It's been years and I need a release

 I feel like my brain.. my self is being erased slowly... Question by question.. comment by comment.. and thanks to a large part by my own creeping depression... 

It's been six years since I last wrote here.. why? Because someone said something.. parents decided to push the "why are you writing personal things in public"... someone said something weird about something I wrote.. 

And i stopped.. 

Over the years I've lost places to vent... Diaries have been torn, blogs have been questioned.. and WHY? 

Because writing down what is in my head apparently is "washing dirty linen in public".. 

And then I was reluctant to put things on a blog.. because I didn't want to start another argument with the person i loved.... 

Slowly my desire to write eroded because each sentence was being read and discussed and commented on by someone who felt "hurt" by what I felt in my head.. 

Even when this was part creative outlet, part venting space.. 

In today's world when everyone is chronically online and insta and threads and twitter are virtually used as daily diaries.. i can't remember the last time I actually wrote in my diary.. 

I went through Cancer last year.. diagnosis February 2024- stage 3C. 

Put a photo on insta with my shaved head after the chemo started.

 Immediate backlash-- why the hell would you put it online? We hadn't told extended family yet... 

It's MY body.. my social media.. and hello? I just told everyone who cared to look.. WHY do I need to "break the news carefully"? 

I genuinely can't remember the last time I wrote a story.. or poem, or even listened to music in peace.. it's like the cancer and the sadness has taken every creative instict away.. though I'm not sure which one actually came first.. 

i'm back to working.. going to office.. 

Officially Cancer free but on maintenance meds so it doesn't relapse.. 

But it's like the light has gone out in my head.. 

It doesn't make me happy or excited or even satisfied anymore.

 It's just a job.. 

Journalism used to MEAN something.. to highlight what's wrong and how it can be resolved.. 

But 13 odd years of writing the same articles over and over again while things keep getting worse is making me wonder why anything survives at all.. 

Literally every few days we are doing the same story of violence and depravity and apathy of those in power and those watching 

Even in office there are times when I wonder if everyone has shut off their humanity to cope with the awfulness we see or am I being over sensitive..

And through it all i feel a sense of aloneness that screams even though I know there are like minded people put there.. there are people who see things, write things, create things in this fucked up world.. 

I used to be able to disappear into a book and forget about everything.. reboot my brain a bit.. now nothing works.. maybe it's because "adult world" means reading books about reality and darkness and politics.. even a fantasy book these days a LOT darker and politically nuanced... I lost my taste for reading happily ever after romances a while ago when things crashed and burned in my love life.. 

That's another set of scars.. from feeling insane and questioning something as basic as morals and cheating and allowing someone to drag me through thoughts and feelings and situations that I seriously don't know WHY I went through.. 

I used to be all about sunshine and finding the silver lining and seeing the happy and hopeful bits.. but now I just can't seem to find it in any part of my life.. 

And i don't know what to do about it.. 

He walks.. I watch

I watched him walk towards me today

Feet splayed

Arms akimbo

Balancing carefully on the bricks of the lane leading home

Slow but sure

Not needing a hand to hold him steady

Watching each brick under his feet

And then watching me watch him walk

The slight frown on my face as I watch each careful shuffling step

The stubborn look in his eyes that says

I don’t need a mommy to hold my hand as I walk

Looking up and to the side as a bird flips past

As I wait

Hoping that the uneven bricks and the slush left behind by the rain doesn’t trip him up

Making sure that he sees the little bit of mud right outside the door

so he doesn’t get his shoes muddy

I watch,

worried but proud

Much as he must have watched me take my first steps as a toddler

My grandpa

The 95 year old who still won’t carry a stick

Labels are a BITCH

Labels are an odd thing..

A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose…

Sure

But what happens when a Rose is told that it is nothing special but simply a member of a large family of the genus rosacea?

Does that not detract from THE thing that is a Red Rose in Full Bloom and reduce it to a “just a rose”?

I had a shitty relationship.. I was a fool in love with an ass who didn’t respect me.. I took everything he dished out for years and still loved him, fought with him, stayed with him... till I finally had enough and told him to fuck off…

That was my reality. I was an idiot in love as a teenager who let that idiocy define years of her adulthood too..

That was me. ME. As the actor who chose to behave in a certain manner and CHOSE to be  a certain way..

But now the label has been changed

Ironically by the same Ass who I told to fuck off from my life

The AB’s back in town for a flying visit.. and has recently been sitting through some seminars on domestic violence and abuse..

So he decided to assuage his guilty conscience and come to me to APOLOGISE for the emotional, mental and sexual abuse he put me through during our relationship....

A relationship that ended 7 years ago.. one that scarred me so badly that I’ve only recently  begun healing..

He came to APOLOGISE… 

and in the process took away my agency, my choice, MY decisions..

I was an Idiot in love with an ass

I’m now a Victim... a survivor of domestic violence whose abuser came back to apologise for his behaviour..

I’m no longer the person who made the wrong choices.. I’m a victim who  “suffered through abuse”

Who was this apology for anyway??

