Pick up my pen.



Since my early years after I learnt how to read and write, I have been in love with books and words.
In school, literature was always a favorite topic and soon enough I started writing for the school newspapers. I often wrote opinion columns mainly because I was too lazy to research and write in depth articles on other topics.
I developed a rebellious streak when I turned 18. My mother says it was late puberty but in reality that was when I began to understand the world around me.
Rebellion had taken roots in my country and it was at war. This was an ideological and class war taking place and it had begun to question my own place in society. Where did I belong? Whose side was I on?
These answers did not exist in the community around me.
I was sent abroad to study that same year. My parents couldn’t afford to pay for my university but they believed that my chances at finding better opportunities in life didn’t exist in Nepal anymore. The country was getting deeper and deeper into war. Once abroad I started working hard to be able to finance my life and my education. The impossibility of raising funds soon dawned on me. As an international student my fees were ten times higher and legally I was only allowed to work twenty hours per week for low paying jobs on campus. Soon I couldn’t afford the university and became illegal. This failure sent me on a downward spiral.
I got deeply involved with drugs, alcohol and the party lifestyle. My lack of deeper analysis of the situation in the world and specially my country kept me angry; I did not want to partake in this unjust world and unfair society. I spent many years lashing out at my family, in my eyes they represented all that was unfair in this world and I no longer wanted to be a part of them.
As the war raged back home, my personal war raged inside me. I stopped writing a long time ago. The substances I was abusing had already numbed my voice.
It was a moment, a day, a realization or maybe a certain person I met that inspired a change. Suddenly I was at a demonstration to Free Mumia. I looked around myself and saw power; the power of people together with a unified voice. I met artists, musicians, poets, activists, writers, all with voices so loud it made my head spin. I began to read again, to have discussions, to try and find my voice back.
Today it’s been more than ten years since I started that journey. I have been educating myself, utilizing various tools to express myself; understanding the power my voice has. I never want to numb that voice again, make it silent again.
When I got an email from Mama Cash about World Pulse I was joyous. It was finally my time to pick up my pen again.

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