Tag: Health

Journal, Myself

Dreams

Sanjay Sabarwal
Free twitter bar
Image via Wikipedia/ twitter.com/zibasanjay

The images of talking to Preeti’s dad evoked my dread of the long-awaited conversation of what next?  Flash of Gurjit crying reminded me of Tejpal’s as well as the death of the normalcy of my life and of the challenges ahead.  Still I dived in these murky as my heartbeat slowed, well aware that the heat of the blankets told of an intense and long sleep.  The room become brighter as if to mark my awareness.  No longer did I want to ignore the idea that I was awake, instead I fished for more.

I marveled that I only had one drink yesterday yet told everyone I had two.  Why?  I wondered.  What was it about being in certain crowds that made you want to be an overachiever in an activity designed to kill brain cells? What was it about social discomfort that made me want to grasp to the one liquid that could return me back to feeling like everything was ok temporarily. How was it different from my dreams?

Then it hit me.  While I thought about last night, the dreams had made their escape.  It was as if I had been purposefully distracted so they could go to their secret hiding place. My breathing slowed, the blankets cooled, I reached for my phone to get my daily Twitter and Words with Friends fix  and the dreams went further away and suddenly the urge to write feels silly and trite.  I am left holding simplistic words and thoughts rather than the deep implications my dreams carried.  Conned, once again by my mind, I reluctantly came to my page and had nothing to offer except the memory of my dreams gone.

I closed my eyes, and nothing came save for the feeling of betrayal I caused myself.

 

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Journal, Myself, Preeti, Writing

Cancer of Words: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal
Cyclops projecting an optic blast. Art by Jack...
Image via Wikipedia

The words just sit there.  The guilt sits behind them.  Yet nothing moves.  I plead with the clock to slow down, to let me gather whatever’s lying around so I do not feel like a fraud.  Yet nothing comes.  It is as if I am spent from fighting the cancer in my beloved, and while the movie reel in my head sputters along, the projection screen is blank.

I can’t stop thinking of writing, and seeing every conversation as potential dialogue.  It’s as if my body is become one huge receptacle for ideas and possible stories.  Yet I want it to stop.  I feel like Scott Summers from the Xmen, unless I put some glasses on, I can’t stop the lasers from destroying the world near m me.

Just stop, I beg regretting ever having starting this muse yet it grows just like the enemy in my love.  Her body betrayed her and now I feel like my mind is doing the same.  The words keep growing and I pray they don’t spread to my hands because I need the energy and the strength to by her side. 

I want nothing except for her.  She is my life. Without her, I am just another person, but together we become one unit that can take on the world.  But we have been let down by our bodies, hers turning against her and making her wonder what she did to deserve this and mine seeing everything as a reason to write. 

But both of us are wrong.  All we is the present and blame worry sadness don’t belong because the reality is we will both survive, one as a writer and one as former cancer patient.  That is our new reality.  It doesn’t take anything away from us, it just has made us a thousand times stronger. 

While we will kill one cancer, we will allow another one to spread so it can kill the doubts worries and sadness in others.  In hindsight, maybe being an X Man, isn’t such a bad thing.

Journal, Myself, Preeti

Breathing

Sanjay Sabarwal
Fire Breathing
Image via Wikipedia

Lying to you was better than seeing you lie there.  Protecting you from the realities of your current world was more important than breathing. Watching your beautiful face still and breathing in pure oxygen made me wish for complete bliss for you. 

Not 5 feet away from you yet feeling a stranger, I look upon you wishing it was me lying there and you watching me.  Asking again and again why you to no one in particular gets old and while the shabads surround the room, the soothing melody allows me no time alone with my thoughts.  I sit here in darkness thinking of lies to tell you so the flicker of hope brightens in your green eyes,  I don’t have the words to tell you that everything will be fine because it’s not.  However, the reality is that although our past lives are obliterated, we have a new beginning. 

Breathe my babu.  Breathe away the anger, the past, the arguments, the many wasted moments regretting what was not to be.  Breathe in the love surrounding you, Breathe in thoughts that will remove the enemy in your body, the unwanted stranger.  Take control of your body.  Get angry.  Get calm.  Focus the laser of your thoughts ‘ on to that pervert, and give me back rightfully whats fine.  Breathe.

The darkness swirls around me, and the thoughts try to enter, but I wont allow it.  I am willing you to breathe away all the negative energy, and lets start our lives anew.  Breathing together positivity and love.  Neither of us know what the future holds except we are together.  Breathe out the intruder like a fireball, and come back to our new life.

I love you.  Breathe…

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Pain Please

Sanjay Sabarwal
Mental Health Awareness Ribbon
Image via Wikipedia

In just 2 months,  the life I knew has been obliterated.  I search for the words to express that, but besides pain there is nothing.  Actually. I wish there was pain.  Just numbness.  I sit here in a daze, not writing particularly well just thoughts and emotions fighting with God asking why her?  What has she done to deserve?  Is being with me so bad that she had to be punished physically?

No one’s saying it to me, but they don’t need to.  I feel it.  I know I am being watched with the wonder, did the constant stress of being in this relationship cause this?  What other explanation is there for someone so young?

