Home.

Image Source: https://quotesgram.com/importance-of-family-quotes/

Home? Can four walls encompassing few people be called a home? Is it important in defining us? How important is it in shaping us, making us who we are today?

I have been plagued by these questions for some time now.

My story started in Kolkata, capital of  West Bengal, a state in the north east part of India. West Bengal is not that hard to find. It has a rich history which is easily available on Google. I was born and brought up here. All my firsts, starting from learning to talk, learning to stand, learning to write, learning to understand the world and its people, every first started from here. This place, out of thousand other places became the reason for my existence.

How can a place, a place so small compared to the rest of the world, the rest of the universe become so important? The point of this post is to find an answer to that.

When I started thinking about this question, one recurring answer came to mind, my family. This place does have something that no other places in this world has, my family. It is the family that roots me to this place. My brother says "You never give up on your family." Indeed! What I have learnt is that when everything else ends, it is the family that stays. Family never leaves, never judges, never hate. It became the only static in my life.

I believe everything is built on a foundation. A tree will not survive the storm if it did not have strong, firm roots to hold it still. A building will not survive gravity unless it has those iron rods to give it foundation. A relationship will not mature if it did not have the foundation of love, mutual respect and trust. An artist can never dream and create if he does not have the foundation of his imagination. Foundation.

Family gives foundation. The courage to fight the world, to stand up for yourself, to chase your dreams, to learn to feel, to learn to love, to learn to trust, to learn to laugh, to learn to share pain. The basis for your existence becomes the family, the air to give flight to the wild creature buried deep inside your heart. It becomes the roots for one's tree of life to expand and branch out.

It is the family that makes a building made of bricks, a Home.

In the end, it's me and me alone that matters!

Photo Credit: http://imgur.com/u37f4pC

I am not proud of some of the things I have done in my life. I am a selfish person. I only do what I want to do, I only believe what I want to believe, irrespective of it being wrong or right. I have lost people throughout. Sometimes I have cared, sometimes I did not give a fuck. Why I am writing this post?

Because in spite of being a horrible friend, a horrible sister, a horrible person, I have two people, my brother and my best friend, standing beside me always, through everything good or bad. And that is enough!

It bothered me before, when I thought about how many friends I had in school, how many times a week I used to go out clubbing, shopping or to the malls. It bothered me how from being with so many people I ended up being with just one friend from school, how I ended up being, spending all my time alone, inside the four walls of my room. This room, where I am sitting and writing this post, just a month back made me claustrophobic, suffocated me. Not anymore!

Somewhere between then and now, I realised something. I realised how important it is to take out time for me, to be with just me, to read my favourite book, to watch my favourite movie, to spend an hour working out in the gym in spite of being a lazy ass, to take a stroll on my terrace under a blanket full of stars with the night surrounding me, to spend time sitting on my window sill, smoking a cigarette and talking to me. It's amazing. It's the most beautiful feeling I have felt in a long time. Just me and the world. How this happened? How I felt the extraordinary out of the ordinary?

Well! It happened when I opened myself to the world. It happened when I severed ties with everything that I did not need, the people who does not matter, the world that judges, the ego that grows, the self pity that feeds.

We, humans have this tendency to cover our emptiness with people, we tend to cling to companionships, intimacies, thinking that the key to our happiness lies with the people we are with. It's true to some extent. It's okay to be with people and feel happy, and complete. But that happiness, that sense of completeness does not last forever. That happiness never grows. As there is no growth in emptiness. It's hollow. The state of feeling whole and complete comes from within. Peace is an inner journey, a mission to discover one as an individual in this vast universe.

In the end, it's me and me alone that matters!

"I am not okay!"

I am not okay!

Even after all these years, even after shifting places I am chased by my insecurities and pain.

What I could never understand is how my life became like this, so disarray and jumbled. I was a good student in school, with dreams, big dreams that made me who I was. I was a dreamer, a person who in spite of falling down a thousand times, stood up and fixed it. Now... I just give up. I try, I actually try to stand up. But I guess I am just tired. I am tired of getting up each morning and not being the person I used to be, I am tired of being a coward and not pursue my own happiness, I am tired of dreaming things and not chasing after them, above all I am tired of fighting to make something out of each day.

I read this quote somewhere

 "I have this strange feeling that I'm not myself anymore. It's hard to put into words, but I guess it's like I was fast asleep, and someone came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back together again. That sort of feeling."

This quote feels like it was written for me. It hits right at home. Because no matter how much I try I cannot, any more be me. That girl, who was so optimistic, so full of life, so inspirational is lost.

The world took her.

I am plagued by how people time and again used me, how people ruthlessly left me, how I always have been a pain in the ass for my parents, how I have always let them down, how I keep letting myself .
My insides are like a burning furnace, with everything engulfing me.

I have no peace left in me. Anymore.

Dreams

"I believe in my dreams, in their beauty, in their clarity." said him, one of my good friends from college.

We were engaged in a thorough conversations regarding dreams that I was having for the past few weeks, dreams which were futile, awkward and hopeless. I remember at some point in my dreams I was rebuking myself for having them. I was guilty as hell. I really needed to tell someone and so I did. To him.

(The thing is I know the futility of the dreams, I know dreams are comfort drinks in times of trouble, I know they are rays of hope in bleak dark days, but in the end, they are just dreams. Something that originates in the subconscious and ends there. PERIOD.)

Hence when he said what he said, I laughed it off. He further persisted saying

"I know understanding my theory regarding dreams is impossible to you, somehow, they are impossible to me too. But in 50, 60 years when I am dead, you know where I will live? I will live in my dreams. I don't know if there is heaven or hell, but I know there are dreams and in dreams I will dwell."

I was taken aback. There was something, some kind of uncanny beauty, in his words which made me think. I got of the phone and thought, so many thoughts were going through my head. What really pulled me into was the thought of living in your dreams after death. I have often thought about death, I remember there was a time when I had time long discussions with my Bengali teacher regarding death. My idea about death has changed from time to time, sometimes death was a timeless peaceful sleep, sometimes death was the continuation of life somewhere else, sometimes death was freedom. But I never associated death  with dreams. His words knocked me somewhere, to the point that I took out my ipad and sat down to write this post.

What do you think?

Is death a peaceful sleep in your land of dreams?