Through the blur

THE VEIL OF CHILDHOOD

I have been living in a metro city for two years now. It's tough to pinpoint the origin of my dislike for this city, or it might just be the life I am leading right now that has made me more of a crisp surface rather than the molten inside I used to be. I don't have animosity towards any person or place. I do realise it's all me and my doing that keeps me awake at night. But I wasn't always this obnoxious. Situations change, they teach you and in pretty gruesome ways pull you out of your fairyland. Though I wouldn't say mine was one ever.

I used to be the kind of kid who even after repeatedly been told not to do so, would sit with any stranger and talk endlessly, tell them my life story without filters. I was pretty naive back then. Though that kid is still in there, but she is scared to bones to come out and see the daylight. Not every person in my life has the ability to pull her out and make her feel at home. I fear I might lose those few people and I would repeatedly say it's not anyone else, it's all me. I don't know how my story started but somewhere down the line, I would make you understand completely how the events shaped me as this dejected and unlikeable character, what made that innocent kid run away and hide in solitude.

I like spring, the cherry blossoms and the overpowering fragrance, the feeble sunshine, the cool breeze. It reminds me of someone, one of those people who make me feel at home. Someone I would want to cross paths with again. Someone I would want to be there when I am at my most vulnerable. That someone, I trust. My story starts with one such spring but before I even knew that someone existed who would make the spring sunlight feel warmer and cosier.

My story starts in one such spring but long before I met him. Being a studious kid back then, I had no clue what the others in my high school were involved in. I used to think that the mere distinguishing fact between people back then was whether they were good students or bad. Yeah, I already told you I was naive. I wasn't ever able to lift the veil which separated me from others because I was oblivious about its existence. I did know that I didn't fit in with most of the groups of our school, that they made jibes at me behind my back. I had heard some really nasty things, had cried myself to sleep at nights. But despite all these, I was a blabbery and cheerful kid. It was tough to fathom why kids were so different from me, why I couldn't be one of the cool kids.

My glass of self-pity was shattered when I realised that I might be the only kid back then, others had stepped up on those ladders and hastened themselves to grow up. That said, I still feel it was their decision but it breaks me to think that I could have helped people back then by approaching them but I rather chose to wobble in self-pity. My friends never opened up to me because they had a fear of being judged and I made it worse by not trying, not approaching them. I wasn't bullied exactly, even if I was, I never considered it bullying. That's what they said, it's growing up. I wasn't bullied but everybody out there was bullied either mentally or physically. But they might feel the same about their situation as I feel about mine. Not bullying but growing up. People believe that whatever wrong is being done to them, they deserve it. Nobody deserves to be abused, let alone in high school. But has the morality ever stopped people from turning into beasts? No, they bend the rules to suit themselves.

Schools which are considered to be the sanctum sanctorum of knowledge lacked to provide the kids with the most important knowledge about humanity, about wrong and right decisions, about failures and coping with it. They didn't teach us to grow up. Mere kids back then were involved in substance abuse, sex scandals without even realising it. Many of them are broken beyond repair from inside. And in midst of all these whirlwinds, I was the kid oblivious of everything, thinking I was being bullied.

 So naive of me, isn't it?

A.roy