boardwalks

dear Amrit,

You don’t have to be afraid.

I’ve never dedicated a tumblr post to anyone who isn’t close to me before, but I want to give this to you because your Hindi paper is coming up soon and isn’t that exciting?

You’ve always been a special person, and everyone has always known it, from the day that you stepped into SOTA. I can still remember how you were one of the first people I encountered, peering suspiciously at our dubious school skirt material that water just “bounced off” and deadpanning about a variety of things and conjuring within my mind a very warped image of what my new school community was going to be like. I honestly enjoyed that first conversation though - the first, and only, for a very long time.

Here you stand today, on the brink of something much larger, a culmination of all the choices you’ve made these four and a half years that have passed since, leading up to where you now are. Throughout this journey you’ve experienced wonderful things and not-so-wonderful things, things that have stirred your heart, others that have possibly hardened it, some that have confused it or left it not knowing if it should still be followed. But no matter what those things have been or where those choices have taken you, it still remains that you are a beautifully, delicately, immaculately unique individual, with more choices to continue to make, with your path extending way ahead of you, with its challenges and adventures and gifts and surprises and miracles.

I know what it feels like to be overwhelmed by an influx of emotions, be it the stressful  onslaught of work, the staggering weight of obligation, the pressures life cruelly pins us down with or the utter dire desperate feeling of being swept along in a current you have no control over. We all have; it’s only human. But I’ve learnt not to let the anxiety flood me so much that hope cannot take root. This anxiety is but for the present moment, a checkpoint on a long and bumpy road, a hurricane that whisks us up to a new stage of our lives that we can undertake with increased maturity and peace of mind.

You don’t have to be afraid; there is nothing too great that can consume you, engulf the calling on your life, take away the strength that has been placed within you. There is always a place of rest that can be found, there is always a way out, a second chance, a new day to face.

You may not know this, but seeing you smile lights up my day and reminds me that there is always much joy to be found. There are many lovely things to embrace and enjoy, and all struggles will pass, come and go and come and go, much like almost everything else.

So be not in despair, dear Amrit - or anyone else. Let us pull ourselves together. For the journey ahead is long. And every step we take prepares us for the next one.

may day

Mariel: I’m going to go back and edit my journal entry.
Charis: Dude, you don’t edit journal entries; you ADD journal entries. If you edited your journal, it would not be a journal it would just be a journal entry hahahaha

Secret: I don’t really like people. There are many times where I would much prefer being on my own because I’m not very good with social interaction. That is not to say that I don’t like who these people are, because on the contrary, I love who they are very much. 

Nothing is quite as shattering for me as the fear that grips me upon finding a person that could quite possibly thwart my attempts to shy away from interaction. It’s hard for me to live in a state of total certainty that dedication is not going to have negative repercussions. I start projecting the frustrated feelings I have towards certain people, upon other people’s feelings towards me. 

The very beautiful and very sad thing about life is that you will never be able to fully adopt a perspective that is not your own. Try divorcing your perspective from yourself when you put yourself in another person’s shoes and you’ll find that it’s impossible. The most we can do to discover another person’s truth is to reach a stage where the person trusts you enough to tell it to you. I believe I could handle the truth, but I also believe it’s likely that no one else believes that, and that if they did, my fear would be replaced by a wintry chill sweeping gustily through my heart, confirming all the loneliness I’ve ever felt, sucking up any hope, and leaving me empty. 

But because I still have traces of hope, the possibility of negative repercussions holds little significance in my dedication.

In fact, it occurs to me that it might be the possibility of negative repercussions that keeps us dedicated and holding on tighter. If everything were certain, love would cost nothing. And if love cost nothing, it would not be love. 

Which is why perhaps the fact that I don’t really like people only makes me love them more.