An 8 x 10 inch canvas of an abstract piece.

https://www.instagram.com/marina.sin.barco Sitting down with their faces towards a window, or a wall, or the ceiling, or the floor - none of the matter because no attention is being paid to what goes in through their eyes - they are thinking about a promise that seems to have been broken. The nature of this promise is a bit difficult to describe, it having a somewhat omnipresent nature – this promise might have never been spoken at all, or it might have been present in every single utterance of the world surrounding them. Have the apricot blossoms ever muttered “I promise I will come back next spring.”? The fact that they always have feels stronger than the words they fail to pronounce. But who are they, anyway? Well, I do not know their names, but it is none of the matter. I suppose they are individuals, but in a group of people every single one person could be one of them without any of them knowing. Or they might even know, it could even be a bond they share. It is still, none of the matter, the point is that they are people. I also do not know how many there are, or where they live. They, as much as two or as little as a couple of billions, from wherever they find themselves to be, stare into the distance and think about this promise. What is the promise, anyway? Well, because of its nature of being all-encompassing or being completely unreal, the details of this promise are hard to explain. But maybe its essence is easier to grasp. Imagine a fountain. What this fountain you imagine looks like is unimportant, so take any freedoms you will with its image. The only thing you must bear in mind is that this fountain gives abundant water, constantly. It always has, and it always will. The water this fountain gives is also supposed to be more enjoyable with the passing of time – that is, as one grows older one is more likely to experience the water as being more refreshing, even purer of taste. It is not fully clear whether it is the fact that being older and wiser simply makes the water feel better, or if the water is actually, physically, different. Regardless, this fountain is wonderous not only because of the abundance of water, but because as they grow, they are able to enjoy it even more. That is the essence of the promise – the fountain will not cease to offer water, and this water in turn will become richer, more flavourful, more refreshing. Of course, you can think this is an impossibly out-of-reach promise, and of course you could also think that on the contrary this is a very understandable promise to believe in. What you think about the feasibility of this promise or how worthwhile it could even be, might say something about your own relationship with the promise – which you probably have heard if you’ve been anywhere, and also nowhere – but it is not really important to them. Not to undermine your thoughts, but the troubles that go through their head cannot easily be appeased, and other what others think about the promise usually ends up by adding to the discomfort. Because a promise that is believed in before a person is able to distinguish reality from fantasy has time to grow its roots inside the mind and the heart, regardless of what unknown others might have to say about it later on. The person they have grown to be, then, is unlikely to have any sort of future that is not impacted by the outcome of that promise. It could be kept, every single word becoming true and then the ever sweeter, the childhood dream has become true. Or it could be broken, and then the roots that are wrapped tightly around every corner of the soul could be ripped out, tearing the surfaces they had clutched to. When the promise is not kept, what is left broken is the person that held it as its northern star, the purpose to guide them. But now, they are left staring at the window or the wall or the ceiling or the floor. The promise, the fountain from which so much water had once flowed, so abundant and so giving, seemed to only have a few drops left within it, trickling down in ever longer intervals. What had made the promise so wonderful, the nature that would make it possible for them to continuously receive what the fountain would give them, seemed to have been false all along. They were unsure whether this was happening already, materially a part of reality, or if it was bound to happen and the anticipation made them only see that. Some, with more or less effort than others, by squinting a bit or shifting the angle of their head – sometimes turning it all the way back –, could lie to themselves that, not only was it not happening currently but that it was also not necessarily the only thing the future held for them. Everything was as they wanted, unthreatened, for them as they had seen it be for others. This lying is helped by the fact that it is not hard to believe that something that had always seemed so possible – palpable – and at the same time so wonderous could also continue to just be so. After all, if it had lasted for so long that so many could only understand as far back as it reached, any further being in what seemed a brutish language, hard to understand but