maybe here!’ you hoped from a relationship.

for the joy you left behind in time, you spent all your remaining time searching through the big moments and the small moments, hoping something would end up being more than a faint recollection of that joy. ‘i don’t want to just remember that time, i want to live again in it!’

how does one look up and see the sky when they’re busy retracing the steps to their past? i believe that’s a good first question to ask yourself when you have some time to yourself next.

[myspirals]

my version of wanting a coffee shop that’s also a library that’s also a garden that’s also yada yada is

how i want to experience everything, feel excitement dripping off the edges of my day like dew, travel endlessly and read endlessly and change the world endlessly, everything endlessly, have the big business and a follower count, live ‘the big life’,

but i also want the quiet friendly neighbourhood with our game nights and ‘i’ll have the usual’ cafes, i want to say ‘honey i made you dinner’ and have that be the highlight of my week, i want to pick up friends from the airport, i want to be a good parent and simply live and die with familiar company. live the life.

i want to be the sun but also i’d be just so happy being a part of a teeny tiny fun constellation.