“ The Road I Took”

Today, I found some poems I wrote years back stashed between old books. They reminded me of two transforming years I had.

I, as a child, was doing everything expected. Getting good grades in school, participating in cultural activities, and doing everything my parents want me to. But I had been too practical and too besotted with my own dreams back then. When I discovered that I wanted to do literature instead of science(which I was doing then). Studying things that never interested me felt like there was somebody inside my heart digging out little bits of it with a scalpel and throwing it away, a sense of emptiness quickly filling up the dugout bits.

Then I felt like writing all I was feeling, I took out the new stationery I had bought. I began writing. Words poured out like a flood. I searched my mind going down the canals of memory, digging out every little thing I feel. I wrote and wrote and poured out my sixteen-year-old heart into those pages. When I finished I was shocked to look at the clock and see that it was nearly 5:00 a.m while I set myself to write at around 11:00’o clock. I had once again stayed up the entire night without even realizing it. I was even more startled to see the length of what I wrote. It ran to about forty-two pages. I never knew in the harshness of what I was going through, my carefully chosen words full of angst, longing and sincerity would wilt and wane. They would be killed and stamped out. Not a trace would be left.

The irony was that I had thought it would soothe me when I wrote it. I had no idea it would snake around my neck and form a noose that would almost take my life. This was the time when I realized my longing to do something I love to and this realization had just begun the descent of my life. On many days I did not sleep at all. Thoughts raced around my head like a colony of busy ants that had found a pile of food. I was filled with an almost coercive need to capture these thoughts somewhere. I bought a notebook and started writing in it. They were mostly poems. Words flowed like never before. I filled page after page with poetry about various things. On the left side of the book, I made drawings to go with them. I would sit up night after night, writing poetry. I would write about ordinary things, I would write about fantasy, about love and longing, about angst, about smells and sounds. I would write about the rains – in short about anything that caught my fancy. I used clever puns and rhymes. Sometimes the poem wouldn't rhyme at all but they would capture the essence of what I was trying to say. I would manipulate words and come up with what I thought were brilliant analogies.

I thought my poetries were beautiful and sensitive but along with that another thought that people will call it “persistent disturbance to conscious thought, perhaps due to delusions”. I was so terrified by the thought that I was not able to muster enough courage to even admit to anybody that I had written a poem. I was ready to stamp out any creativity and learn what ‘normal’ and ‘appropriate’ behavior was. I used to hide it like criminals or tear it to bits, destroying evidence before I was discovered. These thoughts were clamming up in my head and were waiting to blast out.

It came out like fire, not tears. I burnt that diary as everything around me was forcing me to keep doing things I was expected to. I fought back, I was called ‘rebellious’ but the ashes of those burnt pages made me realize that I don’t want to be burnt before being read and here I am, pursuing what I love. I don’t know what it would take me in the future but I am sure I will be myself. I feel like truly living now. I am a collection of some filled and some unfilled pages. All I want is the real me is reflected in all those pages.

 “All thoughts, all passions, all delights ;

 All that stirs my mortal frame,

 All of them are rulers of might ;

 They feed my inner flame “.