also repelling. However, not everyone can convince themselves of a lie like that, and so they – some, all – can only see how it is, will, only trickling a few miserable drops, each of them a reminder of a broken promise, a betrayal of trust. This is heart breaking, and it can also be an already broken heart. It is heart breaking that the glimmer the promise had formed around them had partially or entirely fallen apart, revealing that what they heard was only an echo – something that had been said to other people, and what reached them was only the ricochet. The words of the promise had never been meant for them, its essence enjoyed by others very close by, but still others. Some might believe that they were promised something, and it was not an echo at all but something that had really been said for their ears. They could be totally sure, remembering the dear face that had looked them in the eyes, held them by the shoulders, and spoken the words. Cruel of the others that said this, knowing it was unreal. And if they did not know? Cruel of someone else. Cruel of those living in it, spending it away in front of their eyes, telling them to live as if they would enjoy the same fountain the others had, while changing it into an empty statue. How is it a broken heart though? Well, they could have also had moments in their life that revealed to them, piece by piece, that the promise is false. This made them deeply sad, and this sadness pulled, pulls them away from believing that anything like the promise is possible, either. Because it is not only outside of them, what they were told would be theirs, it is also inside of them. That they would grow and be more capable of something like joy – that the water would taste better could be because of them as well – and growing capable to enjoy things has the same tune as becoming wise, which is like growing old. But joy seemed to leap over them, close enough to blow through their hairs, but not enough to lift them up, and so has the idea of becoming wise, of becoming old, running towards them not to embrace them but to also leap over them. You will understand this feeling can only make a person feel hopeless, because hope is essentially based in that something good will happen in the future, but future for them had been cut short so the space for hope has narrowed down. So now that they see how the promise surrounding them was not entirely true, and its broken glimmer revealed a short corridor only, there is also no strength to pursue it regardless, to try to reach for something similar, to even try to make it possible because the things that they were told would make them happy and proud and wise now look pointless, to be pursued by inertia only because there is also no strength to stop. The promise of who they were to be also feels false and now they are left dry, barren soul and barren land. And they stare, wondering how to move because everywhere they are weighted down by the echo of the promise, a lie, that keeps ricocheting around their world and drowning out their plights.

https://www.facebook.com/asher.adeel.180

https://ximingluo.square.site/

My poem is about fierceness of expression and one's freedom to be whatever they want to be. I'm a proud feminist and intend to be the alpha in my life. And so, in simple words, I try to preach the message of power. Now that God has made me a woman and a poet together; I'm the sinner and I'm the repenter I'm the guilty and I'm the redemptor I'm the creator and I'm the creation I'm the theorist and I'm the notation I'm the lyrics and I'm the lyricist I'm the play and I'm the protagonist and henceforth; I'm the art and I'm the artist.

https://instagram.com/pratishtawithout.h?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y%3D You exist in my memories in fragments. Like the song your mother would sing, never entirely. You never knew the name, just the disjointed lyrics that, somehow, just made sense. And, sometimes you would hear the same tune from a stranger's lips and wonder if your mother knew them and if they knew what the song is called. But you forget about it, like you forget the joke you couldn't stop laughing at. It's not present in your consciousness unless someone asks you about it. But then one morning you wake up humming the same tune. The disjointed lyrics tumbling from your mouth, as if they were written by you, just like that. Not meant to be complete. But making sense the way they are. Do you also wonder if the lyrics missing from your memory are present in someone else's? But then isn't everyone missing their lyrics? Like John Green said- "To be alive is to be missing." And this is what we are missing, the little pieces we left in someone we forgot to collect. The fragments of our being became a part of theirs. Maybe we are all made up of fragments from people we don't remember. We hold the lyrics they are missing. And they are holding ours. We are never really complete, but still a whole. Maybe, we are built to be complete in our incompleteness? Or maybe it's all about finding someone who completes all your lyrics and you complete theirs and holding on to them as long as you can.

Taken from Kerala.

