Category: Myself

Myself

Best Friend: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal
by Jemal Yarbrough

Sometimes, just looking at an image reminds of you the possibility of life, specifically on how a day can do.  My best friend Jemal managed to do that for me today.  I don’t know if he realizes how much of an influence he has been in my life.  We started as law school colleagues, part of the SCALE program at Southwestern School of Law, not realizing that we would still be keeping in touch more than a decade later.  Our days are Thursday as I happen to have a weekly meeting in morning near his house, and in those few hours we manage to keep each other sane.  I think I get the better end of the deal as he has to hear my incessant whining about something or the other.  As much as he will hate this blog post, I could not resist the opportunity to acknowledge his brilliance as an attorney but also his creative side.

If you follow this blog in any sort of way, you will notice that a majority of the images are by Jemal’s amazing photography.  His images manage to always move me with their intense focus and simplicity.  He manages to say more in one image than I can with a 1000 word post.  Each of us have something that is uniquely ours to own, and Jemal has made photography his bitch.  Sometimes, you have to let the ones close to you know how much they mean to you.  Love ya bro!

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Writing 2: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal
Story of I
Image via Wikipedia

Finally did my morning pages after a few months and thought I would share with you:

same, the random ideas come but nothing stays long enough for me to jot down.  I am still struggling with the idea of writing something and time is growing near.  I am almost 40 without a story to my credit. I want to be published dammit.  What can I do to seduce you back?  Why have you abandoned me?  What do you need to flourish inside of me?  Work is not me, you are me yet you hide, devise ways to stay away, making me seem incapable, unwilling to start putting something down for posterity.  It is as if you are afraid that I will misuse you, abuse your nature, blunting the truth down to ignorance.   What can I do to show you that I am more than capable, that I will be to true to you and no other?  Our dance has gone on too long, the flirtation now a joke.  It is time to commit to each other, to make it a real marriage.  I do not know how to get flush you out, to get you to give me the words to show my truth.  Instead, you have given me only silence and small teasers of what could be, wriggling away from my grasp whenever I come close to you.  Enough!  I need you. I want you.  I desire you like nothing else.  Come back to me. Make me whole.  Make me right.

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Roaming Thoughts: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal
Parts of the city of Geneva and Lake Geneva wi...
Image via Wikipedia

The buzz of the birds shines outside our window in Geneva, Switzerland, jet lag still a dear friend so as she breathes heavily due to an impromptu day nap, I sit myself in front of you to spill the churning thoughts inside me.   Poetic I am not, overly bored definitely.  I am smiling involuntarily as images of dancing with my friends and family is still looking to be filed away to become a distant memory yet the amazing wedding and love shown are making me reluctant to tuck away wedding month of celebration.  I dare not admit that 5 years ago, this seemed impossible, with many writing off (including myself) a big wedding, instead hoping someone from her side would show up.   Yet, I seem hard pressed to remember that time, instead I am surrounded by smiling happy faces from both sides, her loving brothers, her amazing parents and finally my always there family, culminating in 7 perfect events, 1000s of pictures, 100s of hours of movie footage but more than a lifetime of commitment to each other and our families, yet somewhere lost between are the small little moments we had, rough to sweet and I wonder what it is that makes a marriage (yeah, can you tell I am married now)?  When does a couple stop being lovers and friends and move on to becoming a loving partnership?  I ask because only in a true partnership can we accept each other strengths and weaknesses, soldering them together to become even stronger, even more agile and finally even more loving.  When we are lovers and friends, we each have distinct needs and wants that need to be taken care of, but in a marriage everything becomes conjoined, shared, split, experienced together otherwise your just two really good roommates who happen to get it on once in a while, aren’t we?

