I wish I had a voice.

(Sometime in the last weekend of August - First weekend of September)

I wish I had a voice.

I wish this sound trapped inside me screaming just came out. Just escaped the inferiority complex within me which keeps my voice attached.

The interview email came and I accepted it and they postponed it without further scheduling the night before. I have been writing by hand, preparing for that interview that never got scheduled yet, as if shaping letters on paper could shape my future. It is a good feeling though. Ink drops pressed on my palm. But instead, I have been busy tracing the case of the political prisoner, the morning came and I waited till the afternoon and saw the news, he is not getting out.

I keep spiralling into his case, his life, his family. Going as far back as possible. Where was he born. His house. His street. His family. His grandparents. His parents. His friends. His co-prisoners. His brothers. His co-revolutionaries. What he had done. What he has been doing. Where was he born? Which hospital? What time of day? Was it raining? What was the name of the midwife who delivered him? Did his parents cry with joy, or were they already fighting? What color blanket wrapped him first? Who visited the hospital? Which car brought him home? What road did they drive on? What trees lined that road? What did his childhood room look like? What posters were on his walls? Did he chew pencils? How did he start reading? How did he learn all those languages? Did he secretly cry at night? What was the first lie he told? The first secret he kept? What did his handwriting look like in grade 2? Which teacher scolded him hardest? What lunchbox did he carry? Who sat next to him on the bus? Which street did he ride his bicycle on? Who were his neighbors? Did he ever break a window with a cricket ball? Which girl broke his heart in school? Did he walk home slowly after, or run to hide the tears? Did he scribble her name in the corner of his notebooks? What songs did he listen to on repeat? Did he write then too? Does he still have them? How did he grow into a man? What shoes did he wear for his first job interview? Who was the boss who first saw him as talented? Or lazy? What were the meals he skipped? The drinks he downed? The mistakes he buried? Who held him at his weakest? Who betrayed him? Who laughed at him? And now… his family, his house, his brothers: who came before him, what they carried, what wars they fought, what secrets sit unspoken in their graves. His grandfather’s hands, rough with labor. His grandmother’s lullabies. The unbroken chain of choices and accidents that led to him: standing, breathing, alive in my orbit. And then I look at his present: what he’s doing now, what he’s hiding, what he’s showing. His letters, his words, his periods. His sighs in empty spaces. His dreams. His ghosts. His sins. His every breadcrumb. It’s bottomless. The more I dig, the more the soil caves in. 

And it never ends with him. When the spiral exhausts itself, someone new arrives. They seep through the cracks of my skin, sit beside me in silence, judging, smirking, as if they know my every thought. I daydream them into being until they take over the room. I start curating myself for their gaze: how they would hear me, how they would know me, how they would approve of me. I birth them in my mind, and then live in the shadow of their invented judgment.

I feed my inferiority complex with such maladaptive daydreaming about people who are revolutionaries. Excavating their lives until I can physically feel myself sitting next to their 10-year-old selves. My mind latching onto them as a proxy for its own stuckness, with this meticulous, relentless mapping of his story versus the hollow, fragmented, delayed mess of my own. People who burn and burn and do not stop burning until the world feels their fire. And, right now, he is the fodder.

And here I am, inhaling their smoke second-hand, choking on words I never even manage to say. My voice buried under my ribs while theirs echoes in courtrooms and cells, in manifestos written with their blood and their hunger, their demolished houses and their desecrated tombs. Sometimes I pretend I am one of them (half-a-martyr in my fantasies) my name whispered in a protest chant, my silence mistaken for strategy instead of fear. 

But the truth is less romantic, mostly banal: I refresh the news, dig into archives, collect fragments, imagine dialogues that will never happen. And, he? He sits behind bars, every fibre of his being refusing to pay the cost of his defiance. While he studies, reads, writes, connects, helps people, perseveres. I sit behind my screen, in my half-a-room, my time paying the cost of my avoidance. We are not the same, but my mind insists on tethering me to him, like if I shadow his suffering long enough, I’ll inherit his courage, his knowledge; like if I just inhale every morsel of information about him, I'll become even half virtuous as him.

I don’t.

I only inherit the weight. The heaviness of knowing, and the shame of doing nothing with it. The ever-growing, voracious, venomous, visceral inferiority complex. And maybe that’s why my voice refuses to come out. Because it knows it is not worthy. Because it knows all it can produce are broken echoes of someone else’s fight.

