Seriously why does it never leave?
It hides lurking in the darkness; the depth of my memories. In a trice, it jumps out of nowhere exactly. No matter how many colors I borrow from the rainbow, no number of sparkle galaxies lent me matter, it comes and erases everything, covering them all in grey and black.
Can you too relate to this one thing?
So, in Hindi we call ghosts, Bhoot. The same word “bhoot” is also used for the past. Now I understand why.
Because it’s so scary. It snatches every smile. It traps every joy. This bhoot fills life with misery, pain and fear. It just never leaves. Infact, you, I can’t say about you, so ‘I’ I don’t think I can even let it leave.
I was having a wonderful day, going around vacationing — lazy mornings, warm summer sunshine, staying near a pond, eating fruits, visiting parks and forts, and whatever. But then suddenly now I’m sitting, and I feel so alone.
I met childhood friends of two of the dearest people who are residents of heaven recently, they told me so many anecdotes, about how playful they were, and the pranks they did. How they both were when they were my age. So many things and memories. I was feeling so happy, all those stories made me so blissful. But then why now, sitting here on my chair am I so sad, so broken, so cold, so lonely, miserable gasping for air as I type?
I am typing this because it feels as if these things will tear open me and spill out if I don’t share. Probably because I’m overwhelmed and overfilled with emotions. I miss them so much, that nothing makes sense to my head. But the weird thing is I just realized I miss myself the most. The time when it was not this hard.
I miss the time when I was not so stuffed. When being around me was not suffocating. When I was not afraid to laugh. I miss when I was not so miserable. I miss me who didn’t know what this feels like. I finally understood today how come I have stopped crying after January. I thought I was getting better. I genuinely felt like there was hope, even for someone like me but, NO!
I thought the last person I said my adios to was my friend who opted for self-exit, in November. And I cried my heart out till January. For the past three months, I felt as if I was finally free. That I can finally breathe. That maybe I should live. That I did well this last year. That I did well by asking for help. For trying to reach out. That, that I am safe. But no, I stopped crying because, even I got fed up with myself. Even I had, had enough of me crying, being miserable.
I stopped thinking about dying. I was happy about it. But it’s today I realized that it’s because in January I had already died. I realized that asking for help was wrong. That sharing my misery with others was wrong. That my pain was disturbing others. The realization my fear of being alone had made me insensitive towards others had slayed the very last bit of everything I was and everything I held onto. So, I just grew numb to myself. I wasn’t sad but I wasn’t happy either. I was just numb to everything. Just a pretentious body moving around.
But today the being lurking in the dark jumped right back up. Now, I stand dumbfounded, in the quicksand. Earlier, I had at least the courage to ask for help, and people I could turn to, but now there’s just nowhere to go. Nor do I want to, I’m just standing still waiting to sink. It feels as if I’m waiting to completely submerge in the sand.
And once I am no longer visible, this quicksand will perhaps turn into a hard rock. Onto this stone will be engraved, “Here lies the insensitive soul of a self-pitying shadow.” Yes, a shadow. Especially a shadow on a December evening. As the temperature starts dropping, darkness is creeping. I’m the shadow of a person looking towards the east in hopes of seeing the moon on a new moon standing near the riverbank, deep in a forest.
Yes, was waiting for the moon on a new moon. As the sun goes down the shadow will keep getting bigger. But then the darkness of night will engulf and erase it. Leaving that person alone, without the shadow. Let’s call this person “I”.
I stand alone in the darkness, now more alone than ever with even the shadow gone. It keeps trying to find the moon in the sky filled with stars. The river flows, the air carries all the sweet forest aroma with it, and cicadas sing a song. But I have my eyes only on the moon. I is no longer conscious of the surroundings, every ounce of I is trying to find the moon.
But the new moon and new beginnings both start with nothingness. But that nothingness carries within itself thousands of possibilities. But I standing there waiting for the impossible, is slowly turning into nothing. As the darkness creeps, I’s features start to melt. Earlier there were eyes, even if gloomy. There were lips and a nose. The hairs kept swaying in the air. But now all that remained was a silhouette. I was becoming a shadow. A shadow without a body.
Stuck to the ground, living a two-dimensional life. I lost all the colors, music, and even the dimension which allowed I to move freely. I with nobody was stuck in the same part of the forest, on the riverbank. Still looking for the moon in the sky. Waiting for a flood to come. A flood would carry me, and I’d finally move, that’s what I thought. A flood did come, it carried I around. I felt that with its movement, it would get its body and colors back too.
However, what happened was, that these waters picked I and then dropped it in the middle of the quicksand. And soon I realized there was no possible way to get out. I slowly and steadily got sucked in the sand. And now rests the insensitive soul of a self-pitying shadow, with even the sky and air gone.
Though even in the depth of darkness underground I still keep looking for the moon. As, to I there was nothing else in the sky but moon. So, all those days above the ground too were filled with darkness for I whose eyes only saw the moon and not the twinkling stars.
