I miss writing like I used to. Now, writing has become about fonts, about finding publishers, about whether people will like this or that. But I miss writing like I did. I remember how my mom used to come into my room at 1am to make sure that I was asleep instead of writing because I had school the next day. Back then, most people thought I wrote to “get into a university”. Someone did say it to my face too. But, well, I’m still writing. But now, I am writing as a person who has written before, not as someone who is writing just for fun, reading random stories out to her mother while chilling in her room. Now, this person doesn’t even have the time zone to be able to talk to her mother for more than 15 minutes. I wish I could, really. But when I look around me, when I look at my work from 2020 and my work from last month, I know. I know why fate sent me here. I have changed. I don’t write like that naïve sixteen year old anymore. I write like a person, I know – I understand – what it is like to be away from people and with certain people and how it affects the way I see the world. I am still that naïve little girl when I go home but two days ago, my mom said, “You sound like a woman who would stand up for herself.” A year ago, I’d have been sad with responses like, “I don’t want to grow up.” Now, I’m proud. I’m not grown up., Mentally, I am still a nineteen year old just trying to figure out what she wants to do but in reality, this girl has grown. This girl always knew how to stand up for other girls and women but never knew how to stand up for herself. These days, whenever this girl stands up, she stands up for herself. And she loves it. A few months ago, she took pride saying that two of her best friends were the kindest guys but now, she calls her girl friends every weekend. She knows that the world is unfair, but she also knows that she has the guts to deal with it.  And she’s proud – not of this growth, but of herself. As she should be. 

Muskaan Darshan

3 September ’23