But still... something inside me rattles against the walls of my chest. A sound trying to fracture its way out. A noise that could, maybe, one day, become a voice.

Or maybe not. 

Maybe I am destined to keep researching people who had the audacity to act while I only have the audacity to think. And maybe my “thinking” is nothing more than a sophisticated form of running away, dressing up my avoidance in the language of solidarity. I can convince myself that watching a trial from afar, translating a press release, reading every single footnote in an old report is in itself an act of resistance. It is not. It is me, stuck.

The interview that keeps getting postponed is a mirror of me. Postponed without further scheduling. A future that never arrives. A possibility that dies in the waiting.

And so I sit with the prisoner’s story, weaving it into my own. Pretending the chains on his hands explain the knots in my throat. Pretending my silence is solidarity, when it is just silence.

But maybe silence, too, has its record. Maybe somewhere, somehow, even this unspoken sound counts. It keeps score.

Even if it doesn’t... at least I wrote this down. At least I gave the noise inside me some place to live, if not outside, then here.

And now I am sitting here again, typing when I should be studying or working or atleast looking for a new job, typing when I should be moving forward with something, anything, but I keep convincing myself that tracing the lives of other people who fought harder than I ever will is “important.” Important for what? For who? I don’t know. It is not like my interview tomorrow will forgive me for knowing the birthdate of a man rotting in prison on the other side of the world. It is not like my interviewer will give me points for memorizing the way his ailing mother cried when he was denied parole.

I tell myself this is research, this is awareness, this is solidarity. But really, it is just procrastination wearing a martyr’s mask. I have been writing too much by hand, pretending to prepare for that interview that never got scheduled yet, pretending that neat notes equal progress, while I drown in everyone’s history but my own. And even in that, I am never alone. I keep birthing new figures, conjuring them until they sit beside me, watching, snickering, rewriting me. I curate my words, my tone, my very posture as if they were in the room, measuring me. They are never real, but they control how real I am allowed to feel. And when the mask slips, all I see is me: failing again, wasting again, running again. Why am I like this? Why do I keep filling my head with other people’s suffering instead of facing my own emptiness? Why do I let their cages feel heavier than the chains I’ve built around myself?

The truth is, I don’t know. I only know I’m tired, and guilty, and terrified of opening the exam paper tomorrow with a head full of history that has nothing to do with me.

But I will probably keep scrolling tonight. Keep searching his name. Keep letting myself drown in everything except what I am supposed to be doing.

Maybe one day I’ll call that a voice. For now, it’s just noise.

I should stop now. Before I start imagining how many people will outlive me without ever knowing I was here.

Noise that pretends to be thought. Thought that pretends to be resistance. Resistance that pretends to be survival. Survival that pretends to be life. It folds and folds until I can’t tell where one excuse ends and the next begins. And all of it feels heavier than the silence I started with.

I should stop now. I really should stop now. But the truth is I don’t want to. The truth is I would rather keep spiralling than face the blank page of my textbook, the blank page of my future, the blank page of myself. The truth is the prisoner feels more alive in my head than I do in my own body. The truth is maybe I don’t want a voice at all... maybe I only want an echo.

And maybe this is the echo.

And maybe this is all I’ll ever have.

And maybe that’s fine. And maybe it isn’t. And maybe I’ll keep saying maybe until it loses all meaning, until the word itself becomes just another kind of noise. 

Maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe. 

Even they sit here with me, the ones I birthed, staring as I unravel. My ghosts outnumber me.

Until my mouth fills with it, until my head fills with it, until there is nothing left but the sound of a word that never decides, never commits, never arrives.

And still I can’t stop. I can’t stop circling his name, his case, his prison walls, because if I stop looking at him I will have to look at myself, and I think I would rather die than do that.

And so I stay here, in the repetition, in the delay, in the comfort of knowing that tomorrow will come and I will fail again, and tomorrow will come and I will spiral again, and tomorrow will come and nothing will change, nothing will change, nothing will change.

And I don’t know if I want it to.

I should stop now. I should stop now. I should stop now.

But I won’t.

But I won’t.

But I—

Because stopping feels like admitting there is nothing beyond this. Because if I stop, the silence will be too loud, louder than the noise, louder than the scrolling, louder than the prisoner’s name, louder than the sound in my chest that refuses to come out. Because the silence will remind me that I am not him, I am not them, I am no one, I am nothing.

