'Cause Pigs can Fly

The truth is, I want to feel the same things that other people do. I want to be able to date people or be in a relationship without frantically looking for exit signs from day one or fearing physical intimacy because it makes me feel like I'm not even human. I want to be able to flirt without worrying about mixed signals and I want to be able to enjoy a quiet night with someone without my mind cranking up the volume on my inner thoughts. I want to be able to feel something, anything when someone touches me. I don't want to think of a future alone, deprived of one of the simplest joys in life. The truth is, I really do want to build a life with someone. I want to love and be loved. I want companionship, someone to talk to when it is 2 in the morning and I can't sleep. I want to know someone inside out. I want to love them so much it hurts. But I want to love them so much I don't want to leave, to run, to flee. And I want to stop having to pretend I'm okay with the ca...

We are all lonely, a friend once told me. It felt like a confession. Admitting to one’s loneliness becomes somewhat difficult as one moves towards their late 20s. This is, of course, based on mere observations and experiences. Admitting that you are lonely is somewhat easy when you are in your late teens and even your early 20s. It’s easy because you either claim you are a lone wolf and prefer being by yourself or you still have some hope that these difficult years will lead to better times. There’s somewhat of an invitation in that “I’m lonely.” You are inviting people into your life, challenging them to prove you wrong. There is also the difference between feeling lonely and being alone and the line is blurred when we are younger. But when you get past your mid-twenties and move towards those years where people expect you to settle down, get married, or start a family, admitting that you are lonely is more a confession. It can be an admittance of failure of some kind. It’s a ...

I've never understood why people do this. What good does writing to one's past self do? They can't change anything. They can't prepare for what's to come. But I think it's less a warning and more a reflection. It's more about talking about your life, your feelings, your experiences, your mistakes from a different point of view. You create these different people. Characters of a story. Sixteen-year-old you is just a character. Present you is just a character. And you talk with honesty because it's a conversation between two characters. You are a bystander in this situation. You remove yourself from the equation. So here goes. You wrote this in 2016. " It's sad when people go from being part of your daily routine to someone whose life you only know through their Facebook posts. It's even sadder when you realize that the distance between you and people you once considered part of your life was created not by them but by you, through your fear o...

For most of my teens and perhaps my early 20s as well, I hated that my parents weren't together. I was somewhat embarrassed as well, because until my late teens, I couldn't even talk about it openly. Family was always depicted as parents who are together and their children. It didn't even have to be an opposite sex couple. Whatever combination of male, female, nonbinary, cis, trans, etc. the parents were partners. So I felt like my life would never be complete because my parents were not married to each other anymore. They got divorced when we were kids. And for most of my life, all I've known is living with my mother and visiting my father. Somewhere down the line, his wife entered the picture. As I got older, not having parents who are happily married became acceptable. In fact, it was rarely that someone would say their parents are still married and still happy in that marriage. Now, as I embrace my late 20s, what I can say is this. My parents aren't happily marr...

I was going through some old files and came across this document from March 2015. I don't know if I posted it here or on the personal blog I had back then. The writing is from five years ago but I want to save it here so I don't lose it. Athamma Athamma, my grandmother, passed away last week. Sunday night, we all had dinner together, we all ate well, spent time together. We went to bed. An hour later, she woke me up saying she wasn’t feeling well. Asked me to call Amma, my mother. She said she couldn’t breathe. That she was dying. She held my hand. She rested her head on Amma’s shoulder. I couldn’t be there. I couldn’t watch her. She passed away a few minutes later. I never saw her body. But Mami did, and he said that she looked like she was fast asleep. We left the coffin closed. She didn’t want people to see her body. She didn’t want people to see her once she was older and ill. The coffin was surrounded by flowers. It was beautiful. So elegant. Like the person she was. A...

I've been working from home since the beginning of October, when Sri Lanka was hit by its second wave of COVID-19. I left the house once for a work-related event but I've been blessed with a job that gives me the option of working remotely. To be honest, I don't feel like I'm doing as much work as I used to back when I did got to office. I feel guilty about this. I used to work on at least two stories a day but now I usually send in only one. I also get to work in my pajamas, from the comfort of my bedroom, and I don't spend 2 1/2 hours on the road, travelling to and from work. I feel like I'm saving money because I don't spend on transport or food. I put in less effort because I don't have office clothes added to the laundry basked every day. I take three steps at most from my bed to my laptop. I don't have to wait for tuks and trains and buses or walk from one place to another. Given all of this, I felt guilty about asking for a day off. But I also...

It was a few minutes past 3 a.m. and she woke up, drenched in sweat. The fan was blowing hot air at the bed but none of it reached her. She pulled away the mosquito net, hoping that would help, but it didn’t make much of a difference. She winced as the cramps in her stomach got worse. They weren’t painful, but the discomfort was not something she could just sleep through. She tried to ignore them, but the wetness and coldness she felt when she wiped away the sweat on her forehead using the back of her hand scared her. She rolled out of bed and switched on the light. Opened the second drawer of her dressing table and took out a pad. Rarely had periods been pain-free for her. She knew that other people had it worse, but she also knew that that did not mean her pain wasn’t real. When it was really bad, she would toss and turn in bed, cramps in her lower tummy area, pain in her back and calves. She would run to the toilet to vomit the water and painkillers she thought she could keep ...