The piece represents the pure love, life lessons, and inspiration we gain from the beloved Radha and Krishna. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cekyei8D0iC/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y%3D

"And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost." — The Book of Mormon, Moroni, 10:4 You must search for the truth in a world where there is only one acceptable outcome. If your answer is “it's all a lie,” doubt your doubts and try again. Pray until you're sobbing and can’t breathe. Pray until your weariness paints angels before you. Pray until you can’t anymore and invent miracles to avoid the gazes of the others. Pray until you believe. When you can’t? Grieve. Denial Light floods through the window in angled rays that mingle with the dust and cast giant rectangles of glowing orange across naked walls decorated only by faint smudges of dirt and the occasional accent of chipped paint, picked at by decades of anxious students. The light catches the rough edges where the paint ends and the drywall begins, intensifying the shadow where the light doesn’t quite reach. It looks completely black to me, like a void beckoning me to reach inward and touch it, even though I know my fingers will not pass through, even though I know it’s just drywall and it’s all an illusion. It’s a Wednesday, which means I am halfway through Especially For Youth, the week-long church camp my parents dropped $600 on for me to attend. It’s the type of camp that the other kids returned from with a certain glow that told you they just wouldn’t shut up about their Magical Testimony Building Experience. The type of camp that the kids from poor Mormon families dream about. I’ve even heard stories of girls meeting their future eternal husbands there. I sit in the center of the room with my legs crossed and watch the specks of dust dance with my every breath. They sparkle and drift in a way that suggests they are alive. I lean into this mirage. “Dear Heavenly Father,” I whisper, “I need to know if you are real.” I continue to sit, in silence, on the floor, waiting for any semblance of a sign. The sunlight catches the light hairs on my arms. My eyes widen, pupils dilating so that I can catch the slightest message God might have for me. The light bores into my brain. I feel naked. I squint. Refocus. I focus on warmth, that feeling of sun soaked deep into the bones, and I feel safe. This is it, Ruby, I think, this is the moment you’ll believe. My heart lurches like a child’s heart caught in a lie and a voice deep in my brain — my voice — chides me. I feel shame. I am ashamed to invent some miraculous story in my mind. It’s a vulgar lie amplifying the church’s facade of posters with smiling families from all over the world. Their grins contort every inch of their faces. Sometimes I see a smudge of mascara under the mother’s eye or a poorly matched foundation shade leaving an orange smear across the daughter’s neck that exposes the hours of preparation it took to fake happiness, but everyone else is convinced. I am a freak destined to not believe the story, condemned to find the sorrow in the perfect, happy people. My eyes well up with tears and my nose tingles in that pinching way that makes you rub at it ferociously with the back of your hand so as to distract from the coming despair. I hunger for belief. How happy I would be if I could cry along with the girls bearing their testimonies and get butterflies when scrawny, pale, repressed, homeschool boys vied for my attention. If only I was one of them. I turn my attention back to the window, I mean, back to God. I need to know if you’re there. The sun had begun to set at this point and the once vibrant orange dimmed and became cool. I looked at the open Book of Mormon on my bed. The pages were slightly bent and well worn. “Dear Heavenly Father,” I whispered, “You need to tell me now because I can’t do this shit anymore.” It’s funny. I’ve told this story hundreds of times, describing the light and the warm glow, but I’ve never told the truth. The day after, I was crying at Testimony Meeting, describing my story through shaky, manufactured breaths. “I felt like God reached out to me personally,” I cried at an audience of people who were so proud of me. My best friend at the camp pulled me close and we embraced for a long time. She told me I had finally got the answer I needed. The camp counselor met with me personally the next day and asked if she could hug me. “I am so proud of you,” she said. I repeated the story so many times and received tears and genuine smiles conveying sheer joy that I had finally had my moment. Sometimes I even believed it. But that night ended differently and my soul knew it was a lie. The sun set and the room went dark. My heart felt cold yet entirely numb. My limbs were tense. I whispered “fuck you” and fell asleep. Maybe God heard that. Anger Every Sunday, we sat for three hours in the second row, the sea of wooden pews at our backs. We faced the pulpit and the organ and a large circular window whose panes looked like orange slices cut across the fruit’s equator. The glass was slightly tinged with blues and greens and the trees behind it let in speckled flecks of sunlight which faded before reaching the people below. It was meant to let in the morning sun, but the trees were overgrown and ivy clung to the window. They stole the light before it reached any of us. Springfield, Massachusetts’ days of beautiful sunrises overlooking the Connecticut River were long gone. Instead, the dreadful sun tore into the once forested hills, now encased in decaying mansions and villainized immigrant populations. It was a gray city, full of trapped people struggling to make ends