And so I stretch the words like a thread about to snap. I stretch them thin across the night. I stretch them until they cut into my fingers. I stretch them until they cut into me. I don’t even want answers. I only want the ache of asking. I only want the heaviness of turning questions over like stones, again and again, until my hands are raw. I only want the punishment of staying awake with my own unfinished sentences.

And maybe that’s all I’ve ever wanted: not resolution, not freedom, not even a voice, but the exquisite torture of circling the wound and calling it living.

Maybe this is living.

Maybe this is dying.

Maybe there is no difference.

And if there is... oh, please don’t tell me. Let me stay here, tangled in the noise, swollen with the ache of it, swollen until I burst into nothing at all.

nothing

at all

nothing at all nothing at all nothing...

the page stares back

the page opens its mouth

the page swallows me

I am

I was

I am not

Interview tomorrow

(cancelled)

case yesterday

future never

handwriting without a reader

questions without an answer

voice — no voice — no voice —

just

noise

noise

noise

my chest rattles my chest rattles my chest rattles—

let me out

let me out

let me out

or don’t

or don’t

or—

or don’t

or don’t

or—

o—

—

…

noth

ing

not

i

ng

breath.

breath.

breath.

stopstopstopstop

(still going)

sto—

st——

s

—

SCREAM.

silence.

SCREAM.

smaller scream.

smaller—

s—

…

hands shaking.

h a n d s

shak—

can’t hold it

can’t

can’t

CAN’T

CAN’T

c a n ’ t

…

void.

VOIDVOIDVOID

echo.

e   c   h   o

echoechoechoecho—

STOP.

no.

STOP.

NO.

no—

n—

—

Some couplets that I kept reading throughout the time I wrote this post:

"हज़ारों ख़्वाहिशें ऐसी कि हर ख़्वाहिश पे दम निकले,

बहुत निकले मेरे अरमान लेकिन फिर भी कम निकले।"

("Thousands of desires, each so intense it could take my life,

Many of them came true, yet still — far too few.")

- Mirza Ghalib

"ग़म-ए-हस्ती का 'असद' किस से हो जुज़ मर्ग इलाज,

शमा हर रंग में जलती है सहर होने तक।"

("The sorrow of existence, Asad, has no cure but death,

Yet the candle keeps burning, in every hue, until dawn.")

- Faiz Ahmed Faiz

~

I think they are still watching me. I don't know what to do. I just know how to scream "STOP" in my head. Please go away. Please.

- Oizys.

The half-room rebellion: Drafts from a coward who mothers stolen pain

I keep the lights off so the blue of the screen can fake a horizon.

How to steal pain [badly]

There’s a way I hold other people’s stories like costume jewelry: turn them in my palm until the light hits and I can pretend it’s mine. A headline, a friend’s breakup, a photo from a ruined city I’ve never walked: if I press hard enough, it leaves an indent. Then I parade the indent as a wound. It isn’t malice. Please, trust me. It’s hunger. I want to belong to the choir of hurt because the choir is singing something true and I am terrified I’m only mouthing along. So I borrow their notes. I plagiarize grief the way a bored student plagiarizes citations: frantic, reverent, and slightly proud of the footnotes. Look, I say to myself, I too can ache. But it doesn’t fit right. Other people’s pain has different seams. When I wear it, the shoulders sit wrong and the cuffs drag. I spend the day in someone else’s catastrophe and still come home anonymous. Every theft has a tell. Mine is neatness. I sand down the edges so the pain can pass safety inspection. The original is jagged, unsanitary. My replica is curated for display; tragic, yes, but photogenic, thank you for asking. I can’t stand the smell of the raw stuff. I Febreze it and call it witness.

Blank page, loud room

“Write about what you know,” they say. Fine. I know how to open a new document and then immediately check three apps to see if anyone has posted a better sentence. I know how to scroll until my brain is a roulette wheel and the ball lands on “apocalypse” twice per hour. I know how to mistake proximity for permission. The truth is I can’t write because I keep auditioning as a version of myself that deserves to be read. The part requires me to be braver, funnier, more tragic. I’m none of these on command. I am a person in a half-room: the bed cut off by a bookcase, the desk cut off by guilt, the mirror cut off by a sweater that never dries. The other half is on the internet, where my life is perpetually almost. When I do manage a sentence, I put it in a museum of almosts. I walk the halls, nodding at glass cases labeled: Almost Poem, Almost Essay, Almost Courage. The security guard is me. The thief is me. The tour guide is me, too, whispering, “Please notice the craftsmanship on this unfinished thought.”

