The hands holding the splintering heart in place are stained with the taint of years flowing from the widening cracks, chiseled as they are from imposed hurt due to visages that could never spare the affection and words that could never provide the guidance she has needed all along. Yet these hands persist in their endeavour, not just empathy and duty but also love holding them through it. These hands belong to a teenager, one whose shoulders droop, one whose eyes weep and whose voice is the loudest scream muffled in a sabotage she has never defended from. These hands belong to a daughter who cannot stop herself from holding a heart she cannot knit back, in the firmest grip, while the inherited venom slowly fills her own veins. The heart that she holds belongs to the woman who brought her here, into this world. It belongs to her mother, who she is frightfully a reflection of, the difference being an older visage, tired black eyes and the vestiges of will to live etched in it. Her mother holds her right hand over her head, the gesture supposedly an affectionate head pat but it isn't because the hand is not touching her head, it is right above it. The other hand clutches a thread that is connected to the invisible heap on her shoulders. Like a puppeteer's string, they pull and prod, always increasing and never decreasing the burden. There is pain on her mother's face but not guilt. A smidge of love but not understanding. A sense of relief but not acknowledgement.

Her hands shake as she gives the final touch to the painting that depicts her reality. This right her is her outlet. The pen the world wields to word the labyrinth they harbour is, for her, the brush that paints the colors of reality infused by fractured feelings and an artistically mild hyperbole.

Saving the word document, she closes it, sighing as she leans back against her chair. Writing a character that embodies a lot of you is draining in a way that cannot be expressed, especially because these are the mediums to accomplish her quest at catharsis. And this quest is in no terms easy. It compels you to search within, see and search for everything you've packed away and let it hurt you all over again.

Her heart sore, she cannot help the tear that slips past her eye. The painting she has described embodies her own situation. It is what formed in her mind as she contemplated this particular scene. The decision to make her female protagonist a painter was a sure one despite not being well thought. To her, despite not being a painter herself, she needed a method of expression that was art but wasn't writing and this made total sense. So did the thought that her protagonist should not be a total self insert. So she drew a sketch and came up with an image in mind that had both of what she has experienced and some opposing traits and situations she hasn't.

Crafting Abhira has been like creating a mosaic from various people and situations and she knows it will always remain a character little more closer to her heart than the others. To express a character that has been through situations you haven't personally been in is a challenge in craft every author takes up and she knew right when she began ideating on the epiphany that this would be no exception!
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The tears that trickle down her kohl smudged eyes follow the well etched path on her face. Her fingers dig deeper into her thighs, drawing out blood and jostling the still raw wounds on her legs. It, though, is still not enough and it never will be enough. The grief that cascades in waves can never be mitigated by self inflicted wounds on a canvas that's already blood trodden. It ceases to matter, another scar in the tapestry of many, a tapestry that is brook and bark when it should have been silk and rose petals.

The thing about being an author is a scene or idea can form in your mind, uncaring about the situation you are currently in. The ideas that come also remain unbothered about the context of their legitimate meaning when they occur in a circumstance that is generally on the opposing side. So yes, penning down something on a sensitive topic without being extremely graphic, the idea of which came while chilling on the couch with a book in hand, is not exactly unexpected and abnormal for her. Also, writing something heartbreaking which hasn't personally occured comes with a brand of insensitivity that she is guilty of being accepting of. It makes her question often if a part of her has finally decayed, under the effect of all that it has faced, making her unfit to sympathise and show a basic human decency or humanity that she just cannot muster while writing about something so grave, without feeling more fake than she already feels.

It is a debate she has stopped engaging in even if the guilt still stays. How many nights has she pondered over morality and righteousness and impact of mistakes?! How many times has she spent her time trying to pinpoint what exactly has bestowed a small mistake the intensity of an irrevocable blunder that cannot be forgiven?!

She sighs again. Revisiting buried corners of her soul also means stirring all those feelings of resentment and grief and yearning that had been pushed aside too. And they pull her back, sometimes so much that she spirals into these discussions and thoughts she long promised herself she'll stop having. That is how the silent acceptance came isn't it? But can she really keep this promise in the face of this decision she has taken for herself? Is this catharsis worth all of it? Her perpetual fear rears its head, woken up from where she keeps it asleep and she can feel the familiar fear, the fear of losing all purpose when this agony is purged!
Will she even find herself at the end of this? Is there a 'her' that isn't what she already harbours?
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Love,
Pratyusha