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Downswing Days

Published on by Varnika Jain18 Comments

I’ve realised I mostly come on here and write on days I have something happy to report. Be it my physical or mental well-being or a step forward in the right direction, be it any aspect of my life. I do it with the firm belief that sharing is caring, that someone out there might read my pieces and smile, take heart and hustle on. Indeed, your kind comments have proven it to be so.

Yet, on days when I’m not feeling my best, I refrain from writing, either feeling vulnerable at the exposure or feeling like an imposter for having written all those uplifting, self-care advocating posts when I cannot simply gather myself together. Today is one such day. Half of which has passed.

The other half, however, I am committed to change today. I will address you on days that I am down. I will share with you my darkest thoughts, sorrows, fears and words. Why, you ask? Because maybe, just maybe, someone out there might read my pieces and smile, take heart and hustle on in the knowledge that we all have our ups and downs. Our moods have upswings and downswings. And yet, nothing lasts forever. I know I will get back into the right frame of mind soon enough. And you will see the difference. As would someone else who’s currently berating himself for feeling the way he is currently and admonishing himself for not being strong. It doesn’t take strength to plaster a smile on your face and pretend everything is okay, winning accolades and love from everyone around. It does take strength to accept there will be days when you won’t be at your best, that it is okay to take a break, take more than a few moments to be with yourself, accept your feelings and let them live out their life cycle in you in a healthy manner and, most importantly, it takes sheer strength to try and love yourself when you’re on the brink of self-hatred.

So today, I am willing to acknowledge that there will be days when I’ll be an irritable, slobbering, whining, selfish mess. But that is till my mess. I own it and will overcome it. I will live through it to better days. And I will do so without assigning blame to others around me when their behaviour ticks me off just because I’m in a mood. I will heal without damaging another’s mental health. There is a heart big enough in me to love them and myself. I will be real.

What do you say to that?

Sunshine

Published on by Varnika Jain4 Comments

I search for people who feel like sunshine

Who can clear the skies on a rainy day

People whose smiles can cast rainbows

and whose tears are always of joy

I search for people who feel like sunshine

I watch them

Trying to glean their secrets and ways

I love and cherish them for all of their days

So that when someone looks towards me in their hour of need

I hope they’d find me to be

A person who feels like sunshine

For words are all I have

Published on by Varnika JainLeave a comment

I have often let my words get away from me in the hope that they won’t abandon me. Afraid of what would be left in me, bereft of these fierce, lifelong companions. Do I make them or do they make me? Or is it a symbiotic, synchronised symphony? Amidst all the cacophony that life currently is, it’s words that pierce through to me like a well-timed epiphany.

And yet, I often let my words get away from me so that they may, of their own will, seek me. I let them go, fly and soar. For they’ve far too often and for far too long been pinned down in being penned down. Now, they’re here, there and everywhere. I find them in every nook and cranny. In music and in food, in fire and in wood, in the flow of water and tears and in the eyes of my beloved.

I find them in hope and I find hope in them. They are my solace and redemption, my desolation and my gumption.

And yet, I am too afraid to call myself a writer. I feel that word is too big for me. Too presumptuous. What if in calling myself a writer, way ahead of time, these words of mine took offence and never again become mine. What if they mock me for my pride and let me fall to my demise. What if they took from me what they’ve given me and left me alone to pine. The fears are many and answers I have none. What I have with me are words, greatly cherished and hard won.

And so, I simply write.

Shock Treatment

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The last thing he said to me was

That he’d never asked me to do so much

Try so hard

Be so nice

Give it my all

Till I was bared to my bones

Heart broken

That was the first time I was rendered mute with shock

And rage

Until indifference took over me

And I knew

I’d cry no more

Alone Together

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While I agree that we may not all be sailing in the same boat

But we are trying to ride out and get past the same storms

Alone

Together

Apart

Intertwined

Not understanding

Yet deeply understood

Unspeakable

But conveyed

So if your storms are raging hard

Come steer your boat a little towards me

And I promise to bend my course too

So that we can ebb and flow with the same wave

Alone

Together