meet. We weren’t from there, though. I lived in Longmeadow, up the hill, a mile or two away. That perfectly manicured bubble of Range Rovers and BMW’s, soccer moms and absent fathers. Aside from a small strip mall with a Gap and Talbots, our only claim to fame was the most millionaires in Western Massachusetts. People from Longmeadow didn’t go to Springfield. We heard stories about bodies washing up in the river, pulled downstream until they crashed near the Longmeadow Yacht Club. If you really had to go to Springfield, you locked your car doors and never went alone. Every Sunday, my mom woke us up early and dragged us into the battered Saturn whose bumper hung precariously as if attached by a thread. Every Sunday, I dug my heels in the ground and gave my mom hell. While the rest of Longmeadow slept, I furiously ripped Sunday clothing out of my closet, searching for the most intimidating thing I could find. Then I would emerge with a scowl, a fifth grader clad in spiky hand-me-down ankle boots and an oversize Goodwill pleather jacket which reeked of cigarette smoke from the previous owner. I would scream “I hate church!” and my mom would haul me into the car. She’d glance at me through the rear-view mirror with tear-filled eyes. Sometimes I told her I knew she didn’t love me. Then we’d make our way to Springfield. We weren’t much different from the people there. We rented the smallest home in Longmeadow and skipped meals to afford the ever increasing rent. The kids at school giggled at our old Saturn whose interior featured exposed foam insulation on the ceiling, after years of wear had ripped the fabric off. Kids whispered that the windows in my family car had to be opened by a hand held crank. I ate peanut butter sandwiches and baby carrots, while others had Subway sandwiches, Doritos, and even Cosmic Brownies for lunch. We’d only been off the government-funded grocery program for about two years at this point, but my mom still locked the doors as we passed the “Welcome to Springfield” sign. She would park and we’d follow the stream of families dressed in button-ups and knee-length skirts. They always wore the best they had, colorful assortments of secondhand clothing carefully arranged out of respect to God. I wore black and dark green. My hair was tightly braided or completely loose. I sat in the second row and glared lasers through the Bishop and the pulpit where he stood. My face remained in a permanent scowl from the time we entered the building until we left. I didn’t talk, but when I did, my words were carefully selected to send the message “Get. Me. Out. Of. Here.” I was so small then. My anger was too big for my 4’10” frame. It boiled over and terrified me. One day, in the summer before middle school, I remember going to a Fourth of July party in the middle-of-no-where Massachusetts. It was the type of town that was so rural that people owned chickens and the thick expanses of trees trapped the humidity and seemed to breed mosquitoes that swarmed in inescapable clouds. In Longmeadow, it was illegal to own chickens and the town sprayed enough pesticides to wipe out even the strongest mosquitos and the most resistant ticks. It took us 45 minutes to drive there. I passed the time watching liquor stores and ice cream shops fly by the window. They became increasingly scarce until all that passed were trees, rocky cliffs, and the occasional hitchhiker. When the tires of the Saturn finally pulled into the dirt driveway, I peeled my sweaty legs off the seat of the car and trailed after my mom with my arms crossed as she made her way to the backyard where church families gathered around a big plastic folding table filled with casseroles and dishes with too much mayonnaise. I tried not to notice we were the only family whose dad wasn’t there. My job was to leave the moms alone and to try to play with the other kids on a rusty trampoline next to the chicken coop. It was the type of trampoline that pinched your fingers on the springs when you tried to get on and left you with nasty blood blisters for weeks to come. I followed the kids around for a while. I don’t remember why they didn’t play with me. Eventually I went inside and sat on my mom’s lap. “Pleaseeee can we gooo homee.” She’d brush my request away patiently. The other moms eyed me as if I had somehow done something evil. I wondered what my mom had told them about me. I wondered if they knew I was an 11-year-old that didn’t believe. I wonder if they blamed my dad for my behavior. He had left the church when I was much younger. No one understood what had gone wrong with dad. Maybe somehow I inherited the apostate gene. On the car ride home, I told my mom the kids at the party didn’t play with me. “I know,” she said. “Their moms said they think you are intimidating.” I wilted inside. I kept my face stormy and my lips pursed. Sometimes, I think even my mom was afraid of me. For a small fifth grader, I sure could slam a door. I was just old enough to know what words would yield the maximum pain. “I hate you, Mom!” Bargaining Silence followed the echoes of slammed doors and accusations. With their noise, my anger dulled. Long ago, my mom told me I would have to go to church until I turned 18. I put everything I had into this deal. I counted the years down. Seven years seem like an eternity when you are eleven. When I think back on the beginning of middle school, I remember my mom crying. I knew she still clung to the hope that one day I’d believe. I knew I could never be the daughter she wanted. I couldn’t bear to see my mom cry because of me anymore. My mom is a sweet lady. She’s the type of woman who bakes cookies for the neighbors and birthday cakes for her friends. She brought me along