There have been many times in my life when i have felt completely and utterly alone. And at others when eveverything that i know everything that i was came crashing down on me and smothered me with the weight of all that i had to be. and none, never more so when i first put pen to paper and discovered the ability to create whole worlds, whole lives inside of me. i didnt know, really, what it meant, to score higest on the dictation test in school in second grade. or to read a sidney sheldon novel long before i should have (i was ten, and terrified someone would find me.) Since the minute i picked up Nothing Lasts Forever i knew i had found the one thing that would bring me peace and joy and LIFE for the rest of mine.

reading. writing. going inside someone else's words, worlds, is still the greatest pleasure i can give myself. having someone get lost inside of me and mine, is the second greatest. or maybe they are incomparable. Yes, it tops swooning over a great pair of manolos. and its everything when it comes to what i want to do with the rest of my life.

see, most people would take my kind of certainty as some kind of wonder. Its not a pleasant thing to know that that one thing you want IS the one thing you are. And the one thing you love is also the one thing you want to be. For me, i knew, i had always known, like osmosis or a vocation that i had to do something with the world of words. I thought being a lawyer would satisfy the craving inside of me to see justice and fair play being done in the world. i was even willing to sacrifice the next ten years of my life to attain this goal. and to this day, when i see a lawyer a pang shoots under my heart. when, due to extenuating circumstances, i wasnt able to become one. The next thing i thought for myself was, again, ironically after reading another Sidney Sheldon novel. This one was called the Sky is falling and the heroine was one courageous lady called Dana EVans. she was a foreign correspondent and she was simply everything i wanted to be. She saved the world and she did it using words.

what better way to use my talents and passion, right? Then i did the course that would have made me a journalist. Heck, i guess i still am in a very minute way. But amidst all these almosts and has-beens, only one thing stuck with me. I took up writing stories when i was nine years old. on a bored afternoon in a place i hated called madras.

and one night, when i lay staring at the ceiling  (Yup, i do that a lot) in my old bed,  i realized one thing. I realized the only thing. The one thing i loved more than writing, and reading was love. And it took a sixteen year old alien king to make me see that. I saw that alien king eight years ago, and i wrote my first book six months after seeing him. Because i couldnt help myslef. and because i couldnt stop.

And i knew. I knew i had found the one thing, the only thing that would make me happy. The only thing i would, COULD do, for the rest of my life. whether i was succesful at it, or i was a complete failure at it. It was the only thing i knew how to do and nothing on earth could make me stop. and that was to be a writer. To write.

Have you ever had equal and opposing forces inside of you pulling at you in two directions? Have you ever had your mind split in two in pain and pleasure? If yes, then you will know how i am. WHO i am.

It is terrible, it certainly is nothing to be proud of that i am defined by what i do. That who i am IS what i do. I write. that is all.

My love for writing and my love for, well, love are so inextricably bound in each other i dont even question it anymore. I havent really. Its not like i had much choice in it, in the first place. Who would choose to be a writer when there are so many more exciting options, so many better, definitely more exciting things to do. And i am not saying I did. Rather, it chose me. Like a benediction or a curse. And here i am.

I never had any choice about the most important things in my life. The two most important thinsg in my life. My career. And My passion. And it seems..fitting, that they are the two things that are linked..connected to each other. That one without the other doesnt make sense for me.

I suppose i sound weird because who thinks of their jobs as having more meaning than giving them a fat paycheck, and the perks of having a cushy job. People dont talk like this anymore right? Who wants passion when you have paychecks and pension funds to look forward to.

I never could understand these people. I still cant. I am not asking you to understand me. or even try to. god knows, i dont understand myself. All i know is..i am actually like Howard Roarke and Dagny Taggart. I love my job because it gives me the power and strength to create something new everytime, i reach for it. Because it fills me with pleasure and makes me feel alive and bleeds my soul at the same time. And i believe, i have no choice, but to believe that what i love about writing and love about love will actually make me a better everything. And that maybe, just maybe, sometimes, you just have to believe.

Even if it hurts you.
Even if it makes you bleed.
Even if you cant sleep or breathe.

because, maybe, if i could find my passion then maybe, just maybe, i have to wait for my passion to finally find me. Maybe, this once, i have to blindly, faithlessly wait. And me being me, that is the hardest thing to do.

But then again, whoever said that the path to true love was easy, right?