Abigail Diya John

I sat down in front of the walls, an agonizingly bored white sitting on them. Hanging on to its plain source of life. Bleeding its irked numbness. I found peace in these walls, as I did that one fine day, that painfully beautiful day…

A familiar uncertainty crept into my soul; a feeling of muted noise was in my body, we all felt its screams. Anything could happen; we could all be here for an hour or a full day. We were all waiting for the same thing, but would all have different results. A rather large man was sitting to the right of me and to the left a newborn baby and his mother. They both smelled different. The man smelled of anxiety, and doubtful thoughts. The mother and child smelled of new life and relief.

I’m sure I smelled of deep, meaningless thought, inexperience and undoubtedly bad hospital food.

Just when I felt like letting everything go, letting my eyes well up with doubts and my throat cough up the questioned. We saw a glimpse of purpose. A small text saying, “All good.” Just, “All good.” Who knew that two words would bring a heart rate of 1000 down to its normal pace? I tried desperately to rely on the text, but its importance wore out after an hour or so. My heart rate started climbing again.

The next time I saw my sister she would be half of what she was and there would be a replica of her. A small infant who would have love poured on her from the first day of her life, to the last day, she would be showered with anything she wanted. When she wanted to talk we would sit and listen intently, if anyone was troubling her, we would go to the person and punch him or her in the throat. Love at first site.  I would take a bullet for this small angel and I hadn’t even met her yet.

All this anxiety was numbed by another text. “ Abigail Diya John was born on the 8^th of September 2010 at 5:15 pm weighing a healthy 3.6 kgs” My heart bounced into 5^th gear. When could I see her? What would she look like? Is she healthy? When could I see her? Is my sister okay? When could I see her?

A small giggle bought me back to clear vision, I took my attention off the white wash walls, turned my head and there she was. 6 months along, healthy as ever and picture perfect.

day 13

My trip was amazing. I was filled with freedoms potion. I wondered about the streets without having to worry about meeting anybody I knew. No reservations. I was myself for the longest time in a long time. Every evening I would sit in Babas restaurant rooftop cafe sipping on mint tea and looking over the vast, beautiful, imperfect landscape. I was not restricted to thought or plans, I was restricted to what I felt like doing. Whatever I wanted to say, I said. My companions were perfect for the amount of time we went for, any longer and we would have found something to kill each other with. We had long, intense conversations about politics, the end of the world, religion, beauty, education and some topics that were just for us. We had argument after argument about useless things, like how to make pesto pasta and then two minutes later we would be light with the thought of where we were. We were in India, we were in Rajasthan. Just the thought of it gives me happy shivers. How did I end up in this beautiful, second heaven? The rest of the time I read, tanned, swam and chilled out. One of my favourite things to do.  

We also went on a camel trip; my arse still hurts from sitting on that weird, highly uncomfortable, unusual looking creature for 3 hours straight. We slept the night in the desert, under a massive painting of stars and a huge moon; I lost count of how many shooting stars I saw.

The whole trip fed the urge I have to travel; I’m starting to plan various trips through out India. Travelling anywhere else just seems so dull compared to the variety of beauty my nation holds. There is not enough risk involved in getting on a plane and looking at sights you have seen on the internet and TV. Where is the fun in a trip that doesn’t involve you almost dying at least 4 times? 

Day 5

Taken from the grip of this earth, taken from the grip of you, I want to be grasped by the ocean and held under till I breathe silently in the waves. I want the water to drown me in its love. The ocean is a person who doesn’t know his own strength and I want to be best friends with the ripples of its vast knowledge. Taken from the grip of its current, taken from the waves of time, I want to be swung from the highest mountain, I want to be frozen with awe and taken to another world.  I want to be crystallized and blinded by the sun reflecting off of the walls of ice and snow that grasp on for dear life to their source of strength. Taken from the steep slopes, taken from the dangerously high mounds of rock, I want to be flung into the dessert. I want to sleep in its warm arms and learn the secrets of its past. I want to sweat with amazement and be stunned with fear. Taken from the dunes of life, taken from the sands of gold, I want to be to be wedged in between freedom. I want to feel what nobody else has felt before. 

Day 4

Day 4

Its 12:25 on an early Wednesday morning.

Dreams regarding travelling have seemed to come alive; someone somewhere has breathed a heart beat into my newly found love. If all goes well I will leave on Monday morning for 5 days to go to a place called Pushkar in Rajasthan.  The next week will be a time of rejuvenating for my soul, my lungs will not feel crushed and squeezed in this city air any more. I will breathe freely and freedom will run through my veins again. I long to feel the out of beat rhythm of the train that is taking me closer and closer to new experiences that I have spent my time and money on. My well earned holiday awaits my embrace. And I await the embrace of the sun beating down on my white skin. I want to be apart of the crowd that nobody knows, I want to blend into my surroundings and not be seen by anybody I know, not to be disturbed by and old friend or acquaintance. I want to feel my freedom under my wings, I want to fly in the thick of my built up frustration and slice the air like volcanic fire would go through ice.