The [cowardly] rebel who won't leave the chair

I am not apolitical. No. I learn politics and I know when I leanly lean. But, I think... I am conveniently seated. I sign the petition, I retweet the outrage, I treat indignation like aerobic exercise: heart rate up, no actual movement. I call myself a rebel and then I hide behind the screen because the street terrifies me. The street is concrete and sweat and other people’s breath. The street would ask my body to believe what my mouth declares. Call it cowardice. I do. I can sense the part of me that wants to be seen doing the right thing and the part that wants to be unseeable while doing it. I want the halo and the cloak. I want to be applauded for leaving while already home in pajamas. Sometimes I fantasize that the half-room is an underground cell and I am writing samizdat that will topple something. Then the kettle boils and the revolution requires milk and two sugars. The pamphlet is a paragraph. The tyrant is the cursor.

If you were to rummage through my braid inventory

1. One borrowed sorrow that fit too well.
2. Three drafts that pretended to be essays.
3. A window that faces a wall and still calls itself a view.
4. A chair that has memorized me.
5. A conscience that wants receipts, not metaphors.

What I [actually] know

I know the names of two neighbors I’ve never spoken to. I know the noise the hinge makes when I consider opening the door. I know that my own pain is ordinary and I keep dressing it up because ordinary pain doesn’t feel enough. I also know this: the replica and the block and the cowardice are siblings. They share a mother named Avoidance. If I wear your sorrow, I can avoid meeting mine. If I rehearse the perfect essay, I can avoid writing the flawed one. If I posture as a rebel, I can avoid failing in public. Avoidance is elegant. It wears all my vocabularies. It knows how to make paralysis look like principle.

The unglamorous experiment [the volta]

Lots of things have happened recently. Good and bad.

I got called for a written exam for a job so amazing I thought my application would vanish unread. Not only did a real human respond, they even shifted cities across the country just to make it easier for me. And yet, as usual, I delayed. Delayed studying for the exam, delayed my own work, delayed the notes I had promised to review for those women’s community program, delayed new applications, delayed my care. Delay as habit, delay as identity.

So I arrived; scared, regret knotted in my stomach, bundles of fear jumping across my digestive system. But it went well. The people were supportive. My laptop failed; they gave me theirs. They handed me sweet water. A comfortable chair. I wrote and wrote all I knew. The whole time, I half-expected my manager or co-worker to call me into some meeting. They didn’t, at least not until an hour after I reached home. It went well, and I was lying in bed with the rain puttering softly outside, wondering how the day could possibly be so kind. Then at night, my mother became sick. Sick enough she couldn’t open her eyes. Fever too high. I fed her some bread with my sister. I rubbed some disinfectant on her puss-filled index finger. I slept alone. Thinking about her. How I should have filled her water bottle. Went to check. It was there. The next day passed watching her lie on the sofa, motionless. I gave her food, water, medicine, care, love, tears borrowed from my sister’s eyes. But I kept delaying everything else. I kept imagining I would respond to the ladies, imagining I would finish my work, update my blog, exercise, upheave my life. Imagining instead of moving.

Days passed. One, two—three? The ladies emailed again? Or was that the same email as before? She did send me a phone message and now it is gone. Disappeared. I lost track. Instead of replying, I scrolled through articles about people arrested five years ago in a political crisis, immersing myself in secondhand despair. Rotting in imagination while regret kept peeling me. 

Finally, tonight, I wrote my feedback. I scheduled the email. And I wrote this blog.

The hinge squeaked the same. I came back to the half-room and the blue horizon was still faking it, but something else was less fake.

Terms of use [for my own writing]

1. If I write someone else’s pain, it must include a cost to me beyond applause. If there’s no cost, it’s theft.
2. If I can’t write, I will write the inventory first: objects, sounds, receipts. When language won’t bear meaning, it can still bear weight.
3. If I call myself a rebel, my body has to leave the chair at least once. Otherwise I’m just adjusting the Bluetooth settings on my conscience.

Coda from the half-room

Look: I will fail at this tomorrow. I will put on a borrowed grief because it looks good with the outfit. I will scroll until the cursor declares a state of emergency. I will declare myself a principled introvert when the street is loud. But tonight, the museum of almosts has one empty case. The tag reads: Removed for conservation. I’m not cured; I’m catalogued. The chair is still here, but it is an unreliable witness now. It has seen me stand.

End of exhibit. Doors open to the left. Mind the hinge.

- Oizys.