To be writing, precisely to be writing this particular piece, I never could have imagined, but life, it’s a twisted road, so here I am today, reminiscing on my journey as a writer.
In standard ninth, which is roughly 6 years from today, I started writing. It started out as something I thought I could impress my, then crush/best friend. He used to write poems, very good ones too.
I started out with poetry. And to be honest, the ones that I wrote in the very beginning, they were childish, some cheeky love revolving poems, ones a kid would write, but back then, it was my treasure.
To date, all my poems, all my articles, rants, everything I scribble go down in my trusty diary, “T for Thoughts” or in my “All literary dumping ground” folder.
As I started writing more, then again, to impress, I began to realise that this is something that flows out of me, that I don’t have to force it out of my system. Rhymes, ideas, abstract thought, some random lines, they’d just pop into my mind, someday, somehow, and I wouldn’t rest until I added a story to that one line that seemed as if the almighty himself whispered in my ear.
Something that started out as merely a flaunt, a tool, now started becoming something that I took pride in, something that I knew would always be with me. My style changed over time, now it wasn’t just poems I wrote, but articles, longer poetries and rants, and I found my solace in it, one of my english teachers introduced the idea of blogging to me, so “T for Thoughts” now wasn’t just a diary anymore, it was a blog, that people read. Not many. But even if 2 would read, I’d be over the moon. I removed having one read from America every single time and that was my happiest achievement.
But it’s almost inevitable that good things end, people started growing apart, there was a certain period of shock that had come to me when I first came face to face with the fact that people aren’t always meant to stay and I started turning a little dark, a little morose. My poetries now became sort of obsessive, dark, melancholic, vengeance filled works, ones that yelled my heart’s agony, that I couldn’t find the strength to share.
Slowly I pushed my boundaries further and wrote my first free verse poem, (“Such the society says”) and this time on a social issue. It made me realise that writing has so much more to it, and I started finding my comfort in rhythmic free verses.
In 11th, if I am not wrong, I had the first big opportunity to be writing with a rather talented group of people, “What heart whispers” it was new territory for me, to be writing “microfictions”. I learnt more in my brief time with those people and wrote my heart out.
Crazy enough, in all of this, I was ignoring my constant deteriorating mental state. My best friend broke the news to me about her eating disorders that had been going on for more than a year, and it broke me further. I thought that I was that horrible a friend I never even knew that she was suffering, I might not have been able to anything even if I knew but that fact that I couldn’t ever find out, made me question my worth. Past experiences with a rather perverted cousin, my fallout with one of my closest friend, realising that some people are just there to pretend, it pushed me further deep into the dark realms.
I had shut myself out, being with the wrong people subjected me to a level of ignorance that I couldn’t handle, I became quiet by the day. I used to be someone who’d stand up for everyone, and now I wouldn’t even for my own self.
There was this period I vividly remember when my mind would tell me to be sad, those voices would tell me, “why are you happy don’t be, you’re horrible a liability is sad don’t smile, cry”. My demons kept growing stronger. I ignored my writing largely, I did write once in a blue moon but not with the ease I did before. I used to maintain a journal, but that wouldn’t help. I took my leave from the group thinking, all of my writing time, ended. I locked myself in my own self-deprecating thoughts.
Somehow one day, I talked. I talked to some of my very dear friends and I talked to a stranger, someone who knew this phase. If I hadn’t done that, maybe, I would’ve slipped into depression, maybe I would’ve needed clinical aid, but luckily somehow, I didn’t. I started healing, I still am, and then, I turned back to my old friend, poetry. I wrote more. It helped me through, it eased my misery, made me unlock some closed doors.
In 12th, if I don’t remember the month, but I believe in 2018, I received a message from ‘TSD’ and to be offered to write with their page, outrage, it was an honour. I never believed I could do it, again.
Slowly, I began writing, getting praised, criticised and featured, it boosted my mental strength, it made me regain my confidence in myself.
Then as if it was magic, I was shifted to the main ‘TSD’ page, where I talked about more than just social issues, here I could dump my philosophical things, poetries of love, hatred, revenge, reimaginations, my short quotes, my long rants, basically, my heart screamed here.
And before I knew it, they said that I’ve been shifted to become a permanent writer, and for me, that was something I could never be thankful for enough. I started exploring newer areas, one’s I thought I never even could think of, like story writing. It’s still growing, my writing.
People treated me not like ‘just a girl who just writes for us’, here, but they treated me as a ‘fellow writer’.
However, like everything else that’s good TSD riddled by its own fair share of drama came to an end in 2020. Since then I’ve shifted most of my focus in rebuilding my Instagram page and blog, listening to ted talks, attending workshops and whatnot. Writing is one thing I can’t let go of, not again.
I did not ever think that I’d be writing something that people other than the ones I know, will read and appreciate. It’s still all a dream to me.
Well, I can write way more than what I’ve just written, but, well, it does have to end. So this is my story, as apparently what they call me now, “a writer”.
T for Thoughts 