One Year Older
I remember finishing my bachelor’s degree, like it happened last Sunday. I remember flying to the Netherlands soon after, with ambitions, insecurities and fears. Both my own, and those of my parents. I remember venturing into a completely new environment in a strange country, whose language I did not speak and whose culture was obscure to me. I remember trudging through the coldest winter I had ever experienced, tackling depression, agony, anger and personal resentment. I remember failing a course for the first time and the rush of overwhelming insecurity that it came with. I remember alienating myself multiple times. I remember the elation that rushed through my veins when I saw the days getting longer. This meant that I was closer to getting back home! I remember the ecstasy I felt when I looked at my city from the airplane that flew me down here. I could barely contain myself, and I became more restless. I felt like a captive. I just wanted to escape, into my city, into my people, into who I was before I left.
I see people flooding Twitter and Facebook with posts of how miserable the years have become, about how each month is harder than the last, even of how people would rather die than complete another semester. I can’t help but despair; how I wish people took a step back and reflected on what they have, where they started, what they’ve achieved and the amazing friends they’ve made. As I speak of making friends, I wonder how someone I knew so little has become one of the closest people to me. Being an introvert has its (dis)advantages, one of them being the fact that it takes a long time to completely trust people, to connect with them emotionally and intellectually. But as I have come to realize, there are always exceptions. People who shatter everything you think is real about who you are, and make you believe again. In yourself, in happiness, in kindness still existing in the world. You find yourself questioning the foundations of what you’ve built your personality on. Is that all it takes to bring down the walls I’ve so carefully built? To penetrate the shield that I use to trust as selectively as I do, and to not reveal myself in the whole?
I continued to reflect on this, as I was waiting to pick her up, a year after I had last been with her. What kind of sorcery is this that I have been victim to, that leaves me vulnerable? It is extremely discomforting, but I don’t let it show. I like what’s being done. I like being blindfolded and sent into new territories. I’ve been taking safety precautions and performing damage control for five years now, it’s time I took a leap of faith. Just as I was thinking this, I watched her run towards me in little steps and hug me. It felt like redemption, to be honest. As if something I once let go had magically found its way back to me. I felt like I’d never been gone.
We drove around the next night. We went nowhere in particular, and I think that made it all the more beautiful. I reckon that could be one of the reasons I like the dark so much: that most people are asleep when it arrives. There are some souls, such as mine, that look forward to the still and quiet that it is composed of. The sense of belittlement when a canopy of stars covers everything in sight, the humility that is restored as they fade in and out, as a reminder of bigger things happening that will forever be elusive to our intellectual grasp. I remember her constant repetition of “I don’t want to go home!”
She doesn’t see her eyes light up when she talks about her favorite books or characters. She doesn’t see the rush of laughter that overcomes her, or the melodies in her cackle to a joke only she finds funny. She doesn’t see herself looking at me with all the care and love in the world. It makes me wonder how so much can exist in someone so adorably small. What a sad plight it is, that there is no mirror to make people look into when they are at their truest! If only my eyes could reflect, if only you could see yourself the way I see you. You’d know that even if you let me see the worst parts of you, even if you let me read an exact transcript of the thoughts in your head, even if the very existence of my being is under threat, I wouldn’t abandon ship.
I remember her head feeling heavy on my shoulder, as she slept, but it was so adorable that I hardly moved. I remember her chest going up and down as the cadence of her breath filled the silence of the night. I want her to remember that I am not always in a very good place, but that she always helps me. Even if she doesn’t understand what I’m going through or what I’m talking about, she makes me feel like I’m not alone. Because I know there are people who say all these things don’t happen. I know these will all be stories someday and our pictures will become old photographs and we’ll all become somebody’s mom or dad. But every time I’m with her, the moments are not stories. They happen. I look at her, and she is so beautiful. I see the moments when I know I’m not a sad story, I am alive. And I see the lights on buildings and everything that makes me wonder, when I was listening to that song on that drive with the person I love most in this world.
And in those moments, I swear, we are infinite.
Here’s to being infinite, Sharon Prabhu.
