(Ahmad Jalil, 1st year MBBS)

Most people would start by saying something like ‘dear diary’ or maybe ‘dear friend’ or something like that. But not me. I see no point in addressing somebody when the only person that’s going to be reading this is me, that is if I ever read this. It’s actually my therapist’s idea. She thought this would help my anxiety problem. Of course she would think that. She is an ordinary person. A person that tries to classify everything using logic. A person that heavily relies on using words like ‘if’ and ‘then’ to carry out their daily routine. But what they don’t know is that sometimes you just have to let life run its course. Sometimes it is good to process things without actually understanding them. That sometimes, you neither have control nor the explanation.


See I believe that everybody in this world has a particular gift, an ability, whatever you want to call it. Mother nature works in strange ways, but she’s always right. The problem arises when we try to correct her. I’ll give an example here, see a lion is made to devour and kill, right? And a deer is made to be killed by the lion. So if a lion attacks a dear, who are we to stand in its way? It’s the animal’s basic right! Similarly, in human world, there is nothing as good or right. It’s all relative. Everything that we do, is our ability, our gift. The uniqueness that separates us from each other. Nobody has a right to judge anyone. Every man and woman is free. You want to love someone, it’s your choice. You want to hurt someone, again your choice. The courts, the laws, the system, they just suppress us and our abilities. You can’t hang a person for killing someone. You just can’t! If I can kill somebody, it’s my gift and my right to do so. It’s only fair. I mean if somebody can overpower me, then it would be his right to hurt me or even end me.


Now I’ve noticed two things, first of all there are too many ‘rights’ in the above two paragraphs. Secondly, it’s totally and utterly crazy to be talking ,or in this case, writing to myself. The solution to both these problems is to stop writing, but since I’ve started this, I have to finish this too. I hate unfinished works…and business.


Now let’s come to the point. I’m a writer. But that’s not what I think I’m unique for. Have you ever truly lost yourself in something? Like, you were reading a book, and after a while you just forgot where you were and what were you doing, and instead all you could see was that green tree in your novel and all you could smell was the wet mud, which your character in the book was walking on. Or maybe it was you walking? You feel yourself in the book, the words becoming  your life. And in that short period of time, you lose control and let some stranger’s story become your life. Yeah well I’m like that except that I’m not the reader, I’m the writer. And that I ‘literally’ lose my control. I 'become' my character. It’s like an addiction. Every once in a while, a story ‘comes to me’. And then I know that I have to write it. But I can’t ‘just’ write it. No! instead, I have to live it. Only then am I able to pen it down. And if I resist it, it’s like trying to quit a drug that you’ve been on for decades. I just can’t. Its like going into withdrawl phase. That story takes over me, the plot becoming my life. The first time I came to know about this, I have only 11 years old. Frankly, it scared the hell out of me. Imagine sitting with your buddies and talking about cool cars and superheroes and all of a sudden, a story comes to your mind from no where. A whole plot. And you just know that you have to write it, live it. And the longer you wait, the crazier it gets. And after writing it, you feel complete. That's the only way I can describe it. 'Complete'. Of course it's only until the next story finds me. But then as I grew up, I came to realize the whole gift/right/ability theory that I explained earlier. So I embraced it. And you know what? It got me a best seller! Oh, and what do I write? I write murders. And yes, I have to actually do 'it'...