Praying to the God so frequently that now only word goes out to him: Please.  As in, please change this.  Please stop this.  Please fix this.  Please cure her.  Please give it to me.  Please stop.  Please forgive me.  Please let me take this on.  PLEASE.

Nothing else comes except the numbness, wishing her pain was mine, wanting her life to be mine.  She doesn’t deserve this. No one does.  Why her? Why not me? 

I look up and hear nothing.  Please.  Nothing. 

Life as I know it is over.  Nothing remains.  Just the pain. 

Please

Brownness, My Past, Myself, Writing

Swirling Thoughts

Sanjay Sabarwal
i hope they serve beer in hell
Image by kangarootone via Flickr

1) Remember grabbing KFC in Iran as a weekly ritual and going to the park (5ys)
2) first day in boarding school in India, I had peed the bed and was ashamed (8yrs old)
3) arriving in london to stay with relatives with my oldest sister (10 years old)
4) driving from the airport towards my parents after not seeing them (12 years old)
5) Being humiliated in my 7th grade english class because the teacher felt my English speaking skills werent up to par, and her being unsure if I would pass the class.
6) Getting on the volleyball team and realizing I was a bench player, getting subbed in and my only shot was tipping the ball in and scoring for the team (14 years old)
7) remembering that I followed Sumita (my middle sister) into almost everything she signed up for writing class, student congress, human relations camp, india boarding school
8) Returning to india after receiving green card, and seeing my grandfather for the last time before he passed away (18 years)
9) my first published story “Rain Fire” edited by a dear family friend who recently passed
10) Winning the National Conference of Teachers of English award (included a recommendation from the English teacher who didn’t think I would pass.

I remember being empty. Time ticking away, coffee getting cold and me just empty. It’s as if I had no memories, no past. And then I remembered the no. Mrs. Maruna didn’t think I would ever pass 8th grade English class. I looked up into her unsmiling face, looking for understanding. Nothing. The redness of my shame circled around my cheeks but hidden by the browness of my skin, it just squeezed my heart and soul.

I was single, young, and horny. We chatted online for a few minutes, and after a few sexual innuendos, decided to take our activities offline and meet up. I am ashamed now at my sluttiness, and willingness to meet a complete stranger just to satisfy myself but really not that ashamed to be zooming down on the freeway to meet her at 3am. She had left the door open as we had discussed. In hindsight, it made sense why she did. I shoved the door open, immediately banged my leg on the bed, and to hide the pain told her I needed to take a shower. Perhaps my only concern for safety was to be hygienic. She was already in bed when I walked out. I climbed right in, but couldn’t quite get comfortable. I kept moving around until she asked if her leg was bothering me? Huh? “I said, is my leg bothering you?” removing the blanket to reveal a steel leg. Holy shit, I was about to fuck the terminator. My penis tried to hide inside of me. The meanness in me proved my immaturity and explained why I never again tried to hook up online.

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker Max

That was the inspiration for my post about my online adventure gone wrong, and while I wasnt as bad as Tucker is in his many “misadventures” with women in college, I think I came quite close to being Tucker with my comment that I was about to fuck the terminator. The sad part is that I had done a much longer graphic post mocking the girl and myself, and really made it my “Zinger” story. I usually told it to a group of new people, and usually it would draw huge laughter, but then I realized it didn’t make me look very good to my girlfriend to be. In fact, she was disgusted not at the fact that the girl had 1 leg, but the fact that others laughed so hard. That was probably the first time I realized what an asshole I came off to be. Sure, once people got to know me, they knew different. However, my choice to share this story as a starting off point really just made me another Max Tucker. And that’s not something I wished my legacy to be standing on. Especially on one leg. Yea, I havent matured much.

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Myself

My Tools

Sanjay Sabarwal
A hoodie with the University of California, Lo...
Image via Wikipedia

The assignment seemed straight forward enough: describe my writing tools and place you will use to write. No problem. Look at Ipad adoringly, check. Sleek wireless keyboard, check. Brand new ipad stand, check. My 2008 Dell laptop (a bit too dated for my taste but fine as a back up), check. 5 subject UCLA notebook incase I get the inclination to handwrite to the right of me, check. Then realized that I HATE writing unless I have my Montblanc and I remembered, I lost it at the hospital, left blank. Being annoyed that I don’t have a printer (even thought the last time I printed something was over 6 weeks ago), double check. Phew, all needed tools ready. Time elapsed: 60 minutes.

Now where to write. Using the ipad as the writing tool at first seemed a mistake since it severly cut down the places I could place it so I could type my 35 words a minute error filled pace, but the gadget freak in me relished the idea of being 2010 rather than 1990 (the year I graduated high school). Ok so settled down in my parents kitchen and withing 15 minutes realized that wouldn’t work as my dads music room next door keep blasting old indian music while he work on a pet project of his, and made me slightly made me deaf, perhaps to imitate hiis 70 years of being hard of hearing.

So moved upstairs, and although words drifted in from mom’s tv show downstairs intermingled with old bollywood, I manage to create some of my own, one of the first times ever I have written here. Success! or is it?

Decided to go to my house (removed 6 houses away from my parents) and while the calmness of the place soothed me, it really create any need for me to regurtitate anything really creative, Pass on my house for now.

Parents house it is.

Total time elapsed 2 hours.