A Fight for My Love

-Ankita Deuri

I was stuck, stuck for more than a year. It seemed like eons. Writing was one of those things that came to me naturally. Just like breathing. I adored this habit of mine. But it was different now. I struggled, battled with myself everyday to come up with just one paragraph. It was as if my brain was unable to decipher the code of words. It was impossible, like a distant dream for me at that moment. And I knew the reason, reason for this catastrophe, this disaster, this block.

I started quite early, on my 10^th birthday my mother had presented me with a beautiful diary with other usual knick-knacks of presents. I was very fascinated with this atypical thing amidst all my wrapped goodies for my special day. Asking her with a zealous tone I was told that it was a book which would be my friend. No questions asked or no doubting games. Too young to grasp the essence of it, I kept it just as a token of love from my mother showing it off to my friends or occasionally doodling in it. But I was unaware of the fact that slowly and steadily it had made its entry into my world.  Through personal diaries, short stories for my school magazines, abstract passages it slowly entered into my world. Then it dawned upon me that I was in love…in love with words and now I was pursuing it as a career. But now this love was leaving me and was gone and it left me with a crevasse. Just as like a big hole in my chest. As a Block!

So what was this Block? I knew it was my “Boredom” that had surrounded me since I left my job for good, for a sabbatical. Next was the “Lethargy”, as my obsession for languor, the more I sat around doing nothing the more I was inclined towards this block of mine! Then came the “Obstruction” of knowledge which was due to this state of mind that I was in. Coming out of it was not viable at that moment. I was out of my “Curiosity” to discover new things in life. Accepted, that life is a series of events and not always a bed of roses but at that precise moment all I wanted was an escape from my condition and it affected me bang-on! My “Karma” had a bigger role to play in it too. The laid back attitude that I had acquired since my lifetime of laziness spared me with no mercy. I left everything for the last moment adding those last minute details and finishing it in the nick-of-time. One of the biggest reasons for my love to dump me mid-way.

There were many other reasons that I am supposed to add here, but I know that was anyway not going to help me in the long run. Furthermore, it was another one of my escapist mechanism with which I shielded myself whenever I had no more excuses left. I just knew that I was stuck left, right and center. I wanted to write but I wasn’t being able to produce one sentence. Ideas were making tornados inside my head but it was just destroying the interiors of my brain. I was frustrated to the core until I left the idea and plunged into the virtual world for solace.

I have had enough now. I couldn’t bear this anymore. I had to break these shackles. I knew I was on the edge of the cliff. To get the thrill back I either had to jump or slouch back to the old life and rue about it later on. I needed my mojo back! The delight that I got in the sounds of the keyboard clicking was more than the pleasure I had in sleeping. The kick that the forming sentences gave me was immeasurable.

I will have to win my love back. The love of my life that was walking away from me inch by inch I will have to call its name till it looked back at me and smiled. Losing a love of such a long time isn’t easy. I cannot let it go. Everybody makes mistakes and I knew I was making one too, and it was a formidable one. But I know my love will forgive me. I am starting to walk towards it. Leaving all my errors behind, as a new me, with my pen in hand I am ready to fight with this ‘BLOCK’! And what better way to start afresh by attacking this with a write up about my writing block?

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