I was okay with my original label.. I was okay being the idiot who made bad relationship choices.. I was OKAY

Now I’m not

Now I find myself reliving everything about the years of our relationship.. wondering which part was my choice, where was it that I had the agency to do something but chose not to, and where were the parts where I could have done nothing…

isn't there some rule when it comes to shit like this that it should be the so called Victim who should ask for and lead the confrontation with the abuser and then walk away after receiving an apology feeling bolstered and vindicated???

i now feel more violated than i ever felt during the worst parts of our relationship... back then i was Choosing whether or not to pick a fight.. i was choosing to react or not react.. or maybe overreact if i felt emotionally wrought enough.. it was MY CHOICE

or so i believed..

now the apology has been given to me.. has been thrust at me really.. and i'm writing about it days after the fact, still dazed at what happened.. 

i didn't really react in front of him.. just gave him a polite hearing and said Okay.....and i let him go.. 

i wrote to him the next day.. with a long list of things that i REMEMBER hurting me.. asking whether he acknowledges and apologises for all of them..

got a reply saying. i apologise for all the things you've listed and things you've not...

and now i'm spiralling in my own head wondering what other abuse have I suffered that i didn't even KNOW was abusive behaviour??

labels are a BITCH i tell you

Soul Fury- Rumi- Coleman Barks

I ask the reed flute, why are you crying

How can there be such tears,

When nothing has been lost

The reed flute says, Not so

They took me from the lips

that once made sugar throughout my whole and silent body

Now I live letting others

Make crying sounds

With my emptiness

The trope of loss and emptiness is a strange one.

Even when the world sees you as an art form, making beautiful music that touches souls, the beauty may be coming from the depths of emptiness and deadening inside.. we believe that the music is divine, but it is ultimately the expression of the emptiness through the various holes torn through the reed’s body

The purpose of a story is not to hold your attention
but to put you back doing your work, inner and outer......

there's no shame in being crazy....

I'm not the one who broke you I'm not the one you should fear We got to move you darlin I thought I lost you somewhere But you were never really ever there at all



there are days when i stumble across a song whose lyrics are like a fist to the gut...



when does this end really???

fuck Patriarchy.. I'm gonna have a drink....

so i don't know if it's just my parents who refuse to simply have my back and make simple excuses like "oh she has work" or even a "she's just gone to the loo/she's around somewhere"... or people in general are really THAT nosy bout my whereabouts coz i'm between 30-31, reasonably decent looking , educated and working... and ON this fucking "Marriage market"

i don't understand how this bloody patriarchy works.....
so today was a cousin's wedding...a second cousin on my mother's side who I hadn't seen  for close to a decade... and i decided to go participate in the ritual of a "Car-o- bar" with my male cousins because the only two female cousins on this side of the family were the bride and her sister who was basically obliged to be right next to the bride...
i decided, that given the lack of ANYONE my age and gender, i will just hang out with the boys.. because lets face it.. i've always found it easier to hang out with the boys.. but according to my parents,, EVERYONE asked about where i was... and "they're trying to get me married ad i've gone missing with the boys.. which apparently goves the worng impression.. and because the boys were drinking in the parking lot.. "who knows if one girl surrounded by 5 boys is their sister or some 'other woman"... like WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!
i honestly don't know if these ridiculous retsrictions are because my parents are a pair of repressed conservatives or the " society" really asks that many questions...
i was having a drink at a freaking wedding venue in full shiny attire with my cousins...because when i said i don't feel like attending the bloody wedding.. it was a "family event" that i was not gonna get out of..
i faithfully get home from work early and get dressed in a sari and fucking attend the wedding of the daughter of my mother's cousin.. who i have not seen, and am not likely to see for YEARS... i even participate in the "joota chupai" and go do the social sounds and say hello to everyone because that's what is expected of me... but going off AFTERT having done the social obligations is apparently damaging...
WHEN does this end?????????????????????????????
My mother actually told me that "everyone asked where i am" because i went  to have a drink with my male cousins.. and apparently.. when your parents have you on the Marriage mart,... going for a drink with the boys is a No No...becaase the entire community of close to 500 people present at the wedding have nothing better to do than note that i'm not demurely sitting by my mother;s side available for people to ask me inane things like where i work...

WHY THE hell is anyone interested in why i'm not sitting with my mother????? i'm over 30, and i've already done the social rounds for the night...for all anyone knows... i could be checking out the dessert section, or just lost in the crowded wedding... WHY do my parents subscribe to the patriarchial idea of how "society" expects a "good girl" to behave?\

i have no role to play in the wedding.. its just the patriarchal hallmark of a "good girl" who would participate in every family ritual and conveniently melt into the shadows when society expects her to be seen and not heard... I DID THAT ALERADY damnit!!!!!
how is it ANYONE's concern if i'm not at the dinner table with my parents at a social function?
:
or it it that my parent's suffer a particularly virulent form of "what will people say- itis" that makes their idea incomprehensible to me...

if the boys are "distant cousins who are not 'real' siblings... then WHY the hell am i expected to change work and after work plans to hang out with them?? if they are "like brothers.." then why does society have issues if i'm having a drink with them...
what exactly IS the point of having a horde of cousins if "society" Still has issues with me hanging out with my cousins.. i would rather have the option of saying "no thanks.. i;m not going"...