What does it really takes?

I have been silent here for quite some time. Tiny notes couldn't save me. It's been almost a month. Perhaps that feels like a long wait for my soul. She doesn't talk but nudges me every day. And you know what, I thwart her. Maybe that's the cost of feeling low silently. I feel as small as an ant when I don't write or find it hard to write. When I don't show up for her. But anyhow, she waits. She lingers, choosing not to despise me. Around every longer wait. I am happy you are still here. Writing to us has been the most intimate thing I have been aching to do ever since I started writing here. To you. To us. It's been almost a year and a half. I have not been writing regularly, but when I do, it makes me feel less heavy. Trust more in the idea of wanting to know who I am when I allow myself to express. I am slowly learning to tend to my soul every time I write here. Thanks for bearing the silence and standing by me so far. I really appreciate your presence.

This is to confront the fears holding me back from writing. The doubts crippling down my little efforts to write between the intervals. To everything that slows me down in reaching you. Reaching us. I have more than five drafts left incomplete, having one completed, but couldn't allow myself to post it. That's a very private one, and I think it needs more tending before it meets this space. Maybe for another day.

I am leaving all those drafts behind to face this fear of waiting for a long time. That's how I know I can still break this silence and choose to write anyway. I am not alone. I am not alone. I am not alone. For any of you struggling to write, I hope this one relates. You are not alone either.

To write is to bring peace, at least for a while. To bring clarity. To be held by yourself. With some love. But how do I tell you it has also been a struggle, I have been slowly avoiding and hiding so as not to take part in it. Silence felt easier at the beginning, but as it started to grow, it has become one of the most deafening noises lately. It curled up as doubt, insignificance, and absence that I had not asked for, but the one I was building anyway. There's always a silent pressure running under my nerves invisibly. I can sense it but the point is I can not stop it from silencing me. I get back to my drafts every day but I can not find myself completing it. There's doubt. There's ignorance. There's laziness in confronting the part where it actually takes the real work. Every time I come back to finish it, it seems like the whole content is deteriorating slowly and I just leave it there. But I am here now, I want to try. I want to get out of the spiral.

I have started to write my doctoral thesis. It has become a weight, a pressure silently pressing me down to low confidence as it gets really difficult every day. Maybe that is why I couldn't write to you or to the one I am. For someone who is so much interested in personal writing, i pity myself now for choosing a PhD anyway. Though I have taken art and memory as my core discussion for the whole research, a subject i love deeply, I still feel disconnected towards scholarly writing. Maybe that's how it is and i don't want to hide the truth. Not to defend some theoretical framework that I have to conditionally apply and connect to defend my argument. But that has to go on anyway. However, I am trying to pull through everyday as slowly as I can. I am learning as I am making more mistakes. I am learning how to not hate myself in this process even when everything seems harder. I am trying not to scare my inconsistency when i have to sit and stare at a blank page for hours. When I have to read my primary novels again and again and exactly when all of this is demanding a lot of patience from me.

Writing is hard. Expressing what i have to say is hard. And academic writing is even more harder than i had expected. I envy how some writer's essays, their tone of writing feels natural. Somehow it's tidy and clear when I read. But when I have to write, it's always a battle between what I have to say and how I should say it. Perhaps it's not a human error. But the language that's different from my own. The struggle of wanting it to be neat scares me. I have got used to it for a long time. To this silence—waiting. Delaying. Not doing the work. But writing here has helped me address my own feelings in a better way. Though not completely but as slowly as i try, it allows me to understand writing doesn't always have to be perfect to be expressed. It just has to be understood by myself first. And I am still learning to trust myself slowly. I hope writing here has helped me in believing my own voice. In my own expression. It has definitely been difficult but i'm sure i will never give up on this space that has held me so closely to my soul every time. Especially when things turn hard. Though academic writing terrifies me, i am not going to give it up for nothing. I am not going to blame it for its usual difficulty. I am learning to embrace the struggle and make it simple and still help the point reach home safely. And i believe I will be able to finish my thesis on time even if it takes me doubting every day. Though the road ahead is going to be filled with new challenges, I will not be sliding in for safety or perplexity. I will allow myself to be my own muse, surrender gracefully to the struggle. There’s no pressure. There’s no pressure. There’s definitely no pressure.

I missed writing to us but the fact that I am still struggling to continue to write here allows me to know myself better. Maybe there are questions I have been avoiding to ask and answers waiting to be heard. This silence is not something to be pitied but only be held with care and trust. And I am not giving it up just because it is hard and challenging. I am here and I will choose to be here even if I have to suck at it. Lately, I have been avoiding myself so well in silence. In doubt. In absence. But to be able to be here wanting to face it and trying to know it better means something. It means trusting again. Trying again. And not hiding again. Especially not hiding again.

The answer to this may sound simple. But every time as I sit to write, it is more difficult to find the silver linings to my thoughts. It doesn't happen readily. But it just takes one strong emotion to settle down well to help me follow a thread. A voice that would linger and weave my thoughts meaningfully. And that is not easily drawn every time because the gap to perform better persists and the silence of a troublesome wait extends like a long train when i don’t usually show up every day. I wonder whether i am really lost or too lazy to write. Maybe both. Maybe I am an irresponsible attender to my soul. A doubtful writer. But dear reader, the struggle ceases when I try to lay bare my heart with all its uncertainties and difficulties and still believe in the voice that wants to write..wants to talk..at least whisper... even after doubting every time, even after feeling lost to come back to myself. Yes, it is hard but i am not really losing it. See me, i am trying hard not to hide myself in the wait, in the doubt for a long time. I am trying to get myself out of the struggle as i am writing about it and it gives me hope to not stop.

Maybe what it takes is not always confidence but letting it all go and seeing what remains to hold you still. Maybe what it takes is not throwing off your doubts completely but letting it see you suffer hopelessly and still know you can love yourself better and trust yourself stronger. And maybe what it takes is not always what you think it should take but what you are really trying hard to avoid. I am not avoiding the doubt. I am not avoiding the fear. I am not avoiding the struggle. I am here and am learning to embrace this process of doubting myself every time and still trying again anyway. Here, as I am writing this post after a month's gap, I truly believe I am not into that rabbit hole, not at least for a while until the next post.

PS: It's okay to carry the doubts and still believe in the voice you hear. It's okay to be silent and still be stronger in the love you carry for your soul. It's not always about how hard it is but how honestly open you are about it. And how gentle you are to the soul in you. I believe my soul is little happy to send this post and hope yours is more stronger and kind when things get harder. Especially when it gets harder. Doubts cannot stop us from trying. It can not stop us from reaching out for ourselves. It cannot throw us into the silence for a long time. I am here. I love you and i missed us so much.

With Peace,

Revathi Ganesh