Notes App Tour

When my parents decided to move for the fourth time when I was in school, this time to a new city, apart from the clothes and books I had, i also had a lot of anger and a lot of anxiety to pack. New city, new school, new people.

You see I’ve never really been too good with change. I tend to be a serial show re-watcher, food re-eater, song re-listener. The idea of unfamiliarity seems just as scary today as it did thirteen years ago, with the same premise of the change being necessary and unavoidable. I knew my parents HAD to move and yet I was so angry. But I didn’t know where to put that anger, certainly not on them, when they already had so much to carry. In that moment, my grandfather — whom i now realise i mention a lot, probably because he taught me most of what I know — told me to write a letter to my parents. To say everything I wanted to say. Unfiltered. And to never let them read it.

What’s the point if I’m not going to give it to them?

That’s the point. Sometimes, the point is to speak, not to be heard.

This was the beginning of many many letters, rants, essays, texts. It’s been over a decade, and the Notes App on my phone slowly became that shoebox stuffed under my bed.

Filled with letters I never posted. Grocery lists I never deleted. Nani’s aamras recipe I keep meaning to try. Love letters I never sent. Breakdowns I never said out loud. It’s strange how much of our lives live in unfinished things. How all that incompleteness keeps my storage perpetually full.

There’s no one thing worth writing about more than another. Even not having something to write about is something to write about. It’s like a mental version of folding your clean laundry  lying untouched on your bed for days that you keep shifting it to the study table chair, pretending you’ll deal with it later, knowing you probably won’t.

Write letters to people you love(d). Send them, or don’t.

Your dreams.

Nightmares.

Pros and Cons lists.

Heartbreak.

Write about home. Write about the fleeting definition of home.

Core memories you’ve made.

Core memories you’d like to make.

Write about his words. Write him words.

Write it down. I’m gonna write that down.

For the sake of your unique life, one that no one could ever live the same, one that no one could ever feel the same, write about it. Write your moments like they mean something because they do. You do not exist twice. Write about it once.