It's time for Ram to return to Ayodhya

I'm leaving the US. After almost 10 years. Wow.

I'm going to visit Canada for a bit before taking off for an indefinite break in Oman. I have no specific plans. I don't know what I'll be doing or where. I don't care either.

But why?

I don't know. No one specific reason, just one huge amorphous mass of compulsions that snowballed very slowly over time since I came to the US after high school. My memory of the past 10 years is sort of blurry, and on the inside I somewhat feel like life stopped at the age of 17. It feels like I'd been in a coma since then and I recently woke up to find that I was 27 but felt like I was 100.

In reality, of course, there was no coma. There was just me who one fine day looked in the mirror and found this haggard and unattractive female sighing back at me. Wasn't I a skippy pixie just yesterday? What had happened to my eyes? They looked tired and apologetic, didn't they use to be brilliant supernovas? I know they were there, I had seen them. I know I used to hardly be able to contain myself. I remember my mind used to be quick, always spitting out a smart comment and bringing the roof down. It used to be so easy. I could hardly speak now. I had nothing to say, and words just felt too heavy to juggle around into brilliant combinations. When did I run out of things to say?

The things that were me - ferocious creativity, unbridled laughter, fiery passion, stubborn optimism, and limitless energy - were gone. The whirlwind that had always made me feel like I would never die now was still like the air inside a tomb. It was quiet now and I already felt dead. But somehow I was still walking around, doing what I had to, doing what everyone else was doing. My soul, which I could still feel in echoes, felt like a dead planet mindlessly orbitting and rotating around a long dead star, like a ghost condemned to its haunting place for all eternity, like a stuck record scratching the same old notes when the listeners have long since left.

I don't remember much of anything over the past 10 years except for suffocating under overwhelming isolation and desperately trying to grab onto anything so I could breathe. I remember daily crying spells when the quiet got too deafening. I remember trying but failing. I remember being told 'no' and having my hands held down. I remember being hungry, tired, and wanting the tightening of my scalp muscles to go away.

I dunno. I think I didn't want to hear 'no' anymore. Last year I felt something erupt within me. I didn't want to be walked over anymore by anybody. I don't know. I felt like I had just woken up and was horrified at what I saw. All I knew is that I had to go back to a time before this to remember who I was. I don't know. I just have to go. What you see today isn't me. I have to go find the people who remember who I used to be. I can't be here anymore. I dunno.