with her for a weekly trivia night at our local geriatric care center. She knows everyone in town and people light up when they see her. She even sends handwritten cards when she notices an elderly Healthtrax regular skip a few days. She wears her heart on her sleeve and proudly tells all her non-Mormon friends about her beliefs. In Mormonism, you are taught that the only way to be truly happy is through the life that the church proscribes. As a baby, my mom made me little laminated picture books of photos of kids getting baptized, of missionaries with their converts, of straight newly weds walking out of the temple. There were even photos of moms and their babies and big happy white families. I never had to ask my mom what she expected of me. It was all laid out from the beginning. In her eyes, she was teaching me the key to be happy. She did everything perfectly. So when her heathen daughter couldn’t believe, they knew my mom was innocent. She was too good. I was just evil. I was so bad at keeping the promise I made myself to make sure she wouldn’t cry. One day, before church I was picking an outfit. I had toned down the leather and studded boots at this point for a more professional look. I still wanted to be intimidating. It was a facade that kept the people at church away from me. But, at the same time, I wanted a look that said “I am confident. I am a strong woman. I’m nothing like the women here.” I now understand that it was my own internalized misogyny in me that made me view the women in the church as weak and encouraged me to resist any hint of femininity. This particular day, I pulled a pair of black business slacks from the closet. They were a hand-me-down from my mom’s best friend. They were a little big, but their masculine fit made me feel powerful. I paired it with a pair of grey flight attendant style stilettos and a tan ¾ length sleeve cardigan. I thought I looked strong. When I clomped down the stairs, stumbling like a newborn deer, my mom looked me up and down and got really quiet. She stood in the kitchen for a while, then came back out. Her eyes were puffy and her chin crinkled and seemed to wobble. I don’t remember what exactly broke the dam holding back her tears, but all of the sudden she was sobbing. I felt guilty. I felt furious. I knew it was the pants that were the issue, but I could not believe she'd be so shallow. I remember shouting “Do you think God cares if I wear pants!?” She made her way to my door later that day after I had changed into a skirt and sat through three hours of church and half an hour of silence in the passenger seat of the Saturn. She knocked and entered before I could say anything. She sat at the foot of my bed and apologized. “It’s just some women wear pants to show their anger at the Church,” she said. “I don’t want people to think that’s the type of message you’re sending.” I made some snide comments in my head about her being scared women wanted equality. I tightened control of internal angst and told her it was okay, I understood. I made myself a deal. I would go to church. I wouldn’t complain. Then, the day would come when I would turn 18 and I would never walk in those doors again. I knew that would hurt my mom even more, seven years of false hope shattered in seconds, but I hoped that I could walk away from everything then. She’d cry, but I wouldn’t have to be there to see it. In a way, I felt evil for this. I just couldn’t handle the weight of her disappointment. Depression There’s something numbing about living a lie. The line between real and fake blurs until you don’t know what side you're on. On the inside I was supposed to be fiery and resistant, critical of every teaching. On the outside I would be compliant, the perfect daughter and future mother, never uttering a word for the girl trapped inside. That silence was pervasive. It strangled the angsty inner voice and turned me into an empty shell with a friendly facade. But with no source of power to maintain the feigned satisfaction, my mask began to fade until all that was left was a blank stare, that distant gaze that saw nothing, yet everything at the same time and viewed the world like a spirit, floating above. Sometimes, the feeling of emptiness was magical. It shut off the incoming sensory details and created the type of silence only felt during heavy snow storms or moments submerged alone in a swimming pool. It isolated yet insulated. It made going to church bearable. At Church, I conducted the music. It started as a favor for my mom, but soon became a weekly occurrence. Conductors are supposed to smile, singing along with the congregation in a sacred embodiment of the music. I never could. My hand would autonomously drift through the air and I would zone out, staring vaguely at the clock as the seconds dragged by. I never managed a smile. Sometimes I would watch the people. Sometimes I’d see someone cry and wonder if they felt the spirit or simply lacked a place to express themselves. Sometimes siblings would fight with themselves among the pews and their parents would rip them apart furiously. Sometimes a baby would cry and the mother would sprint out, her face red with embarrassment. People were zoned out or sound asleep. The best was when old men would snore. One time I saw the Bishop pick his nose and wipe it on the cuff of his sleeve. I floated above them all, sometimes observing them, sometimes floating through the high ceiling until I was amongst the clouds, watching the cars move like insects over the green hills and bald patches of concrete and day jobs. Sometimes birds would fly next to me. I’d reach out to touch them, but they would float through my fingers and I’d realize I had left my body in the pew far