whatsyourrashi

Tag: mental-health

  • To me

    To Me,

    It’s been a while since you’ve heard from me.

    Been a decade since you crossed your knees.

    Been a little more time since Renee stopped calling,

    I wonder if she’s been lost and maybe just wandering.

    I came here to tell you: you’ve been doing good, all this while.

    You’ve lost a dozen of dimes, indeed some were good times.

    10, you were intoxicated with innocence.

    You knew less and that was surely better,

    that’s what Tame Impala says, something you’ll learn much later.

    15, hey! You’ve experienced what it’s like to fall in love.

    Till now you don’t understand the existence of rising in love.

    It comes with growing, needs a bit of wisdom and ageing.

    19, ah! you’re at your prime.

    Or that’s what you thought.

    You’ve fallen thrice and by thrice maybe a couple more times.

    Numbers and people began piling up,

    like weights on shoulders you hadn’t built in the gym.

    Math you never solved, faces you never needed

    all of them pressing down,

    all of them shaping you into someone undefeated.

    21, you’re a rebel child.

    The years that will turn your whole life around.

    You start to bloom in different ways,

    ways your 25-year version now looks behind.

    When it starts to rain, you sit in the balcony.

    You read books to mom to distract her

    from all the daily noise the pandemic brought.

    You tell dad to break a sweat,

    and he does. He loses 10 pounds,

    maybe more of his worry than his weight.

    23, that’s when the wisdom starts to kick in.

    Slowly, but the voices start speaking louder.

    They tell you: keep your eyes open and your mind wider.

    Keep your heart closer and keep dreaming wilder.

    I wish I could tell you that the voice was me from 2025.

    But no, it’s just the echo of a night,

    when dad asks you to resign.

    And you do. You resign, take a flight,

    and start your new life.

    Oceans across, there lies a bed you make,

    food you learn to cook,

    money you begin to earn,

    and new friends you slowly collect like seashells.

    You start to like UK vibes, but you’re so desi you make the whites fall behind.

    24, you learn shit and crib.

    You stumble, you curse, you laugh.

    By now it took you twice to fall in love to rise once.

    You start to realise the mess is also the masterpiece.

    And now, 25.

    you have wisdom, you own your craft.

    You don’t cry when people shout, you laugh.

    You cut ties, you don’t let toxicity intertwine.

    Now when it rains, you look out a little less,

    but you’re still mesmerised.

    You lift heavier, and you’ve come back to India,

    where you realise home isn’t a place,

    it’s the pulse in your chest when you finally feel aligned.

    After all, it’s the butterfly effect. Not so bad like you thought.

    So while I write to add one thing each year,

    This time I write

    Not to warn you or to guide.

    Just to tell you:

    you’ve been doing good, all this while.

    By me.

  • Fear : Face It

    You know what’s funny? When I was 12, I was absolutely terrified of stepping on stage. Not “nervous” terrified. I mean full-on existential crisis at age twelve terrified. Six months of practice down the drain because the idea of singing in front of strangers felt like I was about to perform open-heart surgery with a plastic spoon.

    So there I was. My name gets announced. People clap. And what do I do? I take a step back. Like, literally backwards. Imagine a magician calling your name and you just, reverse out of existence. That was me.

    But then the kid next to me pushed me forward. Probably out of spite, or maybe destiny disguised as peer pressure. Suddenly the spotlight hits me, and here’s the thing no one tells you: when you’re blinded by that one giant light, you can’t actually see the crowd. Poof. Gone. Just me, a mic, and my twelve-year-old panic attack.

    And honestly? That was a relief. Because if I couldn’t see them, maybe they couldn’t see me either. (Spoiler: that’s not how physics works.)

    So I open my mouth, clear my throat, and sing my first note. And it is…horrible. Like, so bad my ancestors probably covered their ears. But then something wild happened: the audience clapped. Maybe out of politeness, maybe out of pity, maybe just to speed up the torture but still, they clapped. And in that moment, I realized: I had survived. My worst nightmare had happened, and I didn’t die.

    That’s the thing about fear. It’s this scam artist living rent-free in your head. It convinces you not to try, not to step forward, not to sing your first bad note. But here’s the punchline: once you actually do the thing? Fear doesn’t vanish, it just gets embarrassed. It sulks in the corner while you stand there, a little shaky but still alive.

    For me, it was stage fright. Still is, honestly. Every time I step on stage, my brain screams, “We’re all gonna die!” But every time I ignore it, the scream gets quieter. And maybe that’s the real deal.

    So yeah, the performance was terrible. The claps were probably charity. But you know what? I’d rather bomb under the spotlight than never step into it at all.