A Rickety New Beginning

Credits: My very talented sister (don't tell her I said that)

I’ve always been a writer. That’s what I do. I write poetry, which is probably not very good. Too many failed attempts at novels. A few mediocre short stories here and there.

I’ve never really bothered writing something about my life, or something very personal. Let me rephrase that. I’ve never really had the courage to bare my creepy little soul to strangers. But that’s me considering myself very important. I’m not getting any ‘audience’ here. Maybe this is the catharsis I need.

So, the usual ‘about me’ section. My name is Harnidh and I’m not a psychopath. Borderline sociopath, maybe. As you may have guessed, I use ‘maybe’ a lot. I’m in college, and I study history, mostly because most people are a whole lot more interesting when they’re dead. As my URL would suggest, I’m wholly, irrevocably, socially awkward. I do not understand social constructs and mores. I may live by them, but they do not really make any sense to me. A lot of what I write is based around my constant frazzled state, which is mostly caused by my lack of understanding of how human contact works.

I really do dislike writing in first person. It’s so…violating. It’s like laying bare a vulnerable part of you in front of people and watching it being trampled upon because no one quite realizes why it’s there. ‘Why would she even write if it seems like physical torture?’ I hear you ask. (Probably not, but I need some way to put my point across, yes?)

Writing has always been a ‘refuge’ from some of the horrendously taxing years of my life, both emotionally and physically. It’s been a ‘solace’ at a time when no one, literally not one single human being, could understand what I was trying to express. I put these words into inverted commas because honestly, writing was exactly the opposite. It was a cage, a trap. Since I could not escape, I embraced it, and I turned to poetry. Through my broken attempts at cheesy love stories and half-baked fantasies about a dragon-human specie called Draeken, I tried to channel all the inexplicable things floating in my head into something concrete. This was, to give you a fair comparison, a lot like self-harm to me. Some people cut, I wrote. I wrote of love, and loss, and longing. I wrote to torture myself with things and people I’d never be able have for my own. In a way, writing became my idea of penance. I punished myself by writing.

Most people around me, including family, thought I finally found a way to deal with many things they couldn’t help me with. Praise started pouring in from all corners. Silly school kids playing around, doting adults, and a mother who wrote herself all resulted in my ending up in the spotlight because I could string words together into what seemed like beautiful sentences. Soon, I started writing at a speed that scared me, just to hear those words again and again. Talented, gifted, blessed. These words made me greedy for more. Imagine an addiction that destroying you from inside out, but instead of being told to control it, you’re told to nurture it. And nurture it, I did. It became my very own Frankenstein. A product of delusions and horrors, brought to life just because I could. Bring it to life, that is. My writing soon grew to take over my life. I was ‘the’ poet, ‘the’ fat girl whose identity revolved around the fact that she was oh-so-deep.

However, soon, much too soon, this started to fall apart. Writing, poetry or anything else, is not an easy task. Whatever the reason behind someone writing, it saps something very precious out of you. My writing burned through me like a forest fire in a dry desert scrub. Soon, I was left without words. Imagine a cocaine addict not being able to buy any, but not getting proper rehabilitation either. That happened, basically. Also, alongside this, I entered a happier phase in life. College started. In having friends to talk to, and losing almost 50 kgs of weight, I found myself not needing to write as much, too. Slowly, as Pavlovian lessons would dictate, I started equating writing with scary, scary things. Every time I felt an urge to write, I quickly drowned myself in something easier, like cooking.

So, after that rambling preamble, I come to the crux of the matter. I’m trying to start writing again. Not poetry, because I’m still raw and chafed inside. I want to start putting words down and catalogue, mentally, where and how my life is moving. I need all the criticism I can get, and I need all the push to open myself up again. Hence, I’m going to work with deadlines. I want to try and upload a 800 words or more post twice a week, ideally on Tuesday and Saturday.

In trying to fix myself fast, I did a shoddy job. I’m going to have to retrace my steps and start over, because there are leaks and cracks that threaten to give in at any moment. This is going to be awkward, emotional, embarrassing and borderline torturous, but some things need to be done, irrespective of how difficult they are.

I think this should suffice as a first post to the blog no one will ever read.

Stay awkward

Keep learning

Harnidh xx