Journals-Part I

Was it fathers death that changed everything for me?

I still struggle to find answers to most of the things that have been impacting me, but for the most part, I’m just trying to survive. Yes, that’s right!

Life isn’t the fairy tale that we’ve all imagined it to be. It isn’t the magical symphony that we were told about in our early days. Rather, we find ourselves walking the shores of chaos from the time we get up and up until we sleep.

My love for poetry started when I was around 10. It was a remarkable feeling knowing that I had fallen in love with something that would never leave. But what made it more meaningful over the years was the attraction towards misery and the poetic tune I found with it.

It’s easy to say that misery is appealing, even for me, but it’s much harder to live through its unforgiving depths. Sometimes I’m really weak, to the point where no amount of poetry can save me while the other hours see me finding comfort in poetry. Can you see the poetry in that?

I once thought that everyone around me was happy except for me. That maybe I was just unlucky to be here. But seeing how everyone can so easily fake joy, I now know that no one is truly alone, in joy or misery, no matter how much we idealize each one of it.

I mostly live a quiet life, finding an abundance of joy in the trees, the mountains, and the thick forests. Maybe that’s my calling. It’s where I belong. It’s where I desire to be no matter how appealing the alternatives become.

It’s nature that also inspires me to write and continue writing. My father used to say that I would do something momentous in my life. And he was right because the greatest thing I have achieved so far is holding onto me. Yes, holding onto me when everything else felt dull and dark.

Our lives aren’t the same so I never pretend that it is. Perhaps that’s one of the things that makes me who I am. We live at our own pace, all at the mercy of our emotions. I have realized that tragedy is no stranger to our land. Maybe it’s the only thing that is real.

Some nights when I’m sitting under the naked sky, all that I can think of is the vastness of the universe compared to us—just how little and insignificant we really are. It moves me, it numbs me, so all I can do is go to sleep. In that way, I temporarily forget everything that overwhelms me.

And sleeping has helped me in other ways too. It has been a rescue when I’m feeling down. It has been a friend when everyone else let me down.

So forgive me if I’m just being me. I could never be you even if I lived a thousand years.

-Yogesh Chandra