I Also Think.... I Also Write

It's just a phase, I say, lying to myself, taking another drag of the cigarette I've been holding. The nicotine buzz hits me, and I realize I'm no longer the same person. Would Dipta , a few years ago, even think of this as the right thing to do? Perhaps time really changes people; it changed me for the good and the bad. As time faded, the obligations on my shoulders have gotten heavier, and so has this unfulfilling void that always makes me feel empty. I dumped the ashes in an ashtray and sipped on my coffee.   The longer I stared into the smoke that passed out the window, the more I got in-depth with my emotions. Have I always felt this way? Have I always been an empty shell of a skeleton with nothing but the emotions that people around me fill up? Who am I, to begin with? Why am I here, and when will this stop?    Perhaps answering all these questions requires me to strip naked in front of the mirror and point out things that I see as flaws in me since August 8 . It'

  As someone diagnosed with BPD around 8 months ago, I still have a lot to learn about my own diagnosis and how it affects the people around me and myself. From anxious attachment style, which steams from abandonment issues to the search for external validation that subsequently goes along with hypersexuality having BPD has made it harder for me to navigate relationships with myself and the people around me. This disorder has caused me to be a furious person who is full of rage all the time. The way BPD has shaped me to see the world in only black and white has made it profoundly difficult for me to understand the grey areas that come along with things in life. For as long as I can remember, I've always been someone who idolized people who I liked and moulded my personality in accordance with their likings. Later in therapy, I learned it was called; Mirroring. Mirroring is when someone with BPD changes their personality, attributes, identity or sense of self, to fit in

  It took us about three weeks to entirely fall for one another. We were practically still kids back then, but for what it was worth, we found each other at a place and time when we needed each other the most. We spent the following year and a half going out on cute little dates, buying flowers, and flooding each other's phones with sweet and corny texts. It was the most fantastic period of my life cause everything I did with him was wonderfully flustering and endearing. He simply felt like serendipity to me. But all I can afford to say now is, It was incredible both falling in and falling out of love with Peter. So this goes out to Peter and me You came along and swept all the woe away with your tender touch For you held me against your chest and made me feel I was enough I felt like a kid, wrapped up around your arms, learning how to walk and talk Your patience felt mellifluous while I simply laid there inert like a lifeless clock We both were lost in the labyrinth of

  Life's uncertainty always baffles me. Last week I had a deeply traumatic experience that I'm still trying to work on. It's funny how the human psyche works cause in my mind, and I'm still trying to comprehend many ways I could have avoided the situation. On the other hand, my perpetrator is probably sunbathing while sipping a cup of tea. Here is a poem that I have been working on ever since then :  (Trigger Warnings:  mentions of sexual assault & violence) Do you carry any shame and guilt for all the horrible things you did to me? Or will I have to carry the burden of being touched by you for the rest of my life? Do you still see people with the same filthy eyes of yours as you did towards me? Or am I the only one struggling to get your perception of me off my body? Were those screams not enough for you to understand I have had enough? Or did you find immense joy in stripping clothes off of my body which I loved for so long Do you wonder how I must have felt when

The education system has failed queer kids all over the world. Private schools, colleges, and universities are best known for excluding queer kids from sports, invalidating a kid’s gender identity, and giving more validity to hetero-normality. For example, ever since I was a kid, I had been taught that marriage should only exist between a man and a woman and anyone who thought otherwise was “wrong.”And growing up in such an environment only made me push my queerness far away. Of course, it is constantly conflicting when one goes through a crisis related to their gender or sexual identity but having to experience that conflict in a homophobic region made it harder for me. It wasn’t until grade 6 that a teacher finally made me feel seen or visible in their class; else, I was always perceived as the kid who was not doing enough to get good grades but having a teacher who believed in me and encouraged me to do better truly made me feel secure and confident in myself. And that t

