Prisha Khimavat

Poetry? That’s all I have.

They say that poetry stems from emotion

That words are made beautiful

When paired with experiences, feelings

And poetry? That’s all I have

It’s a large part of how I express myself

It’s how I process the world

But right now?

I can’t feel anything

Hollow, numb, emotionless

An empty shell of a human being

That’s me.

So, what now?

It’s not that I’ve lost the ability to feel

But rather that I’m feeling so much at once

That I can’t feel anything at all.

Or maybe it’s just that

It hurts too much to open up

My personal Pandora’s box

Because I know that processing everything that’s in there will hurt.

So then is it better to not process at all?

What am I supposed to do right now?

My thoughts are all over the place,

My feelings stored away safely, unexplored, untouched.

I guess to be able to write again I have to open that box,

It’s time to face my fears,

 I guess I can’t stay numb forever because

Emotions feed poetry.

And poetry? That’s all I have.

For the past few months as I was wrapping up my last year of high school, saying goodbye to more than a decade of friends, and making plans for the biggest change in my life up to this point, I really struggled with emotions. I’m someone who feels emotions very strongly and they affect my actions deeply. Which is why I’m quick to asses and process my emotions. However, there was so much going on over these past few months that I kept avoiding dealing with how I was feeling, because I was feeling so much. Soon, I became numb, and numbness, in my mind, isn’t good food for poetry. So, I didn’t write. Writing makes me extremely happy, and it makes me feel productive, content, and calm but I didn’t do it. I didn’t write because I was afraid that my numbness and lack of ability to process emotions would lead to terrible writing, so I put it off. Over and over and over. Until for months, I didn’t even look at my blog or work at it.

But then, I watched the movie Set It Up, (yes I know it’s cheesy, getting inspiration from a rom com, but whatever, bear with me, also SPOILER ALERT, but also I mean it’s a rom-com, so is it really a spoiler that it’s a happy ending?). Anyways, I watched Set It Up, and in it there’s a girl who works as the assistant of a sports writer (I think) and she’s been wanting to be a writer herself, but she never finishes her first article because she’s afraid it’s going to be horrible. Towards the end of the movie, someone tells her, to just sit down and do it, no matter how awful it is, so at least she will have finished something. And she does, and eventually she gets out of her slump and begins freelancing as a writer. This made me think that maybe all I had to do was sit and write. So that I had written something, finished SOMETHING. No matter how awful.

So, I did and here it is.

This might be the worst I’ve ever written, but it doesn’t matter. I’m back, and I’m finally doing what I love most.

Because poetry? That’s all I have.

So, I just want to encourage you, that if there’s something you’ve been putting off because you’re afraid it won’t go well, just do it. It might be awful, but at least you started somewhere. At least you finished something.

~ Prisha Khimavat ~