The Beautiful One.

Dear Sculptor,

I never knew what to write for you or about you when you asked me to. I mean I know it was a passing comment, but it stuck on with me and it was really frustrating to not be able to write something to do with the most important aspect of my life! I mean it's not that I couldn't write about you. I would've just jotted away pages within minutes if you'd given me an ultimatum. But the truth is. I would've never been able to do justice to it that way. I wanted to get it just right. I wanted it to be more from the heart than the mind. I wanted it to capture the essence of you. Not who you really, probably are. But what you are for me. To me. Because I don't think you know that well enough.

As a child I wasn't much of an extrovert (I know it's hard to believe NOW. Like really. But it's true. I wasn't). I'd keep to myself in school. I wouldn't talk much to my classmates. Nor to the teachers. I did my work and looked forward to going home. Back home to my parents. Boy would they like me getting back to that stage again, but back then, they were worried about me. They wanted me to make friends, to be wanted in the social circles of nine year olds. And it wasn't because they were psychotic and obsessed social-climbers-through-their-daughter parents. No. They wanted it for me. They saw how unhappy I was. How I hated going to school a little more than the rest of the children my age. And there was a day when I even cried to them about it. Nothing much changed. But I felt a lot better. They were a source of comfort. Parents always are. You feel like the world is falling apart and bursting at the seams. As if there's nothing you'd rather do at the time but close your eyes and submerge yourself in something, anything that keeps those bad things away from you. That get your stomach in a knot. That dreaded dull feeling that's worse than anything you've ever known. And that's when they're there for you. Those few people in your life. Parents. Guardians. Sometimes just one person. To call whom even just a source of comfort would be an understatement.

Thank you. For being my uncertified guardian. I never quite understood the concept of a cloud with a silver lining. A ray of hope. For me, when something goes wrong, it consumes me. It blurs my vision. I may have changed on the surface over the past few years. But I'm still the same person. I still have most of my old insecurities, fears. You know what's the most evident proof of that? When we're holding hands. My hands shake. They're unstable. But when I slip them into yours. Somehow they stop. It's like they've found a place where they belong. And I'm not just saying this to make this post seem a little more "touchy", but it's true. It's never felt like this before. And then I look at your hands. So sure and firm. So comfortable with what is and not worried about what will become. I think that pretty much defines us. Not so much as individuals. But more of our places in the relationship we share. You're keeping me together. Placing every little part where it's supposed to be and making sure nothing falls out of place. That I don't fall out of place. Like a sculptor possessive about his sculpture. The crooked, ugly, dejected sculpture that he found abandoned, but now makes it beautiful. And he even thinks that the beauty lay within the sculpture. The sculpture would beg to differ :).

It's you. The one with the magic. It's always been you. You've always managed to capture the beauty in everything that you see. That surrounds you. No matter how asymmetrical, unfit, and shabby it is. So what if it's even through a lens. You have a beautiful heart. One that turns everything half as beautiful as itself, once it makes place for it inside itself. I'm probably one of those mildly "made beautiful" things by you. I never knew or thought I was anything worth a second look until you told me so many times that I finally looked at my reflection in the mirror for a second longer and almost believed you.

It's like I've transformed slowly since I've known you. I've learnt to be more of me than what somebody else wants me to be. I'd gladly be whatever you wanted me to be but I stopped trying the day I realized that all you really wanted was me. Just as I was. It was oddly unsettling at first. But I came into my own soon enough. And now I can just prop up my legs in an unlady-like way, or eat like a person who hasn't seen food in days. Or pull my hair back and wear clothes that do anything but flatter me and still know that you'll want me the same amount. That you'll still be the happiest to say that I was yours. And yet it doesn't make me want to stop trying for you. It makes me want to tell you every second of every minute of every hour of every day, that I love you. I love you for being so selfless when it came to me. So much so that I started this post by comparing you to the most selfless relationship there is in the world. To my parents.

We never really grow out of being nine year olds. Throughout our lives, somewhere or the other, we're always haunted by the fear of being unwanted. Of being lonely. Of things not going your way. It's only the scales that change. The emotions remain. But I know I can move on and face all of it now because you give me the strength to. You make your presence felt. It's like I can shut my eyes and be assured that everything is right because even if it's really not, you're there. When you tell me something's going to be right. It really is.

I'm so accustomed to knowing you'll be there that it's scary now. What if someday you're not? Funnily that's something you haven't taught me to deal with yet.

You know that patch of shimmering water and the skyline that we see almost everyday? Can you imagine the water without the ever-changing-yet-constant horizon? It would be almost soulless. The sea itself wouldn't know where it should end. Where it's needed for it to stop. Where it would destroy itself. Or even the sky without the sea. A deep, hollow pit. Where you couldn't find anything. Not even yourself. That's how inseparable you are to my existence now. I just thought you should know. The most comforting and wondrous place I have ever known, is in your arms. And it hurts to turn over on my side, in the middle of the night, and not find you there.

I know, I know, this is probably the worst way you've ever seen anybody express themselves. But it's all that came to my mind. And for what it's worth, I really tried my best :).

I love you IJ. And I always will.

-Your most grateful sculpture.