THE UNSENT LETTER By Shifa Atik Khan

Dear someone,

 

I have been breathing this air since last 18 years, and nothing is better, everything is just getting worse, not the way I assumed or expected it to be, and not only that but me as a person it’s not going good as well. Growing up we all had this mind set, our thinking on that particular person we want to become. But the reality is we become what we go through, it’s the ups and downs what makes us who we are, and this is something we miss out during our childhood. You must be wondering why am I telling you about this, well you know all those late night conversation we used to have, you might have talked your heart out, but somewhere you never noticed that, I never really talked. I was that wondering soul in those nights that lost herself in the words of yours. I have no idea how, but I would feel all the feelings you were feeling. Every other night when you’d want to give up I used to stop you, tell you how beautiful life is, and we need to make the problem and things give up on us for being so difficult, and not us. Life is filled with problems and ups and downs, highs and lows all we have to do is to fight and never give up. I mean how hard it is to do that.But I could never tell how I was trying not to give up myself, how weird it felt to know that I wasn’t the only one who was feeling that way.

 

Every other night when I looked up at the sky and it was empty, I felt the same way empty and full all at the same time. I was drained out of the energy to fight by myself, to express the hollowness growing in me deeply and with great intensity with each passing day. How I was so empty and how deep I was lost in my thoughts that I barely noticed the world falling apart right in front of my eyes. How and when it was fixed and back to life, I have no idea, I lived a moment and then there I was just breathing past the people in the crowd. I was left unnoticed and all of a sudden I was in the limelight, everything that happened always used to be extreme, either I was invisible like air, or I was the sand of the desert.

 

Life was just like the spiral, as it was getting twisted it started strangling me, I was struggling to breathe. My tears were nothing but quiet just like my whispers. Asking for help would always lead to a big lump in my throat which was way too big and way too hard to swallow. I would have tried once or twice to let you know how I felt but my problems were nothing in front of yours. So I stayed quiet all the time. I wasn’t left unheard but I was left alone at the end. I was left used, used for pouring emotions, used for help, but nobody noticed my pleadings, my plastered smile, and maybe I was wrong, I should have approached you and asked for help. I didn’t, but that doesn’t mean I’m not living, I’m more than alive, I never took a step ahead to the path some might have choose. Yes suicide. No I didn’t, on the contrary I have started living a better life. A better me, no! I still don’t share my problems, but I have my subtle ways to deal with them. So here I am, counting the unseen stars, and looking at the sky, with so much into my eyes, that I can’t even explains, that I can’t even stop the shivering of my hands, I can’t stop the cold seeping in my bones. I just keep warming myself, I just keep sipping some coffee, all I do is look at the sky and question my life. I question how you always thought I’ll be the one holding your hands all along and then all of a sudden you left. You left me standing here like a fool, waiting for you to come back , but maybe you found some other partner to share your

 

Midnight thoughts, maybe you got another shoulder to weep on, just don’t think that person will be strong enough to stand alone, when you leave. When you are sharing your feelings with someone make sure you listen to that person too. Make sure you keep your shoulder available for that person, you listen to that person too. I might get another person who could make me feel the same way all over again. But yet alone things change, life run faster than we think, so does the time, it changes faster than our moods. It doesn’t stop not for you, not for me and neither for us.

 

So we hold on to memories, to people, to live in them all over again and not miss the moment we are living in all at once. How amusing it is to see that how we want to grab everything that comes in front our eyes, be it a bad scenario, be it anything, we want to capture everything in our minds and when we go back to sleep we take a detour to our memory lane, and think about the worst days of our life, connect each and everything with our life and then weep in silent about how our life is so messed up and how we can do nothing about it.

 

We are, so screwed in our own minds , we are so used to see what’s wrong out there and in here that we forget what is right, we forget what beautiful actually means, and what a beautiful creation we are. We miss out the beauty of being broken, we miss out the beauty of how beautiful our smile looks when we wear it no matter what. How beautifully our eyes shine

 

When we look at our favourite food, or person. We miss how beautiful the night is, we miss out the feeling of sleeping with a smile on our face with the feeling that we are content with what we have. We just want more and more and more, we want everything to be perfect, we want a life like the great models, actors and the greatest actors and actress of all time, but we forget that for reaching there they did hard work, they worked day and night to be where they are today.

