Some Days

Often, I am just stuck with my fingers hovering uncertainly over the keyboard. I can't bring myself to type out the entire sentences. My thoughts are always on a rush, each one pushing and shoving and jostling for attention. They just push past each other, tripping over each other and reducing the words a jumbled garble of letters that just spew out as a powerful stream of projectile vomit. Before long, the vomit of letters will just trickle down to a string of weak, spent saliva...still stuck precariously to the tip of the lower lip, but utterly spent. Then there will only be this uneasy stillness, like a room full of acquaintances suddenly gone quiet with awkward silence hovering over them, after running out of topics to discuss within minutes of settling down to talk.

But that silence only lasts so long, before the letters start peeping into my brain. They gather their might, bit by bit, a sentence here, a phrase there. Then they slowly brew into full paragraphs that run through my head, just before I fall asleep. Next, they start tormenting me in my sleep, with full pages running in my vision and before long, I am up. The handy notepad and pencil near my bed snatched up and held poised, to purge my mind again. Many times, it is like this feeling of nausea where you know you have to throw up to feel better, but your stomach is not full enough or troubled enough to muster more than a few weak dry heaves. So you then forcefully insert a finger into your mouth and tease the inner tongue and trigger the gag reflex.

It brings a brief respite. It is especially troubling when I don't have a story to pound out of my head and heart. It is much easier when the story is already there in my head, all fully written. But more than the stories, it is often these intense snatches of thoughts that get lodged uncomfortably in my chest, sitting there smugly and tickling my fingers. Making my fingertips ache to type away the weight, but insubstantial enough to just disappear without a trace when I finally succumb to the urge and open my laptop. A half finished sentence hanging without a period or a comma. A paragraph that had a seizure and died towards the end. Randomness that makes no sense to anyone but me. Nothing to finish, polish and present, but always a tangled web of characters that had to be exorcised out of me.

Many times, they are also like clouds...dark and heavy. Crowding the head sneakily, one small dark curling wisp at a time. And before I even become aware of them, they would have gathered force and would be blotting out the sky, blurring the horizon and pressing me down with their weight. And if I don't let the clouds pour down, then they turn toxic...not overnight, but slowly. Very slowly. The toxins then seep out of me, a snap here, an irritation there, a frustration out of the blue and a disappointment turning into a vicious downward spiral of spite. These clouds are like pus infested wounds that have to be cut and drained. A dirty, secretive purging done not with joy, but out of necessity. I have to pierce open the clouds, even if I know that all that they contain right now is boring, weak, half hearted ramblings that makes no sense or substance.

I have no choice, but to write. It is cathartic. When the words finally stream into the screen, my heart and mind feels like a bladder that is finally relieved, after holding in piss for so much longer than it could.