So here I sit, while her snoring gets louder, and I still at the various images hitting my head, from the little things friends did for me (sing when they weren’t planning on it, plan a bachelor party for 13 loud and picky guys, fly down even thought we hadn’t seen each other in years), just a multitude of kindness that I am not sure I can ever repay to the present moment.  She lies in bed snoring away at 9pm (12 noon our times) and in room my thoughts roam and I wonder (yet again), how I ever got this lucky. 🙂  It is becoming hard to sign off, to stop this post because the smile is not going away but the dread of what lies in the future remains.  So she snores and I roam…

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Happiness and Thank You: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal
Lorsque paraît la beauté..
Image by ImAges ImprObables via Flickr

It’s easy to write when your sad, angry and full of hope, but harder for me to write when I am happy.  My high school teacher Marie Tollstrup used to say that if you look at most poetry and literature, it has traces of negative emotion with a happy ending merely to showcase the writer’s whimsy, yet today I feel obligated to note the love surrounding her and I, amongst our dear friends, family from abroad and in general.  Each day in the past week has been full of positive emotion, brimming with future possibility, and the reality that our time has finally come. This December will make it 5 years when I fell in love so deeply and truly with someone who I had known all my life that it still feels unreal that I am with someone so beautiful inside and out.  But I digress.  These past few days have made me realize how truly blessed and lucky I am to have the people I do in my life.  Looking at my past posts, I have spent an inordinate amount of time whining about the ones that truly do not matter, ignoring the ones that come around me at a drop of a hat, and I cannot help be thankful for being just good enough to have them in my life.  I do not know what I did to deserve them but dammit, I am going to make damn sure I keep them!

 

Thank you, thank you, and thank you.  I wish I was more eloquent but I cannot stop smiling, while soaking in these beautiful days and events with amazing friends and family.  THANK YOU!

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Energy: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal
Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...
Image via CrunchBase

I remember writing few months back where all my energy, ideas and focus melded into one need to get the story done.  I was smiling and truly enjoying the process, just living the dream of being a writer, knowing that what was being laid down was pretty good and I could do this.  I want that moment back, those blissful hours when it seemed becoming a writer full time was not a fantasy, that I was good enough dammit!  Yet lately, I seem to have found people who either don’t think much of my writing or dismiss it.  Worse, still I have others who manage to always feel bad about blogging or posting on Facebook even when I am supremely careful of not blogging names and keeping my status updates to a minimum.  I feel stifled and trapped into being a certain type of personality on social media as if I have to apologize for being open about my thoughts and feelings.  Sure, I have said too much sometimes and called out others when it was not my business to, and to that I can only apologize and call it a learning process, yet I feel trapped with the label of someone who talks too much.  It’s soul and creativity killing to know that my words are scrutinized to be either dismissed or confirm my status as a big mouth.

I want my words to have the energy they did when I wrote freely and got them out of being in my body, bottled up for so long.  That’s where I want to get to.  Let’s hope that the ones who are judging me know that they are killing me softly.

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Regret: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal
UBC Hospital
Image via Wikipedia

“Hey Sanjay, your _______ has been taken to the hospital.  Nothing to be worried about and…” the rest of the words were a blur as the immense guilt overwhelmed as I imagined that person not being part of my life.  In mili seconds, all the memories, half-said reminders to do more, talk more, spend more time with that all important person hit, and I numbly went through the motions of changing out of my workout clothes and got into the shower.  The water touched my body but not my mind, and I cannot remember if I had soaped myself or just stood in the water, aching for all the things I never got around to doing with them.  “Please, please let it be all ok. Please let them be here” I prayed to the nameless entity, my entire soul focused on the regrets of not doing more, of the last time I met them and the laughter we shared. I just could not imagine not seeing them during my wedding, now only 28 days more and wondered what kind of cruel Being takes away even that much happiness from me and them.

It was at 1am and as I sat in that hospital room, relieved that for now everything was ok, I was ashamed at my selfishness.  I only thought about me and my feelings, and tried to imagine how they must feel to lie in that bed and know that each subsequent hospital visit could be their last.  I watched as they breathed gently, at peace and smiling drowsily each time the nurse came by, jarring us both with the harsh light, apologizing for intruding but not really meaning it.

So there we sit in that room, regret my friend while relief the soldier who conquered that small room, allowing for another day, another moment, of just being with them.

Darkness. Light. Regret.  Relief.  We are who we allow ourselves to be.

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