below me. That never seemed to bother me. It only got bad when I realized I couldn’t come back. The empty shell I left behind would stay forever like that. She was able to move and go about her middle school life, but she’d sit in math class and watch the numbers pass as if they were a completely foreign system. She’d drag herself out of bed and marvel at how heavy an empty shell can be. Acceptance The last day I went to church, I was 16 years old. We were in Utah on vacation. I was with a group of strangers, all the other teenage girls grouped by our age and genitalia. We stood outside the church building. I leaned against the brick wall and watched the scene unfold. Each girl was given a laminated sheet of paper and told to place it on the ground. The labels had words like “Birth”, “Baptism”, “Temple Marriage”, and “Kids” on them. We were instructed to lay them on the ground and follow the path they made. My heart seemed to crawl into my throat and I felt an unmistakable urge to run as fast as I could and never look back on that scene. My palms were cold and clammy and my pulse raced. I quickly ran to the bathroom and sat in the Mother’s Lounge. It was a quiet room, isolated from the rest of the building, adorned only by a single rocking armchair which enveloped whoever sat in it. I wasn’t supposed to be here because I wasn’t breastfeeding, let alone a Mother, but I sank into the chair. I felt something new that day, a kind of confidence that assured me I would never be there again. I would never be the mother in that chair or the churchgoer condemned to believe the ultimate multi-level marketing scheme. I would never marry some Mormon boy and pump out children to give myself an identity. It would never be for me. I would die if I had to pretend this any longer. So, I refused to go. I remember my mom crying but, honestly, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. She saw it coming. I tried to go quietly so as not to disturb the others, but eventually they noticed I had slipped away. Some requested meetings with me. Some brought gifts, asked why I had gone astray. One girl told me I was her “project”. I received a string of emails from the Bishop. He said he wanted to meet with me. I insisted time and time again that I was not interested. I had heard the stories from my dad after he left. They interviewed him too. They asked who had offended him enough to make him leave. They assumed he left because he wanted to sin. They twisted his trauma within the church to fit their narrative that somehow he had messed up. They refused to believe that someone could simply come to the conclusion that it was all a lie. Ruby, Thanks for your response - I appreciate it. I want to respect your wishes. So I promise I will not nag you or make you a "project". If you are really done with the church, I would respectfully request the opportunity to have an exit interview with you. I would like to understand what your experience has been. If I can understand it, then we can try to make the church experience for others better. Ruby, I know you to be a good person and I don't think your decisions about the church change that in any way. I didn't think you were trying to be rude or disrespectful. But after the number of years that you have been involved with the ward, it would only be courtesy to part ways on a good foot as friends rather than dropping it cold. I hope that makes some sense. I do get your perspective of not being able to have a no pressure conversation with the bishop. I hope you can believe me and trust me with my intent. And so I ask you to please reconsider. One meeting. With a parent if you wish -- either parent, or both. I genuinely just wish to listen to you. Sincerely, Bishop Hall His words were kind, but I saw a different intent behind them. He wanted to manipulate the details of my experience to fit the narrative that I had somehow fucked up. I wouldn’t let my story be twisted in this way. I needed to be the one with control over how it was told. Eventually, the emails slowed and I stopped opening the letters I got in the mail. I thought that would be the end of it, but I knew my name was still on the church records, meaning that I would be forever contacted by the members of the Church. I wanted my name gone from their records forever. I sent in this letter to the Church headquarters in Salt Lake City. A month later, I got a typed email from the Church headquarters. They had removed my name. It was all over. —- My whole life, I had waited for the moment when I was done with Mormonism. It had been a magical day I looked forward to, a day that would solve all my problems. I was so naive. —-- The grieving process promises a moment of acceptance, where the conflict somehow fades leaving peace and a distant memory of the pain. Yet, how I was raised will always stay with me. I guess, in a way, that counts as acceptance. I’m not sure if I’m okay with it. My mom still cries because of me. But, it’s not as often now. I live on the other end of the world. She receives a curated version of my life, specifically designed to not bring her any pain. Sometimes I am angry that I can’t tell her more. Sometimes I feel numb to the distance between us. Sometimes I pretend it’s all okay The most confusing part is that I deeply love my mom. We live, trapped in a fucked up dichotomy where one can only win by hurting the other. Every time we Facetime, I toe the line between being true to myself and preserving her bubble, so as not to make her cry. I sit through her stories of church gossip and her beliefs. It hurts to bite my tongue, but it would hurt infinitely more to lose our relationship. I love her and I can’t lose her. So, I will never escape.

