I like to look out of the office windows on days like these, when the sky decides to tear itself apart. Rain makes me want to write. It makes me want to purge. It makes me want to effortlessly string words together so that every bloody thing churning around inside would find a specific slot outside my head. Once, I would be able to do that. But writing has gone away from me. From my hands, my mind, my head. It is time I admitted that the half-baked whines I come up with are boring at best, and mindnumbing in their ordinariness at worst. For years, since I was a little kid, writing has been like the yellow brick road. Like the platform number nine and three quarters. It's been like Malory Towers and Kanasona and every fucking place I created in my mind to escape from the grinder that is reality. It's all I've ever known. And I don't know WHAT to do with my thoughts now that the words simply do not form.

I can cook now. I can manage cranky authors. I can pay my bills. I can even deal with long distance boyfriends. But I just. Cannot. Write. Hell, I cannot even compose a semi-decent paragraph on, say, cows. Or about how I am slowly slipping back into the void I tried so hard to get out of. Or about how I'm stuck in a rut of pretend-happiness and super-politeness and cannot make myself snap out of it and grab someone by his collar and SAY 'Hey you? That thing you said? That was kinda mean. And it hurt. And I don't like the fact that I have to TELL you that it hurt. You are supposed to KNOW. So, how about I punch your face instead?'

I read like a crazy maniac most of the days. And every time I read a beautiful paragraph or a particularly breathtaking string of words, I stop myself and try to think, honestly, whether I would be able to come up with anything like this. Ever. And I know that I can't. Especially now that the magic of words eludes me completely. And every bloody time I come to this conclusion, my heart breaks just a little.

Happy post.

For all my whining and existential angst, I'm not really unhappy here. No, really, I'm not. I revel in the anonymity that this city gives me, I like not bumping into known faces at every corner, I like the fact that I can order in Kababs at midnight. I have also decided that I love winter in this city. The bright colours, the morning misty breath, the need to wear three layers well into February gives me a high unlike any other. I like the independence. I bitch about my hardships, but there's a rather large bit of me that likes paying my own bills, cooking my own meals, deciding that I want momos for dinner today. I like coming home, fixing myself a stiff drink, and reading the newspaper. Knowing that, if push comes to shove, I can muddle along without anyone's help has calmed that part of my psyche which goes by the name of Marvin: The Paranoid Android. There are days I feel like shit, there are days I feel on top of the world. But at the back of my mind, I always know that there is no one else to blame for the shittiness.

Maybe this is what it feels like to be a grown-up, and I'm not half-bad at it.

Also? In case anyone was wondering, amar autobiographyr naam debo Noshto Meyer Upakhyan. Just so you know.