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Letters to Rahel - Summer of '23








To make life more bearable.




It's been six months. Can you believe that, Rahel? Six months. It hardly feels like it has been a month. You know, all of this feels unreal sometimes. Two years back this time I was on a train to Kashmir, and it was snowing. We drank tea and smoked four square cigarettes to keep us warm. The dogs were all fluffy and the kids looked like little apples. Everywhere I looked it was all green and white.


Now it is all black and white. It feels unreal. How did I end up here? The dots and lines that led me here. I wish this was just a nightmare I could wake up from. I’ll wake up back in my room, and my friends would still be in the same city and we could just sit on wooden benches and drink tea and stay like that forever. 


I read somewhere when they were planning this city, they planted trees for all the seasons, so throughout the year, the city will be covered in colors. As I am writing this, the city’s all covered in pink. By the parks, through the lakesides, beside skyscrapers, everywhere it’s just pink. It is really beautiful. 


It’s summer here. Summers are more bearable than winters. My mom thinks it's still cold here. I didn’t correct her. I don’t know why. I have become like that. There is no energy for even the smallest of things. I wonder why am feeling exhausted all the time.


I used to know this person, whenever I told her I’m tired or something like that, she would ask, mentally or physically. We sort of drifted apart. Summers always reminds me of her. Maybe because we met during the summer. Maybe because she was like Summer from ‘500 days of Summer’.  



To make life more bearable.



I feel like I am two people. There is this idea I have of myself, and then there’s me. I loathe the actual physical person while I absolutely adore the idea. I wonder what people see when they look at me. Someday I’ll leave all of this and become the idea itself. 


I recently saw this movie, and there’s this idea that we humans are not from the same place. Like we are all from different planets. Maybe that’s why we don’t understand each other. Why do we find it so hard sometimes to relate to many people. Yes, if we’re lucky we will stumble upon a few people from our planets along the way. People who make life more bearable. Sometimes they'll stay, sometimes they won’t.


I have been reading a lot about Virginia Woolf lately. Mostly about her suicide and the events that led to it. I honestly don’t know how many times I have read here suicide note by now. Did you know she filled her overcoat pockets with stones and just walked over to river Ouse? You ask me if there was an ideal way to end things, I’d say that was it. 


To make life more bearable.


They say art, poetry, and all these stuff exist to make life more bearable. I agree. But at the core, I believe we need each other. You need to sit across the table with someone and talk about the simplest of things. I believe you need to wake up on a bus to see the other person leaning their head onto your shoulder, and just smile. You need to pull a friend off the road when you see a car coming at speed. You need to hold someone close to the umbrella so their shoulders don’t get wet. You need to hold hands. You need to braze each other’s shoulders while taking long walks. Because some days art, poetry, music, or movies aren’t just enough. You need human comfort. You need to be able to sit with someone at 2 AM in the morning and strip yourself off emotionally. And say something sadly funny like, 


“So this is who I am. I know it’s a mess, but it’s kind of a work in progress. I am reaching there. I hope you bear with me.”

 

What's the other option?.


You'll feel like a non-person. You’d feel like your throat’s all dried up. You’ll feel like you’re disappearing. God, you’d wish you could just disappear into the background. The helplessness, the hopelessness, the feeling that you reach inside and you’re not there. 


What if you don’t come back? 


Would it make life more bearable? 


Sayonara.









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