The Motivation.

Its been on my mind for some time now. The thoughts I’m just about to puke out. Puke out, because my memory’s growing weaker by the day and I keep forgetting things.. tiny things, those day to day things and for somebody like me, who broods about certain things subconsciously, almost 23 X 7 (23, because there’s this one peaceful hour of REM- Rapid Eye Movement- sleep that everyone manages to get in a day, everyone including brooding thinkers like myself, regardless of how much they’ve got to worry about and what REM sleep is, I’m not going to explain here because that’ll make me forget all the other important things that I’m here to write) it becomes very tough to remember all that I need to write about.. thanks to digressing thought lines like the above. Digressions, I tell you. >.<

Anyway.

So.

I’ve been complimented about my ‘flair for writing’ for a long time now. Apparently I write in a way that gets the reader to really feel my emotions and connect with my writing. And apparently I also have a fairly decent grasp over the language accompanied with a fairly good imagination. That combination, according to my English teachers and according to other people, helps me to express myself well in words. I don’t quite agree with them.
I think more than the good imagination and the ‘grasp over the language’ parts, it was my need to express myself that drove me to write. It was my need for a friend who’d listen and just LISTEN without replying with a piece of advice, that encouraged me to write. I had secrets that I needed to share (I’m a girl after all! No, I cant keep my secrets to myself and no, you cant blame me for that) and I had someone I needed to talk about- incessantly -after I’d seen the someone at school. For the sake of convenience, let’s just call the someone ‘X’. I was in the 7th grade then. I needed to talk about it, but was perhaps too shy to talk about it openly. I shared the little secret with my friends but didn’t want to tell them everything. And so, I took resort to writing. And my little writing adventures (I’d like to refer to them as adventures because my writings were invariably and involuntarily a beautiful mix of reality and my imagination and in hindsight, the mix seems like an adventure) became a daily routine and before I knew it, the ritual that had started on such informal a note, started affecting my writings in general. I developed a ‘flair’ for writing. It became a skill. For any given topic I could make a mix of my imagination and the given topic and churn out some material that was ‘funny’ (in its utter honesty) and ‘delightful’ and ‘refreshing’ to read.

For the world, this was a skill. For me, besides being a way to put down in words my numerous thoughts in an attempt to give them some coherence, it was primarily a way of expressing my emotions- emotions that needed to be expressed. Emotions that I couldn’t spell out loud for a variety of reasons. Emotions that I’d felt thanks to Mr.X and which I had no clue would continue to ‘inspire’ me to write for so long. Whether it is my imagination or there really is something about X that has been ‘inspiring’ me to write about him till date, I have no clue. A chat with a friend of mine made me realize today that it’s going to be 8 years. 8 years since I found my motivation to write and my motivation continues to motivate me!

I don’t think I am much of a writer because the only time I do write, is when my emotions have over-powered me, i.e, when my cup of emotions is about to overflow/ has started overflowing.. when the bottle in which my feelings have been forced in, is about to burst. My writing has always been a medium of emptying the cup/ bottle. These emotions may be that of happiness, sadness, anger, resignation, indifference. Funny thing is, that more than 80 percent of my writings have had X as their motivation which in turn implies something that I don’t really like the sound of.

I’ve been going on and on without making my point. I often tend to do that. Anyway, my point here is very simple. I’m not a writer.. and if I am, I can claim no credits for that. And that just makes me sad. Terribly sad.

Another thought- I don’t know what the case with other people who write is. I don’t know why they write.. what their motivations are. One thing, though, I know for sure and that one thing is that there always is some reality in every fiction and as such, it sounds almost demeaning to me when a piece of art, any piece of art (not just a piece of writing), is complimented. I have often written only when I was in deep pain. This inexplicable kind of pain. This special category of pain that can’t even begin to be measured.. such pain often resulted in big, heavy words to be used in the piece and when such heavy words were used people often complimented the piece and to those compliments, I didn’t know how to respond. They created for me an extremely weird position. It felt like I was some child crying for some precious toy that had been broken and to my utter disgust, some stupid girl found it appropriate to go ‘awww’ right then because she probably found my ‘way’ of crying too ‘cute’. In such situations, I often didn’t know how the hell to respond! It seemed and seems almost demeaning to me compliment a piece of art which seems to display even the slightest hint of tragedy. Tragic comedies, are an exception to this. 😛 Weird thought to have, I know.

My friend, who I was chatting with had a problem with his love life. The usual, typical problem.. that of unrequited love. The girl he liked, liked someone else. I suggested that he should move on, find some new chick,  fool around, take it light and have fun. Why cry over someone who wont do the same for you, blah blah. He seemed to have other thoughts. He said he didn’t mind seeing her walk off with this other guy. He said he was happy, so long as she was happy. He said these big things about love not being love at all if it didn’t revel in the happiness of the one you were in love with- even if their happiness resulted in sheer sadness for yourself. I was almost influenced by the big talks. Indeed what a magnanimous heart he had. I, being a patient of unrequited love, like him, decided to adopt this attitude and actually went to the extent of complimenting X’s other. Today, I realized this couldn’t work for me. My friend asked me if I could see him settled with some other girl, after all this time of clinging on to him, and still be happy for him. My answer wasn’t something I had expected out of myself. I thought I’d be cool with it. But when I really thought about it.. like in the real sense of ‘settled down’.. I couldn’t deal with it. The thought had till date seemed so unlikely and far fetched to me that it hadn’t ever even crossed my conscious mind. Subconsciously, I’m sure I must’ve known. Suddenly, the idea of the big, magnanimous, open heart didn’t seem so nice. Suddenly, I had two tiny, angry teardrops find their way down my cheeks (I say angry, because they were acidic- the angry acidic teardrops left two meandering curved lines on both my cheeks. And no, that wasn’t the eye make-up) Suddenly, I wasn’t even ready to conform. Suddenly, I wanted him ALL to myself. I couldn’t share him. Not with anyone. Ever. I was ready to pull out the dagger any minute. And come to think of it, this was an unrequited love I was thinking about so the question of not sharing would never even arise. How can you share something that’s not even yours? How can you not share something that’s bound to be someone else’s? That’s what I call a tragic-comedy.

My friend wanted to know how much longer I was going to cling on to this hopeless situation. I haven’t figured out yet. Perhaps, for 8 more years. Perhaps, for 8 more days. Perhaps, for 8 more months. Perhaps.. forever. Perhaps, no more. I don’t know because I haven’t seen all of life. Most probably though, it’s only as long as I don’t find another motivation. The day I do, I will reach the end of this helpless situation because I realized that my obsession with X perhaps has not just something but a lot to do with my little writing adventures that I was able to embark on, thanks to him. Again, I’m not sure about this because just like one can’t tell what came first, the hen or the egg, I can’t say what came first.. my feelings/love/ imagination about/ for him, or my love for my writing adventures.. I don’t know if I write because there’s something I have for him.. or if he was just another motivation.

The extent to which I can try to dig into things surprises me sometimes.

I found a quote which to a large extent gives precise words to my feelings-

“Verse is not written, it is bled; 

Out of  the poet’s abstract head.

Words drip the poem on the page;

Out of his grief, delight and rage.”

-Paul Engle

Beautiful, isn’t it?

Night.