Having been brought up in a Hindu household, I've always been accustomed to agreeing to be within certain boundaries, whether in my social or personal life. I still remember when I was three years old, my mom took me to Saraswati Mandir in Dabali, which is just 5 minutes away from my home. It was Saraswati puja that day & it also was the very first day when I was taught how to write the Devanagari script, my mom held my hands, and we together wrote: " क,ख, ग " on the walls of the temple. After doing so, we took blessings from the Pandit who was there & went home. For the three-year-old me, it practically meant nothing, and I couldn't comprehend why my mum would take me to a place as sacred as the temple to teach me Devanagari script, and what even was the point of scribbling into the walls? I often stayed in my Mamaghar in my childhood cause both of my parents worked a 9-5 job. On the days when my Aama was free from her household chores, she took

I sigh as I wake up early in the morning, I'm restless, and my body is aching everywhere. As I look into my phone, it's 5:01 am, and the voices of alarm don't seem to stop despite me trying to turn it off. It's such a cold day,  I say to myself as I finally get out of my bed to get ready for college. I do all the mundane tasks, including brushing my teeth, combing my hair, and changing into fresh pair of clothes. It was already 5:30 am, so I rushed out of my home & to my bus stop. While I stood there waiting for the bus, I started thinking about all the places where I had applied my resume last night and counted the probability of me getting in; the chance was zero; of  course, why would any company hire someone who's just passed their high school & has little to no experience.  As soon as the bus arrived, I rushed inside & sat in the cornered seat which was available. I began checking my emails, showing I had no new emails to open. I was dis

I remember when I was a kid, I used to have this idea about love that it was so profound & so pure. Even now, I'm not sure what it means, but it has done incredible things to me and honestly made me a better person. It's so hard describing the very thing I experience & feel every fucking day. My interpretation of love is so simple; I believe it to be an emotion that gives you immense comfort and joy. Although love has its variations be it romantic, platonic, or parental, I think each & every one of them is equally important. But " young love " it's incredibly flustering. When two young people with big dreams & ambition fall in love, the days suddenly start being more blissful & fun. Ever since I met him, I've had this voice inside me that tells me I don't deserve to fall in love with someone so perfect cause I'm nothing like him; maybe it's my nativity that puts me in a position where I feel so insecure about the fac

I first formally met you in 8th grade; we competed against each other's team in a basketball game. I didn't even know how to play that sport; I was just there cause one of my teammates was injured. Good god, you were so fucking beautiful. Amazing brunette hair with the perfect length, kind face, and legitimately a brilliant and caring individual. You were famous, athletic, and had a smile that could light up any room, and I was nothing like you. I usually find people in that position to be very mean and bratty, but I do honestly believe to this day that you were an exception cause you were always incredibly thoughtful and warm. I'm not sure when I started liking you, but it was probably when we were getting to the end of 10th grade; I used to find you so pretty and attractive. You were one of the kindest people I knew back then, and even if we didn't have much in common, I'm so glad that we at least shared our interest in books; as much as I knew you wer

Everyone & Everything dies. The tree that you see right outside your door will die someday, the bird that's flying in the sky will no longer be in the sky one day, the snail that's moving on the ground will no longer be there one day, and we, we humans are as certain to die like Everything else in the world. Some die because they choose to do so, and some die because their body is reaching the end of its life. But grieving and mourning are different for everyone. I'm not someone who intensely mourns over the death of people around me cause I understand death is inevitable, and there's not a power in the universe that can stop it; in addition, I'm never comfortable showing my emotions to others... It's tough losing someone close to us & it's tough having to move on with the realization of their absence...I often deal with my emotions by acknowledging the pain and understanding that there is no "normal" timetable for grieving. At

I had a very chaotic teenage life; ever since I was 17, I started to go to therapy & was on a lot of antidepressants. Back then, my bisexuality & queer identity made me feel very uncomfortable and suffocated cause I wasn't able to accept myself; I guess that was just a result of my upbringing in a conservative household. Anyway, when I look back to the past, I see a very naive person who wanted a lot of validation and acceptance from people around them. I was a people pleasurer as I did about anything if it meant that the "said" person would be happy. But now that I'm 19, I understand things better than I used to, but I still carry a lot of shame & guilt, which I cannot get past. Many things happened to me while I was 16,17, and many of them still traumatizes me. But therapy has helped me manage my emotions regarding the said "subject." When I was 16, I spent a lot of time online; I talked with many strangers and befriended them. But