Asia is my home, I could not picture my self anywhere else in the world, my body is not made for easy living. I am meant to have trouble with my life, so I can pick myself up and learn lessons for the future. The west calls out for people who need a break. I need a break, but a break from my city. I need to live in awful surroundings so that an awful surrounding for the average person will be a luxury for me. Humble, I need to be humble and what I do in these years of my life will determine what kind of person I will be for the rest of my life.  I want to be a colourful person. The type of person you meet and think, “He is weird, but a beautiful weird” I want to be a beautiful weird, so I can show the world that being different is a good thing and normal is just plain boring. I want to own a different vocabulary, I want to dress different, I want to act different, but not just to be different because that’s what everyone different is doing. I want to be different because I was structured that way, which I know I am.  I want every part of my body to be kissed by uniqueness.  I want every bone in my body to be loved by a foreign thought. I want to have an instruction manual to my body in a different language so I never become over familiar with myself. I want the colour of my blood to be see through and I want the immediate thought and judgment that kicks in as soon as I see somebody to be seen through and destroyed. Its 1:05 on an early Wednesday morning and my back longs to be rested.

Day 1

 Its 1:14 AM on an early Friday morning.

Plans of my future have been haunting me, haunting my dreams and haunting the way I live. I have never been a worrier but more a warrior but some unknown blade has seemed to have wounded me and I’m still trying to figure out who and what weapon has left me in my current state of mind. Everything is fuzzy, everything is shaded. My memory does not go past my last meal and my anxiety of the future has rushed ahead of me and left me in a confused state of mind. I want to do something new. I’m tired of getting the boring old right hook, I want an eye gouge, I want an upper cut, a shot to the ribs, I want to be paralyzed with dreams that come true.

I have left so many faces over different oceans and the wounds of goodbyes have come to haunt me.  Friends and family have been left behind in the waves that separate me from the rest of the world.

I want to learn new things, I want to set out on voyages and learn new languages, I want to set up tent in the middle of a desert with nobody within a 100 mile circumference, me and my guitar strumming my anxiety and worry away. Music is the only thing that can possibly contain what my heart is screaming out for, but my fingers cant keep up with how much my mind thinks. It’s a pity. If my trail of thought were turned into a symphony then it would be a big blast of confusion and the drum beat of my future would beat out of time.

I want no worry of the world to set a foot in my doorstep, but it seems some has creeped in. Just slightly and if what I’m feeling now is slightly then I would hate to find out what it is like to have the bastard come in the whole way.

Excuse the sudden subject changes, but I feel like its necessary to jot this down as I am thinking. 

Day 2

It seems my thoughts and anxieties have been buried along with my fear.  The darkness and dullness of my mood has been lifted. My want to travel has increased over night though. New experiences and challenges call out for my acceptance and I have been ignoring my thought of mind till now. I feel I am behind schedule in living my life up to its fullest capacity. I look through pictures and scrapbooks of my past and I am grateful for what I have already done, but all that has been over holidays and free time. What I do in everyday life has slowly started to be a routine and that is unacceptable. I am a free spirit with no direction, but I will search for a path and where that path takes me will be great. As of now I am undirected and blind. My eyes long for a light greater than that of the Sun, something out of this world. I want the storm of change to mess things up for me, so I can try putting the puzzle back together. I wish to one day be a free spirit with direction, with a guided light that I slowly move towards. I envy people who know exactly what they are going to do, I fake it sometimes, fake my own mind into thinking that my rhyming words will lead to fame and money and no worry, but my patience grows thinner and thinner by the day with my aimless thought of mind. Oh how I long to sit on the roof tops of my ideas and stare positively into the misleading signs and mess of it all. Take my time and think which ideas would lead somewhere, which long lost songs will be a hit, which business schemes will sell like hotcakes, but all that is lost in my beautifully mangled mess of a mind, the rubbish dump of my impossible dreams is priceless to some and trash to others. I stand in the middle trying to choose which side I stand on, the optimist or the pessimist. 

Day 3

I sit here in my room, with the dark behind me and the very repeated new discovered Israeli song, I love music that I don’t understand. In my brain it’s almost as if the voice is being used as an instrument. Its stunning to say the least.  I find that night is the best time to write and express myself. It is 11:03 pm and I am dreading waking up. My mind feasts on memories of the weekend and it puzzles me how fast time flies when you are distracted. Now that I am starting to think again it hits me that the week will be full of new experiences that I will require to meet the expectations of my future that I hold for myself. It sends a sharp shiver running up my spine, a sharp, but needed wake up call to my rested mind. The week will consist of me getting stressed out, built up and shattered all in time for the much needed two day holiday at the end of the week.

It confuses me to think how fast time flies, it feels like I was stressing out on which colour crayon I would use for the 1^st grade examination. It confuses me to think that the stresses I am experiencing at this point of time will seem as useless as a choice between a crayon one day. One day I will look over all this and say to myself, “I have conquered the worries of my childhood and the nagging, unintentional expectations of everyone around me.”  That brings me peace, but not enough to distract me from what I am swimming in right now. I am drowning in unnecessary worry that knocks down the door to my mind every. Single. Night. The monotonous banging and nagging infuriates my already restless mind. Anxiety is a scab, it is an itch on your back that you can not reach, a burn that goes away only after the blister has been burst and the skin heals, a back ache that stays just long enough for you to be paralyzed in pain. One day I will be free, but till that day. I will scheme and plan different ways to kill and destroy my unwanted worry.