 

We forget that nothing is actually perfect, nothing has to be perfect. We can be who we are. We can make our flaws and scar glow in the dark, we can make them see the light and heal them with patience and love. We can glorify them and make them better, make ourself feel better, we can love ourselves more than what we actually do. We are so busy in providing love to others that we forget to care for ourself. We are so lost in the pain of others that we barely notice that are we falling apart or are we already are at the edge of falling into deep darkness. We forget that we deserve the same attention that we give others, we just start expecting that someone will show up from nowhere and give us the attention that we deserve. We forget that that kind of attention should be given by us only, nobody can give us the attention that we can. But our generation has molded our thinking in a way that caring about for us is selfish and if we care about others it’s being selfless and for some selfish reasons.

 

Our thinking is growing but with a wrong perspective, with wrong conclusions with different observations, we need to come back together at one single decision and start all over again. To see things with not only others point of view but have an opinion of our own. We should learn how to stand on our own words, and not just do things on social media, but in real life as well.

 

Social media has become one of those dementor of our life that it has started sucking the life out of us, the soul out of us. I being a part of this generation knows that how depressing it gets to see people having fun, going out, and I’m stuck alone in my room. It sucks out our moods, our smiles, and gives us those big frowns and scowls for absolutely no reasons. We need to understand that the social media is made for us, we are not made for it. It exists for us, we don’t exist for social media. There was a life before facebook, instagram. twitter and many other social platform that were created. And that life was lived in playgrounds, movies, long drives, night outs, campfire, trips get togethers, and so many places. Those moments were captured by a Kodak camera. They wer­e preserved in the most safest and most amazing place that is our memories. Why we keep forgetting that though we need inventions though we are developing being creative with each passing day, we are missing out the fun in actually living the life. Living in the moment, we are forgetting how to make memories. We are so lost in the gadgets, that we are losing the interest to go for a walk at the beach with our favourite people. We are forgetting the small games that used to bring smiles at our faces as soon as we thought about them. I’m not saying we should become kids again, I’m saying we can try and find happiness in the smallest things, we can try to live a happy life than what we are actually living. We can start a new journey whenever we want to. We can learn new things, but it’s not necessary to forget the old ones. We should meet new people but without forgetting the old ones, make new memories but not on the cost of losing the old ones. Yes memories tend to fade after a certain age, but we can preserve them till that time, still laugh on the antics we did as a kid, as a student how we got scared about our internals, how low attendance was one of the biggest fear in those days.

 

It’s okay if we don’t compromise our memories for somethings, its okay if we are not okay with some of our life decisions, it’s okay to regret and be guilty of our actions. It’s okay to not to feel okay for a while. But you should know that It’s not okay to be alone all the time, it’s not okay to hide what is hurting you, it’s not okay to keep quiet all the time, it’s not okay to mumble our truths away when you can scream them, it’s not okay to feed a lie when you actually keep the aducity to speak the truth. Its not okay to see everything going wrong and not raising your voice. When it is wrong, you don’t go on finding what is right in there. When an answer is wrong, it is wrong as a whole, the only way you can make it right is learn from your mistakes. And when you face it again you do what is right. Its not okay to stop yourself from dreaming, its not okay to compromise your sleep for something you saw on the internet and it reminded you of your past. Its not okay to feel so many things all at the same time. And being not okay is actually fine it doesn’t mean you have to seek help, it doesn’t mean you have to go visit a doctor or a therapists or a counsellor. No it just means you are doing and agreeing to what your heart says and there is nothing wrong in following your heart. So the next time you want to seek for help, feel free to do so. Next time you want to speak against something feel free to do so. Do what your heart says not what others ask us too cause at the end when you are going to sleep its you who is going to be happy about your decisions and not others. Be you and do what you want to, never let yourself down, that’s the last thing you want do to yourself.and when you actually think of letting yourself down even for once just think about your childhood and all the best things happened to you you will realise how beautiful it is to actually live a life with so many feelings to feel so many thoughts to share and of all to live for the most beautiful smile on our parents and loved ones face.  

 

Yours truly,

 

One of you.