...And as the Diary spoke:

             

Opening the box of memories is like opening a box of chocolates,
You just can't stop at one. 

       
              Yesterday, while cleaning my loft, I was going through some of my old stuff, stuff from my childhood. Yes, I am a gatherer. You would be surprised at the amount of ‘junk’ as some people would like to call it that I have right from the time I was in school. The Barbie dolls that I would be gifted on birthdays or would have bargained for in return of straight As in my report card, my favourite denim dungaree, my candy doll, the bookmark some special friend gifted me with an inscription on its behind, the glass crystals that I may have collected from somebody else’s junk, the tiny handbag that I would carry around everywhere that I went with its tattered and cracked exteriors, those Enid Blyton novels that I would eat up in summer vacations, the Amarchitra kathas and the Chacha Choudhary comics, the Champak series that I would wait for each fortnight, the collection of the fairytale books that I would read to fall asleep and dream about my happily ever after, the cut out of the doll from a newspaper that I would call ‘Thumbelina’ after reading a fairy-tale about a girl of the size of a thumb, the pine nut that I carried from my very first camping trip to the Himalayas as a kid, the report cards from standard one to 12, all with A+s and if it was a bad year As, (no I’m not boasting), those notebooks and text-books of my favourite subjects depicting the evolution of my maturity along with the maturity of my handwriting, those science journals with the complicated and beautiful drawings that I marvel at today, my painting and sketching books that reminded me of the creative streak that I had, which has been lost somewhere in the run for excellence in life, the slam books that various friends from various walks of life had written when saying good-byes, the glossy real photograph albums from the time I was born till the time I left college as opposed to the digital images of self obsession that we call selfies these days rotting in the memory stick of my mobile phone, the peacock feather that my grandmother had given me to play with, neatly pressed in my diary, which now with age had developed a beautiful golden sheen on it.

The feather that absorbed the tears of the past

           Did I just say ‘In my Diary’? Yes my beautiful diary. To anyone else it would be a binding of beige coloured papers with scribbling inside, bound with a magenta satin casing with rusty golden-ish edgings on it. But to me it was a window to myself. The diary which had absorbed so many of my tears and fears, the diary that was my most loyal friend, to whom I could open my heart out to without the fear of being mocked or judged, the diary that had a plethora of unexplained emotions like excitement, fear, sadness and tears, the diary that harbored all the stories of the little me,and there it was staring at me, urging me to open it, to look back and soak myself in the nostalgia of my childhood and college days to feel those emotions again, to smile at my stupidities and laugh at my fears. As I ran my fingers through those aging and yellowing pages, I could smell the saltiness of the tears and feel the joy. My cursive handwriting in it (which was a thing of envy those days) bore the mood of the happenings of the day I was writing it. 

I thought to myself, if the diary could speak what would it have told me? What would I like to have told the little Me, now that I am looking back.

As the aging pages of the diary spoke to me... 

             The very first thing that I would have told the little me is 

“You are beautiful”.

And no it has nothing to do with the way you look, but it’s much deeper than that. Your skin will change with time, it may wrinkle, the shape of your body will change with time, but what will not change is that smile. And that is what defines you. Beauty is not just skin deep, it’s so much more than that, so don’t waste your precious time and energy on those beauty creams, or starve yourself for that zero figure, instead build up your personality. Confidence and grace is so much more important aspects of beauty than skin deep beauty. If you are comfortable and confident in your skin, you will be beautiful.

             The second thing that I want to tell the little me is, 

“It is okay to get lost in your way or take the untrodden path sometimes.” 

Well, you’d say, really? Yes, It is okay to get lost if you are determined to find your way back (Literally and metaphorically). Sometimes unexpected turns in life are deliberate so that you come across the most beautiful sights and experiences in life. It gives you the excitement of finding your way; it makes you more capable of taking wiser decisions in future. If everything was perfect you would never learn.

            Yet another thing I’d like to tell the little me is 

“Believe in people and life; and you’d be really surprised at how amazing they both can be”. 

Doubt is like a slow poison. It impairs our capabilities and we tend to hold ourselves back by our illusion of fear. We miss out on wonderful people and experiences in life. Again, I don’t mean being silly and just close your eyes to reality, but put belief and trust before doubt. So what in the process you get your trust is breeched, it will be, but you will most definitely spring back to normal, believe me.

             The last thing that I’d like to tell the little me is 

“Let go, Accept, Love and Enjoy”. 

These, I have learnt from my variety of experiences are the simple things that make life so much simpler. Don’t hold on to grudges, makes your heart and soul heavier, let them go.
Whatever curveballs life throws at you, don’t complain, try to change it, and if you can’t, accept it and most definitely in each of those curveballs, u will see a blessing in disguise.
Enjoy each moment because there are no do-overs in life, so make the most of what you have. Life is simple and don’t complicate it, just have fun.
Learn to Love. Never give up on love. You may have gotten your heart shattered a number of times, it may feel impossible to put back those scattered shards of the broken heart back together, but you will, eventually.

                "....Because love is the closest thing to magic we have on earth".