Querencia- The place where I draw my strength.

Querencia- The place where I draw my strength.

To be or not to be, to thrive or just be merely alive to survive, is a question I have often pondered upon. What does being alive mean? Does it mean extrapolating in the exteriors of materialistic drawls, of forging in an existence that is concealed with the perfectionism of having it all?

Or is it walking down the nostalgic lane of fond memories, that brew warmth in our hearts when we count our days to end in this mortal world? I wonder what joy truly means, does it have to do with rushing with high adrenaline every second of your day or does it peacefully foster amidst the moments of stillness in the embrace of mundanity?

Irrespective of me knowing what joy meant, the yearning to return to my home always stays the same. Home is the place I draw my courage from.

The abode that gives me strength to fight the world in its darkest and loneliest nuances. The journey to find my might began when I was thirteen and cried in the night.

In the hours of my solitude, when I was a girl at a tender age. I was leashed in an atrocious cage.

The dungeon of self-doubt and inferiority, when I looked at myself, I often felt the urge to find the meaning behind my existence. It is often said that every individual forsakes their mortality with a purpose they are meant to fulfil. The pursuit of happiness lies in the fearless act of following one's passion, which sets the soul ablaze with dreams to chase. I read the quote and in the introspective fall of my being, I looked in the mirror, with tears in my eyes. For all I could see was a girl who was befriending the loneliness of time yearning for a moment of pride.

Pride that felt eternal, that glowed through the crevices of my broken soul. I clutched onto my pen and held it intact, scribbling the demons of my mind, bleeding onto the paper with my sword. As I read what had forged out of my own hands, I wrote about a warrior who embraced the light emerging out of the dark sands. I as a 13-year-old knew that one day maybe in ten days or ten years would write to her tune, would make the words dance and sing attuned, to her rhythm.

The fragments of my bare soul held a story true, in the crevices of the vision I held, light flowed its courses in the hue of blue. Beholding a vision that I beheld, I wished upon a star that one day my words would inspire someone to believe in themselves.

The hammered wheelings of time strung their recital, plonking me into a mirage of broken dreams and despair that I didn’t entitle. With bright dreams of how my future should look like, I dreamt of going into the university that I strived for, alas fate had other plans in store. The doomed lockdown hit us and I was plonked into the realm of uncertainty as millions of other students were.

I was eighteen when I faced the rejection that plunged me into misery, but little did I know that life was teaching me to accolade the merriment of melancholy. During the months of isolation, I met my old friend again. The long-lost love of brewed stories and my pen started its game.

The endeavour to share my bounty flair with the words fostered the creation of my blog, intending to inspire anyone in their search for themselves. I wrote without the burden of tomorrow, a way to alleviate my sorrow. The pain of rejection did sting me, but the magic of poetry healed me in its own mysterious ways. Soon time showed its joy, as I wrote with consistency,

I believed in the power of my writing. As time turned its wheels into the light, leaving the sorrow, soon I started working as a content writer with great promises of tomorrow. With confidence in one hand and a pen in another, I mastered the art of writing in the embrace of relentless learning. Life is a teacher and we are students at the hands of its mercy. Learning with diligence, I grasped every lesson taught in the school of existence.

Criticism and animosity crept in silent whispers, but the footsteps of my writing beheld their stance loud and galore as they traced their way to the prestigious platform of the nation’s uproar. The sorrow of transcending from light to dark often comes with a price, the cost that shatters the soul from within. The world around me gasped in the shades of grey, as death pretended to lay its icy hands on the brokenness of the astray. The aspect of life and death questioned me every day, as I waited for the news of my loved one to be akin to health, to be in a sanguine presence I would pray.

To experience the loss of a loved one or to almost experience it teaches us the value of what matters in the end. That joy does not breathe its existence in materialistic commotions that one fathoms it to be, I finally knew that joy is the abode filled with people you love laughing in glee. The world I fiercely protected was battling the storm, the storm that finally silenced itself in the embrace of health and warmth. The warmth of the pen that knew every scar, the fondness of my diary that beheld every secret with the utmost care, I knew my abode was here in the fantastical world of my flair.

To be or not be is still a question that dwells in the realm of uncertainty. The visions of tomorrow I hold are still vivid and unclear. But today as I stand as a recognised and published poet, author and writer, I extend beyond gratitude to the universe and the younger me who did not give up on her dreams. The fragments of me that I searched for, the abode that I longed for, found themselves on their way back to myself, in the unscathed words and familiarity of the depths of poetry.

No matter where I end up in this odyssey to find myself, in the search of my muse I will let my mind roam, wherever I stride, to hide and draw my querencia, in the world of books and in the magic of my creations I will always find my home

_Hridya Sharma