A Confession and An Apology

What I thought as my worst fear was perhaps my most loyal companion. For the better part of the two decades, I remember myself wondering, whining, and crying myself to sleep over not being able to communicate what I felt within me. I wondered why I wasn’t the perfection that my sibling seemed to effortlessly master and contain; pondered over not being fun or frolic like my peers. I was told that this was the way achievers behaved, but I look down at my empty hands sometimes and feel nothing but the sting of remorse and regret. I wanted to laugh. I have tried. But someone always chides me. Maybe that is only because that is how they usually talk. How can I tell them that though I would want to brush it aside and laugh along, I am unintroduced to that luxury I love staring at them when they do that? How do people find it so easy to look so light? Can I too learn that secret? I don’t know who I should ask. I want to tell all of them that I am grateful that they are around. I want to give them a hug sometimes…I want to wink at them…I want to call out their name just to feel that they are around me. And I want to tell them.

But what if they don’t like me? I have tried telling people how I feel. I have tried telling them of the things that amuse me, things that make me happy…and things I thought they too would love to see. But there has hardly been a time when I told them and they stayed. They all choose to leave and it is my fault. I am boring…intolerable sometimes. I can only bleed on paper but I cannot tell you how much I want to learn to talk like them, be like them…to smile, to have friends, to hangout, to have secrets to share and inside jokes to laugh at. I know it is stupid. I try to imitate them. I try to learn from them. But when they recoil away from me, I am afraid to call them back. I want to ask them how I can be like them. I want to know if I can be one of them. I want to tell them that it is not that I do not care. Just that I am afraid to accept the fact that I feel lonely mostly. I want to contradict the people around me calling me friendless and arrogant, and for which I must myself firstly believe that I am not scared of this claustrophobic confine and void that looms larger within me…so I pretend to be the one choosing…I pretend that I love who I am; I pretend that I can genuinely spell and paint my loneliness in the brightest shade of wondrous solitude. I must admit I am wrong and the wet pillow on my bed and the pile of patient paper are all that I can bring to you as witnesses to this crumbled me.

And yes, I have loved. Whatever else I did half-heartedly, I have loved with all my heart and soul. I have loved like to love was the last of the human freedoms left to me, and I have picked up every piece of me like shards of broken porcelain and tried to lay them in careless fashion for their kind perusal. There was nothing that could interest them there either. But as memoirs penned on sleepless nights, I bequeathed from all the unrequited love a reminiscence that I poured into the open arms of my paper. I have murmured names to empty nights, chanted lines of confidence to memories…but I somehow surely lacked the courage to love myself that way. Had I perchance, I would never had written this to you. But I will continue to love and dream…till whatever last remains of me.

If you have read till here, I would like to thank you for bearing with me and I would like to tell you that I indebted for your patient company. I don’t know what else to say but I hope that the above passages – unedited, written in the middle of a sleepless, drowsy night – will tell you all that I wanted to.

I have always wanted to tell you how much your presence, every single moment of slightest conversation, a wave across the room, meant for me. I wanted to hold your hand and tell you my fears, thank you for just crossing my path. I wanted to show you a million minute scars. But I was just afraid. All I can tell you is a sorry…for being awkward and stupid sometimes.

Good night.