Where Do I Start? From When It Ended?

The utter truth is that lately my brain has been rather quiet, and I have nothing much to say. Unlike back then, when I always had something to say. Let's go back to the past—to when I stopped writing actively.

I was feeling so down that I had the urge to call my Patti (grandma). I knew talking to her would make me feel better. I had this random urge in my brain that kept saying, "Call her, call her." I usually call her once every 2 weeks. With this reminder, I made up my mind to finally call her.

She picked up, and the first thing she said was, "Wait, ah, your mother is here, she is leaving." So I immediately told her that I would call her later since she had a visitor at home, though it was my mother. Then she said, "No worries, she is leaving. I have to feed Ponni," her dog, whom she has been raising since Ponni was a puppy. Again, I offered to call her back, but she didn't let me put down the phone. She kept talking while feeding Ponni. We talked and talked and talked for 1 hour plus. She was so active—from telling me what breakfast she had prepared for the next morning to whose office she was going to hunt down to ask about certain lawyer-related things. She was full of life.

We also caught up on how Murugan (her favourite God) hid her ring, and it was because she sneakily ate mutton when she should have been a vegetarian. When she said sorry to the god at the praying altar, apparently, she found the ring right away. We both laughed out loud. The conversation felt different. I was so motivated—to see my grandma, who is 70 plus, doing so much independently, made me feel like I should be doing better than that.

I wrote about 2 articles that day and was on to my third article. I usually am able to write 1 article a week. Can you imagine the kind of vibration and energy I was on? Unstoppable moment. I was also planning a whole different routine on how to bring my content out seamlessly. Then I got the call. The call that made me freeze and made me stop writing actively about anything personal on my blog for years.

"She passed away, CJ. Chitti (aunt) brought her to the hospital, but she had already passed away at home." My sister called at 2 a.m. and notified me right away while she was rushing to the hospital. And I was shouting to her, "I was talking to her just a few hours back, she seemed fine. I don’t believe you." The water filled up her lungs, it seems. To date, I haven’t gotten the details 'cause I didn’t want to. To tell the truth, I was in denial the entire time I was at her funeral. 

I was distracted by work. Anything I could get. Wash plates? I was washing plates literally the whole day, 'cause my brain didn’t know how to react to the whole incident. People thought I was hardworking because I was cleaning throughout. What they didn't know is that sitting quietly at a corner would have made me insane. I booked a flight to go back home just so I could breathe and cry my heart out, and came back in 2 days. The number of flights I booked within those 2 weeks, only my bank balance knew. 

Till date I don’t know why I did that. I had nothing to do in KL. But I knew that I just had to leave that whole place, and to know that my go-to person when I feel low is no more there, I didn’t know where to go. My brain went silent. I didn’t touch my blog after that. Did some rushed articles for some brands. But nothing came from my own personal experience. I tried to come back, did a few articles, then stopped. Nothing was consistent. Then came my love for videos and editing. Thank God, 'cause I don’t think I would have come this far if writing were all I could do.

It was a struggle, not having a go-to person who can immediately make you feel better no matter what you go through. Then Ashton came into my life. Who is Ashton? That's a story for another day.

Till then...