The Ink of My Heart

Presuming you to be a sculptor; an artist who makes sculptures...............

Dear Sculptor,

        Its taken me so long to pen something this personal so overtly. It’s just that I never have known what to write. I have undergone the most strange feeling. I mean I know it was a passing comment long back, but it stuck on with me and it was really frustrating to not be able to write something to do with one of the most important aspects of my life! I mean, it's not that I couldn't write about you. I would've just jotted away pages within minutes if you'd given me an ultimatum. But the truth is, I would've never been able to do justice to it that way. I wanted to get it just right. I wanted it to be more from the heart than the mind. I wanted it to capture the essence of you. Not who you really, probably are. But what you are for me, to me. Because I don't think you know that well enough.

As a toddler I wasn't much of an extrovert, the way I have grown today. Earlier I'd always keep to myself in school. Neither would I talk much to my classmates, nor to any teachers. I did my work and looked forward to going home. Back home to my parents. They were always worried about me, back then.

Mum always wanted me to be in the social circles. And it wasn't because she thought I was too shy. No. She wanted it for me. She saw how restless I was. How I hated going to preschool a little more than the rest of the children my age. And there was a day when I even cried to her about it. Nothing much changed. But I felt a lot better.

She always was a source of comfort. Parents always are.

When you feel like the world is falling apart and bursting at the seams. As if there's nothing that you can possibly do at the time, but just close your eyes and submerge yourself in something…anything!! - that keeps those ‘bad things’ away from you.

Indeed, that gets your stomach in a knot. The dreaded dull feeling that's worse than anything you've ever known.

And that's when…they're there for you, those few people in your life!!

Parents; Guardians; Sometimes just one person!!

To call whom even just a source of comfort would be an understatement.

Thank you, for being “my uncertified guardian”.

I never quite understood the concept of a cloud with a silver lining or what actually is a ray of hope. For me, when something goes wrong, it consumes me. It blurs my vision. I may have changed on the surface over the past few years.

But I'm still the same person. I still have most of my old insecurities, fears.

You know what's the most evident proof of that? When we hold hands, my hands shake. They're unstable. But when I slip them into yours, somehow they stop. It's like they've found a place where they belong. And I'm not just saying this to make this post seem a little more "touchy", but it's true. It's never felt like this before. And then I look at your hands, so sure and firm. So comfortable with what is and not worried about what will become.

I think that pretty much defines us. Not so much as individuals. But more of our places in the relationship we share. You're keeping me together. Placing every little part where it's supposed to be and making sure nothing falls out of place. That ‘I’ don't fall out of place

Like a sculptor possessive about his sculpture.

The crooked, ugly, dejected sculpture that he found abandoned, but now makes it beautiful. And he even thinks that the beauty lay within the sculpture.

The sculpture would beg to differ :)

It's “you’’. The one with ‘the magic’. It has always been you.

You've always managed to capture the beauty in everything that you see. That surrounds you. No matter how asymmetrical, unfit, and shabby it is.

So what if it’s even through a lens ;-)

You do have a beautiful heart. One that turns ‘everything’ as beautiful, once it allows a place for it, inside ‘itself’.

I'm probably one of those mildly "made beautiful" things by you. I never knew or thought I was anything worth a second look until you told me so many times that I finally looked at my reflection in the mirror for a second longer and almost believed you.

It's like I've transformed slowly since I've known you. I've learned to be more of 'me' than what somebody else wants me to be. I'd gladly be whatever you wanted me to be, but I stopped trying, the very day I realized that all you really wanted was me. Just as I was.

It was oddly unsettling at first. But I came into my own soon enough. And now I can just prop up my legs in a non-lady-like way, or eat like a person who hasn't seen food in days. Or pull my hair back and wear clothes that do anything but flatter me and still know that you'll want me the same amount. That you'll still be the happiest to say that I was yours. And yet it doesn't make me want to stop trying for you.

           It makes me want to tell you every second of every minute of every hour of every day that I love you. I love you for being so selfless when it came to me. So much so that I started this post by comparing you to the most selfless relationship there is in the world; to my mother.

We never really grow out of being nine year old. Throughout our lives, somewhere or the other, we're always haunted by the fear of being unwanted; of being lonely; of things not going our way. It's only the scales that change. The emotions remain. But I know I can move on and face all of it now because you give me the strength to.

You make your presence felt. It's like I can shut my eyes and be assured that everything is right because even if it's really not, you're there.

When you tell me something's going to be right. It really is.

I'm so accustomed to knowing you'll be there that it's scary now. What will happen to me? What on earth will happen to me? Do you have an answer?

Funnily that's something you haven't taught me to deal with yet.

You know that patch of shimmering water and the skyline that we see most of the time we meet? The place where there lies the dome, the longest bridge, the beautiful waves, the cool breeze, the shimmering sun, the tall blades of grass, the occupied benches, the laughter and the cry, our smiles of joy, the horses, the rocks, love most of all.

            Now, can you imagine the water without the ever-changing-yet-constant horizon?

It would be almost soulless. The sea itself wouldn't know where it should end. What is needed for it to stop? Where it would destroy itself!

OR Even the sky without the sea? Nothing less than a deep, hollow pit! Where you couldn't find anything! Not even yourself.

That's how inseparable you are to my existence now.

I just thought you should know. The most comforting and wondrous place I have ever known, is in your arms. And it hurts to turn over on my side, in the middle of the night, and not find you there :(

           I know, I know, this is probably the most dramatic ways anybody could express themselves. But it's all that came to my mind. And to contribute for what it’s worth, I really tried my best :)

I love you. And I always will.

Yours most grateful,

Sculpture