You hate the way your face looks, how your stomach isn't thin, and you hate imagining a life without her- but you have no choice in it. Cause there used to be this magic, in every ordinary thing, like driving late at night, and morning coffee trips. But now there's something broken, you're a liar when you smile, all you want is a hand to hold, to take the pain for a while. Sometimes when you're left alone, there's a bitter bitter dark. The quiet scares you cause the voices pick your mind apart.

The prompt had me smiling. There were possibilities. In the years that I have been alive, I have invested myself in different things – jack of a lot of trades, master of none. Learning something new, assimilating it as a part of me and leaving my imprints where I went. Getting intrigued by something, hopping on to another soon after. Some things were forgotten easy, while some, like spinning webs of words, stuck with me. Anyway, It had me wondering – what is the one thing that I could write about? Do I write about how prejudice makes its presence felt in every nook, every corner, everyday – painting social interactions a colour of venomous gray, maintaining oppressive social structures? Do I write about the spine chilling violence and all the forms that it unfolds in? The extremism? That how waking up to tragedies everyday – fresh and perennial alike – gets the delicate balance of my mind crumbling? It is easy to sit comfortably at home coddling my conscience, feeling sorry for people for whom the lived reality is far from kind and go on with my day while the world burns, quite literally, at this point. That the insatiable greed to fill the coffers of the few is escalating the doom of the only Earth we know. There may be life out there too, but still, there is only this Earth that we are sure of. And it is spinning a little too fast, perhaps waltzing to the crescendo of its song now. The end might be near and it is all too bittersweet. There is uncertainty, anxiety and then also some respite, some relief. How much more could we have gone on with indifference and hate rotting our cores? I am sorry for the digression. This was not part of the plan. But all of it is part of my human experience for sure. Let me get to my story. It might not be much but I have spent a good part of my life on it. It's my life’s work – trying to be good enough. Except that good enough was never adequate. I never learnt it. There was no way in hell that I could have been socialised into being just good enough. Good enough was not enough. Good enough was mediocre. Good enough was a sin. Good enough was for the lesser fortunate. Good enough was never an option – I was brilliant, had potential and I was made for greatness, I was told. Well, there was only for so long this burden I could hold. I fell, face first, I crumbled. Nothing could prepare one for the cognitive dissonance that comes with it. It is a lonely journey and you are on your own. For the first time, you see yourself as a person. For the first time you see yourself as yourself and not as a projection of someone else’s wishes. For the first time you are able to empathise with people who struggle, whom you have seen as ‘lazy’, ‘uninspired’, ‘just not doing enough’, ‘failures’. You are one among the struggling too. Now you know that you could have had the perfect plan and the perfect means and yet one curve ball from life and you are done for. But you are not done. Not just yet. You wake up everyday as someone with flaws, limits, baggage. You try to build yourself up again. You get dangerously close to giving it all up, everyday. And yet for some reason, you carry on. You try to make peace, it is a constant tussle. You don’t like the way you look, you don’t like the emotions you feel, you don’t like the person you are, you extend your hand just to catch empty air. You cry, you sob, you die inside a little everyday and no help seems to reach you because you are not calling out loud enough for it, because you can’t. And yet, you carry on. Step by step, piece by piece, day by day, you find yourself again. It is frustrating. On days you don’t have the energy to move, much less the energy to turn your life around. But you carry on. It is not a journey to be taken on alone. You reach out. You get help. You make home with the fact that good enough is enough. As clichéd as it goes – good enough is different on different days, different for different people. All the while the system we willingly or unwillingly submit to would tell us otherwise – good enough is good. I learned it the hard way and I would repeat it till I believe it myself too: good enough is enough. And I am getting used to it.