Walking The Plank

"How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?"

- Dr. Seuss

Dear Eighteen,

Lately I’ve been wondering who will be there to take my place, a year- a few years from now, to write me this sonnet of what life has to offer. Trust me, the next year of your life is going to be like a screenplay you’d half expect to be adapted from one of those movies or plays you so endearingly loved. I promise you this- you’ll never want to love melancholy again.

Then again, you’ve never been one for poetry of the faint-hearted. You’ve never been one for the eye of the storm. You’re human. And that entitles you to hurricanes and stormy seas, war-torn mind palaces, the survivor’s guilt that comes with surviving. Currents of despair, bullets…and bullet points, roller coasters that can’t stop…won’t stop. The wheels will keep turning, the waves will keep crashing, and you will carry the bullets in your pockets- and the pain that came with them. But you, honey, will keep trudging through. I won’t lie; it’s going to be the kinds of struggle that will make you yearn for the song of the sirens. Remember, though, the only sin you ever sinned was to love and dream and want what was best for everyone…and that is no sin. Looking back at 2016, at eighteen, I would never change my life. I wouldn’t want to do it all again- to hurt all over again, but I guess the lessons you need to learn are lessons you cant unlearn.

The repercussions of what is yet to happen in the next year will change your life.

You are going to realize you’ll add If’s and But’s and For Now’s to everything, because in your head, nothing lasts forever. As for the end, you will want to see it coming, and not get caught off guard. How could you get through life if happiness left and acted like nothing happened…and came back and acted like nothing happened?

(Un)Fortunately though, you cannot plan this. Not how you react, not how you emote and definitely not how you feel about something. That’s just not you!

You and your heart were/are meant to stretch their arteries and branches of arteries up until the horizon and engulf everyone with it’s love and light and warmth as it slowly burns down the sorrow surrounding them and the remnant ash lies by their feet as they marvel at the fireflies in the sky.

Nothing is going to stop you from continuing to love everyone and everything that surrounds you. This might mean you don’t get that in return, but it doesn’t matter, when you love them, you love yourself.

Oh, btw, guess what? I know what it feels like- losing something or someone, I know that you love your dream so much that the world, the future does not seem like a scary place anymore. But I’ve learnt that there are always going to be new dreams, or new versions of dreams. People leave, what/who they leave behind…always stays. But you know what else stays? The family and friends-turned-family are never going to. They shall be your strength, your lighthouse, and they’ll be rocking out to Bon Jovi, right beside you, as you race to the end of the tunnel to be embraced by hope yet again.

It’s scary for me, right now. To return to all of these chapters that had once made me calculate my worth based on them. But as your best friend is very wisely going to say to you, a year hence, Life is not Electrostatics. It does not demand unwinding and reliving. Sometimes you just have to let go and let yourself fall…to be lifted back up again. Word of advice: You don’t want to exist in-between.

The biggest lesson you are going to learn is as follows.

Life can’t be used as an excuse for love.

Life can’t be used as an excuse to give up.

Let nothing bring you to antitrust the Universe, it’s far better a director than you think you could be.

As for Life? The echo it left of pain, is going to fade with time. So many people are broken or hurt because they don’t let themselves heal. You are going to be scared of ripping the bandage off, skinned knees and skinned hearts that are simply scars to your beautiful. Cut, suture, close, my love. Fix your own heart by accepting that what happened…was perhaps meant to happen.
A month back, I would do anything to take me back to when I didn’t need to look for sunshine. I found sunlight everyday at 6-7 a.m. when I set out for school (the hundred-odd photos in my gallery every school morning lay testimony to that). And now, I try to Lumos my own sunshine, something I think I lost along the way and am trying to find again.

Life gave me rain, but there was always so much sunshine to run to,

Pain, but so much comfort lay waiting in it's arms,

Petals of a rose when the thorns became unbearable,

Strength to go on, when my superhero cape became un-wearable.

Life gave me a story, where I could want and be wanted.

Life made me feel Epic, and that is exactly the kind of story I write now.

Not just the random musings of a restless heart, but the exclamation point of a beginning and a start.

The past is now but a happy getaway from the spilled ink of memories, the comedies of mistakes and the tragedies of persuasion.

The present is remembrance of a belief greater than myself, or you.

The future is the light at the end of the tunnel, the sunshine I saved from all our happy moments together and the glue that fixes me, piece by piece.

And piece-by-piece, I collect chapters of my story, verses of my poetry and choruses to my songs.

Piece by piece, for the hole in my heart longs to be whole again.

To be whole again is to be able to love you for wronging me, to love you now and love you ten years later,

To bump into you on a crowded street in Fifth Avenue or a cobblestone pathway in Rome,

And to hear the familiar voices of Happiness and Love go, “Hey, its you again.”

To be honest with you, I don’t have the exact words to comfort you or to prepare you for what is yet to come, but I do have the hugs to hug you (do invisible time-travelling hugs count?) and the reassurance that once this year is old and grey, dead and gone, you are going to be stronger, wiser, sunshine-y with only a hint of dark clouds and your spirit is going to be more unwavering than ever.

College shall bring its own onset of challenges, but you have always been a fighter and you’ll always have your wolf pack to have your back. The hurt will end, the only way past it is through. Good luck, Eighteen. Be strong, be brave, and always remember- that you, my dear, are a Froot Loop in a world of Cheerios. Or Chocos. Whichever works.

Love,

Nineteen.

P.S. When you are going to be this close to giving up on hope, love and happiness? They’re going to show up at your door and knock the heck outta it until you welcome them in again.