With her back against the closed window, she gasps for air that seems nary to come easily. The lump in her throat is nothing in front of the panic clogging her senses and waves of pain crashing against her, drenching her in the intensity of the pain that is just the same as the past. Believing her heart's desperate whisper and terming him as a friend did not mean the emotions seeping into her charged words weren't vulnerabilities she should not admit to a person she barely knew. The fear is a pungent thing, compounded as it is from prior experiences that taught her there was no one but herself for her and that her vulnerabilities should be entrusted to no one but herself. Because the world is a bad place and safety is privilege not everyone is given in the confines of their homes. The only place truly safe was within oneself, tucked safely away.
She wraps her arms around herself, trying to find some semblance of comfort. Despite all of this, there is a part of her that just wants to let go, wants all of what is buried in her silence to find a voice. But it is something that is always easier said than done. Letting go, of anything, be it a memory, an incident, a thing, an event, a response, an accident or anything else, it never is easy, be it anything good or bad. Sometimes, it even turns out to be something necessary to hold on, even harder, to.
The weak, desperate girl within her aches for human connection, for love and friendship and acceptance. She aches to be heard and understood. She aches to be told that she is not an ugly caricature despite what she has faced and what she is, the image she sees each day in her mirror and one that screams her flaws at her, submerging her heart in disgust and pity and yearning. She has always and now that she has received a speck of it in his admiration of her work and art, she wants to cling onto it with all her might.
It might be the only thing she might ever get. ( She despises herself for her weakness but it is something that people seldom know, that a heart that has words buried in its folds, awakens at the first listening ear like it is subjected to a siren's call and is doomed baring the unsaid to it. A speck of belonging is all it takes of a connection she acknowledges, for her to begin spilling her own tale through the emotions that surface.)
She does not know if it is a better person or a worse one who would abide by the walls constructed around their hearts and lie protected by a façade, keeping to the isolation they have chosen. She is not that person though because she has facilitated a dent in her own walls all because of her yearning for connections that have always destroyed her in the end. She is toeing the line between being brave and foolish and she has no idea which one she is going to end up with. She is a mosaic put together of broken pieces, which she knows shall shatter if this too was to end up in betrayal again. She is a contradiction in the way her fear raises her shackles and futile, fragile hope and a lilt of belonging weakens it.
Her breaths come a little easier as the storm shifts to her thoughts. It is an old cycle made new with the intermingling of a battle of thoughts debating an entire apocalypse of her existence over a lingering, first of its kind connection with a stranger her weak soul craves to call a friend. In sharing a little of her vulnerability in her words which did not even say so much about her life while only hinting at a certain possibility, she has been reduced to this unraveling. She wonders how the unraveling would be if the words uttered, directly said her tale. She isn't sure she is equipped to handle this every time her treacherous mouth spills her vulnerabilities.
She is at the precipice of a leap. She can either make it or stay put right where she is and she has to make this choice with no guarantee of anything.
But how can she? What is this propelling her like this? Has she not endured enough? Does she now have to kill that part of herself that she has fought to keep just in the fear that these happenings are the precursors of something she knows she cannot even fathom to bear because there would be nothing left of her to?
She has no idea what to do. All the emotions she yearns for are all based on, their foundations laid on the one word that she has lost all of- trust. How can she trust when it has been shredded to tatters by people who were her own family, time and again. But also how can she not because any basic connection warrants it? It is a cycle again, one that she does not know how to break.
She has always been the person who forgives to the maximum extent, trying to keep people in her life, always surviving on being of some need because she knows, she isn't good enough and her worth amounts to so less in the eyes of others hence this is the only way they would stay, even people who hurt her with harsh words and demeaning glances because they are all that she has! She has always trusted easy, never letting her experiences stop her from rebuilding her trust except for the last straw that broke everything five years back. The isolation was a welcome conduit for her devastated self and her workings, after that and she hasn't opened herself to any human interaction or connection ever since, till she saw him and the words slipped past her tongue.
Now it feels like she is back to weakening herself into giving in like a naïve fool embittered and jaded but again not enough to keep to herself instead of behaving like a dog yapping up affection, touched by his admiration and interpretation of her paintings and him understanding them so easily. Like he is not a stranger who might be a criminal for all she knows. Like it is not stupidity, a caution given in all families where it is advised against revealing to a person you barely know because appearances are deceptive and venom colorless. Because weaknesses are always meant to be exploited.
But it had been her own people who had done so. It wasn't a stranger who had broken her. It wasn't a stranger who had clipped her wings. It wasn't a stranger who had betrayed her. It wasn't a stranger who had abandoned her. It wasn't a stranger who had held her down while she screamed and screamed and screamed. It wasn't a stranger who had brutally extinguished her hope and the love she had been nurturing. It wasn't a stranger whom she had escaped. It wasn't a stranger's blood that had stained her hands then.
Maybe, just maybe it could mean that it was okay. She has to let go.
She does. (a little though because there's still a long way)
She takes the leap, feeling her heart beats rise and her hackles come down. There is fear still but there is also a lightness. Because in an epiphany she realizes, amidst the storm of her thoughts, that she had absolutely nothing to lose.
_
WC: 1275 words
Love,
Pratyusha
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Edge Of The Night | ONC2024 ✓
General Fiction[Open Novella Contest - 2024] ONC2024 Longlister Round 1 & 2 Qualifier Prompts: 24,5 Tired of rising from the ashes, when his last reason to hold on falls apart, a man seeking peace moves into a new apartment. What he doesn't expect is to become e...