People are subconsciously pushed into looking like / or presenting themselves as a certain perfect figurine...And that figurine is somewhat already established... I feel everyone has been a victim of envying men & women in magazines, televisions, and phones because, for some reason, that felt acceptable and beautiful to us. But why do we hate it when it comes back to our bodies? The reasons are so much deeper than someone to pinpoint & explain; there are good reasons and bad reasons – they may not be correct, they may be horrific and mean and based on decades of well-funded sexism and fatphobia,...but they were taught to us while we were very young.  We cannot turn around without being exposed to depictions of very thin, tall, "flawless," often highly sexualized women & men. And due to the very fact that beauty is often related to people having "Perfect" bodies, we end up questioning our own; we even take it a step further and point out the p

Does anybody feel that life isn't really for them? That you're tired of it all. Some people wake up, and they go to work, and they wait in traffic, and they pay their bills, and they care about the opinion of others, and they come home to sleep in the same bed they've been sleeping since a decade or so... Do you ever feel like you're above all it all? The layers of bullshit in everyday life. Cause you know for a fact that people will let you down. The fact that everyone you've ever known will die. The vanity of existence, the lack of true meaning, and compensating for it by setting goals for yourself to keep busy is no different than the donkey that goes after the carrot on the stick.  Yeah, people will disregard those thoughts. They'll say you're "depressed ."They'll say meaning is in the little things. They'll try and help you with inhibitors, counseling, and hollow advice. They'll cut you out 'cause "wow, that ne

Life is tiresome. Let's go back to when we were seven years old, sitting on that old rusty school bus. When you tapped me on my shoulder and asked me, 'Are you really from Nepal?!" & that was the first time I ever talked to you; you were my next-door neighbor. We would often do our avatar screeches to call one another. When we used to play ball together, it used to be fun. I miss the dog that both of us were scared of touching. I missed when you got picky about your blue raspberry candy or when you used to dress up for your birthday. Let's go back to when we were seven. And please, please let's stay there too. Let's stay there, so I don't have to feel what I felt when I left India, what I felt as I grew older here. Let's stay there so I wouldn't have to find new friends who eventually left me. Let's stay there. Let's stay there because I miss the school we used to go to together....please, let's go back to when we were se

 I observe most individuals find it near impossible to separate the artist from the art unless they are artists themselves; it’s like the way individuals feel indignant that someone who makes their living as a clown isn’t constantly funny in real life. The artist becomes commodified, and often when there is some monetary exchange for serving the consumer, feels entitled, like asking if what they want comes in a different color, shape, size, pattern or tweaking their meal to suit them perfectly- you become the object or meal and they’re expecting/projecting something. It’s the vector of emotional immaturity and consumerist entitlement wrapped decoratively around the core of a wounded inner child who is freaking out in one way or another.

I have had anxiety on and off for over a year, and it stems back to a time in the services, but you can control it to some degree. The subconscious part of the brain sends these nasty little messages down a one-way street to our conscious part of the brain, where these little triggers turn into reality. Still, we cannot tell it to stop because it's a one-way street unless you learn to mentally tell it to "go take a hike" and then concentrate on something else. The more you think about the symptoms, the more you open up that one-way street. Anxiety feeds from anxiety; the more you let it take control, the more it will, It eventually got better as I got used to it. However, when I'm stressed, my mind and body still escape to "the other side," and I feel like I disconnect from the real world, and everything is just so surreal, and I lose connection to myself. It's annoying, but the longer you have to deal with things like that, the more you real

Its It's been a year since I wrote anything, and getting back to it is pretty scary...A lot of things have changed in the past year, a lot of people around me and a lot of 'me'...A lot of 'me' generally refers to how I've changed both physically and mentally...well let's talk about the easier thing for now; even though my growth over the past year hasn't been linear, it's been significant to me, I've finally started becoming a person small "me" would like to look up to. I'm finally in a position where I can say I'm proud of myself. I've personally gone through a fair amount of traumatic shit the past year, but again there's no running away from it. For the half part, it took me an insanely large amount of time to realize what I had been through was extremely bad and unfair. I kept blaming myself for the other half, feeling incredibly guilty and ashamed of it, but I sometimes still do. Still, I don't let it be a reaso