being this being

To Know Loneliness

Darling Debby, 

I'm going to start by describing my surroundings, just because it is the thing to do. So here we go - the sky is a dull sort of blue, nearing cerulean, a depressing sort that I find it rather relaxing. Then there are the clouds, in shapes that honestly, are indistinguishable to me, being the kind of person that left her creativity behind in the age of braces and taylor swift fantasies. The breeze is rather cold for a Bangalorean summer day, the ground lacking the rich brown leaves that often adorn fictional floors. Instead, I find cigarette butts, election pamphlets, and polythene bags, which to my dire dissapointment, do not offer a satisfactory crackle on every step. My thighs ache because I don't usually drag my ginormous self home from school by foot, and prefer to be escorted home in my parent's car, while I listen to the same Lorde song on repeat, and pretend to be in a music video. Typical. Okay. Back to the environment. A man stares daggers at me while I jump n' skip my way past his house, which is okay because I probably will never see him again. I stop at the heritage store for some ice cream, though I was supposed to eat healthy, owing to a developing risk of PCOD my endocrinologist warned me of. If your wondering if I 'have' an endocrinologist, well no, I don't. Thank god for that, because the lady was a total nuisance. She kept telling I needed to 'get some excersise' and 'eat more veggies'. I get that all of that stuff is good for me. But you're talking to me. Have you seen me? Probably not. Well that explains why you would ever think it was even possible for me to wake up early, and go for a jog. You are taking about the woman who called her sister on the phone to get the remote placed on the coffee table, while seated in a 'compromising' position, right opposite to it, on the couch. You are talking about the girl who went to sleep at 9 in the night, set an alarm for twelve in the afternoon, woke up, switched it off , and went right back to sleep. Moreover, I wouldn't call myself fat. Just curvy. In all the right places of course. 

I finally see signs that I am close to home. The curly haired aunty whose name I never seem to remember waves at me, despite my deepest efforts to stay unnoticed and act invisible, and I wave back flashing my most energetic smile at her, which isn't saying much, but was good enough to make her cross the busy road, endangering her life in the process, just to ask me how my twelfth grade was going, though I was literally two days into it. The first question that popped into my head was how she even knew I was in the twelfth grade, or how she even knew my name, questions well legitimised by my trologdytic nature. I lied to her, telling her how it was great, not stating facts like - 'school is a hellhole' and 'I really just wanna go home and feast on this ice cream while watching the 3rd episode of the 4th season of My Little Pony', but instead said things like - 'It was so nice catching up' and 'hope to meet you soon'. 

Emotionally, Physically and whatever-other-possible-ways-to-be-tired-ally, I trudged home. Owing to the fact that it was late in the noon, the silence seemed to be growing, getting louder. I hate silence. Silence leaves me alone with my thoughts. If you knew the inside out of my head, like I think I do, you'd know what level of torture that amounts to. This is one such moment. My mind starts going back inside the classroom, back through a terrible day. A day that makes me hope that these are my worst days. Stop - I tell myself. I don't want to go through the same vicious cycle of heart-ache inducing, painful thoughts. Whatever.

Finally, in what seems like forever, I manage to pull myself through the front gate and onto the porch. Then, I ring the bell rhythmically several times, pretending to be Nucleya Reborn or something like it, though I can hear my grandma begging me to stop at the top of her voice, while she rushes over to the door. Ah. The feeling of home. Of indoors. Of safety, hope and happiness. 

For more of an introduction about myself, to start with, I am Oshana. Yes. O-S-H-A-N-A. Its like my parents didn't even try. Sourced from the significance of my birthdate, the 25th of March, which was the date of celebration of a Festival we Keralites celebrate, god knows why, every year. I most definitely didn't live up to the level my name put me on in the Malayalam Calendar, which is kind of disappointing to my parents, but I didn't ask to be named this way. In fact I'd have it any other way. Or maybe not, because I know my parents are capable of worse. 

The day had been terrible. The pain in my stomach caused by the severe emotional tornado in my head hasn't ceased yet. I drag myself into my heaven of a room, grab my Mac and snuggle into a huge, cosy comforter, while typing in the web address of youtube in the search bar. I watch a little bit of this and that, including 'top 10 celebrities you didn't know were broke' and a few 'these vines cured my depression lol' videos aside a few 'BTS in America in 5 minutes '. My mom got in some snacks - fried pakoras and hot tea. These are the moments that make my life worth living. Often, I feel kind of guilty about revelling in the loneliness that Always put myself in. All my life I have been taught that humans are social beings. Every time I try to be social, in the human definition of it, I fail terribly or succeed for a while but give up due to exhaustion, hurt and insecurity. I'm kind of sure this is an only-me thing, which is why I never took the trouble to express myself to anyone who meant anything to me. Sometimes I reach the breaking point, and pointless thoughts seem to fill my head, in the most literal sense. They they seem to fill up my upper body, choking me in the process. These feelings are so real, that I actually have trouble breathing in such moments. These are the times when I reach out, to almost anyone. Often I end up spilling my emotions out to people who don't give a fuck about me, and have probably already judged me, and shall demean my emotions over a cup of pumpkin spiced latte with a friend, making mockery of what almost killed me. 

There are times when I feel like I'm all alone. Utterly. Butterly. Deliciously. Alone. These feelings overpower me even when I am in a room full of people. All sounds seem to turn into a mere haze in the background, and my eyesight seems to be hindered by a mental veil. In actuality, I can see and hear everything clearly, but my mind twists things to make me feel like Im watching a movie, and a really boring one. I find it almost impossible to respond to anyone that tries to make conversation with me and end up saying things like - 'flbrgtstt'. YES. Its true.

To pin everything down to a one thing is almost impossible and highly impractical too. But I have of course, managed to develop my own analogy in my painfully abundant stocks of alone time. 

One year ago, I was perfectly fine. I had everything, that mattered to me at that point going well. My grades were exceptional, I had friends and everything seemed just perfect. I never thought twice about whether my friends really cared for me, or if the people around me liked me. Sure, I did have moments of insecurity, but it was almost never about friendship, because honestly, I didn't care at all. 

Then this year happened.

I experienced what I had never before - it made me realise that I could be happy, and not just fine. And then, just like that, all of a sudden, everything was snatched away, and this time, I knew what I was missing, and hence felt its absence.

WHATEVER.

I feel inexplicably guilty about dwelling over my first world problems in a third world country like mine, which is probably justified.

Since this is all I have to say for today, I shall bid you farewell until we meet in a painfully long 24 hours.

Arrivederci