Whispers of Laughter and Tears: Masturbation

I haven’t been able to write even ten sentences together for nearly a year. The only thing I managed to write during this time was a letter to my counselor. Right now, I’m typing with a fractured distal radius in my right hand, hoping life might become a little clearer. Writing in a personal space has its advantages—it helps organize thoughts and worries. But there’s a downside too: two lines of praise can inflate the ego. The habit of writing is one thing, but the habit of not writing brings its own challenges. I see the pain of not writing reflected even in my friends’ posts. Neither I nor ninety percent of my friends ever believed writing would make us great. Instead, writing brought a kind of inner peace, a sense of fulfillment we kept chasing. But that greed has ended up like the owner of the golden egg-laying goose—leaving us empty.

My hand can’t even lift a weight of 100 grams. It hurts. Amidst that pain, while typing this blog, I feel a faint hint of the labor pain of birthing something. Or maybe it’s like the soreness in intimacy after a long break—a pain that brings a certain satisfaction. Sumon asked me to write something about winter for his blog. I couldn’t. In the past, I would have run away from such failures, but now I’ve learned that admitting them brings relief. Sumon is my friend, a friend with boundless energy. Sometimes, I even envy him for it.

So, I tried to write something. Here’s that piece. Sumon wanted prose, but all I can call this piece is self-indulgence: