How can you explain you are not okay without having to convince yourself you are okay.

Hello dear readers,

Something gets emotionally stirred in me and I want to scream it out loud here by writing about it. So far, I have been droning my personal turmoil in every post. I honestly accept, it must have been boring to you, but how do I explain that this is where we all forget to connect the real dots to our idiosyncrasies. If I keep hesitating to share my mental struggle, thinking it would not catch up with anyone of you, how will i then know that unnamed pain can find a space to heal or atleast talk.

Your side of expression couunts, even if it needs only a small space to be held. What you keep writing silently adds value to your soul and to the world surrounding you whether you are willing to accept it or not. Even if you are moving slowly like a snail, lazing off most of the time available to you, even if you are not confident everyday, even when you carry only fear and doubt on most of the days, because i want to remind you that we are not the lagging behind people as how family or society tags us to be and I am sure we are definitely not the failing ones though that is how we are made to feel mostly.

I am not writing this to justify how being hopeless or lazy or doubtful can be taken positively or convincingly. I am only writing this to allow myself and everyone understand that the limitations we set for ourselves do not define us as something meek or being incapable or behind. Perhaps it is true what we keep doing everyday will define who we become in the future but it is also us who are large in number struggling to be in a constant cycle of production.

• When did ever wanting to grow became this much scarier and hallowing out.

• Where shall we all go if we daily allow ourselves to be ignored in our own noise for wanting to deliver.

• Where shall we all direct this silent pressure of showing up okay to go and grind.

Okay, let me say this out loud, no, i am not okay. i can not grind. I feel weak. Both in mind and body. How can i explain i am not okay without having to convince myself i am okay. We can pretend to be normal as we already accept growth earns us respect and strong place in this world but how can we lie to the soul we are that doesn't stop longing for its retrieval —it's slow rhythm. You and me are not alone in this silent battle I am talking about. It is growing wildly eerie as it is not letting us breathe freely in our own heads. This modern competitive world will not allow us to find meaning in our own minds. Instead it will ask us to follow the curated race that our hearts are not even sure of running behind. Ofcourse, achieving in this race would bring us more happiness and pride that even our souls did not really ask for. But do we get this shield of joy by doing what we actually ache for? Or is it the one that you think will bring more money and that more money will bring you more respect and stability to hold for the rest of your life. Definitely no. No, because I think unless you can not do something happily without having to prove anyone or even to yourself, you are not building anything long-standing or valuable. Because you can never escape from your real yearning. You may survive on an imbalanced thread, blinding yourself it's normal for a while but i bet you can not go on like this forever. Not even for the next few years because see me writing to you all about this for the past few letters. May be it's just the mental drain wanting a place of it's own to communicate it's pain. A pain that always gets silenced. Suppressed and unheard. But I am trying my best to not let it go unattended. I wish you do the same for your own yearning or silent pressure that's stopping you. Let us start talking to it before we get completely blocked out.

Desire is a strange thing. We keep desiring for things in the hope it would add more meaning to our life. But the desire is itself the dangerest thing i would say if it is not stemmed from our own yearning. Yet we keep desiring for things inflicted or invented by ourselves and others even before we could understand what we are honestly desiring for.

You start judging yourself as not being enough for what you desire, not capable and definitely not growing at it. This is same even for the things we deeply desire for our souls. To follow what my soul desires for has been the hardest battle in the recent years. I can not say how much i keep longing to pick up my graphite pencils and A3 sketch book that i'd bought for myself so achingly to start drawing little bigger portraits. I can not say how much i yearn to draw my nephews and niece who are very dear to my soul. How much i ache for a space to let all my love and yearnings flow and not feel selfish about it. But I end up surviving barely on nothing. Even all the little tasks at hand feel heavy not because i am incapable but my mind is wandering somewhere in the distance island where it keeps wishing to finally settle and take up my litte passion seriously.

There's also this unchecked softness that goes unnoticed when you force your soul to be hoping always even when it can not. It can not because we have not given it enough time and space to thrive. To ask. To yearn. To live.

• How can we escape from this blindfold that we keep wearing for ourselves or from the society that asks more from us we do not actually wish for?

• This world do not care for our honest yearning unless we command it to. But we are slowly disappearing already even before we could cry for what we ache. Or how to even speak for what we know we want.

• How to not think you are weak just because you couldn't achieve something that they wished for you or even what you wished for yourself?

• How to ground yourself like you are breathing the very life you wanted to build for your soul?

• How to understand you are capable as who you are already, as who you are still yearning to be even if it counts to no achievement as they call it?

May be they make me feel like I belong nowhere and may be that's how I can see myself right now. In nowhere yet aching to be everywhere that will lead to the uniting self in me. Though I can convince myself I am not a failure or a lost symbol of hope, I can see patterns of my daily energy rot, showing up both in my active and the inactive states of mind. But I am writing this in the hope that this silent suffering too shall pass, shall heal and finally find a place to be laid down. No I am not feeling alone here. There's an unexplainable strength growing even as I am writing about this. Maybe that's how I get myself back to my soul everytime. She is not lost. She is not disappering. She is here waiting to be held even more closely everytime. Especially when it's hard to hold on silently.

PS: I wish you hear your soul talking and not let anything stop you from believing that you can still choose to bloom on your own speed. I love you.

With Peace

Revathi Ganesh