We’ll all have this one moment where our basic “right” to live is questioned. This moment is life-changing. This specific moment, usually, can be a child of a plethora of emotions. The moment could be born from happiness, wonder, ecstasy, or simply from sorrow, anxiety, fear, or pain.
That life-defining moment happened to me. But my reaction was like that of a woman’s when she finds out that she’s pregnant with a child from a one-night stand. The feeling was abominable. It shook me to my very roots. No, my child wasn’t just a normal child. It was of a mixed breed — an amalgamation of sorrow, pain, fear, and anxiety.
This moment makes you reflect on your past and makes you wonder if you’ll have a future — dead or alive. It’s irrelevant, actually. Although your mind wanders into the haunting realm of the past and sinister future, you choose to be in the present. You compel your mind to fixate on the moment you’re having — right now, right there — because you’d rather opt for the horrifying, soul-crushing present than the past or future.
You want to freeze time. You want to take this split second and break it into moments where you’d have the ability to stretch it and live individual lives. If only humans had such an ability. If only. But we don’t.
You want to fade away. You question yourself why all this is happening to you. Why me? I’ve asked myself this question far too many times. The people around you ask how it could come to this, how you let it come to this. And all you’re left with is not even an audible reply, just a stream of tears. You break down. You become the burden, the anomaly, the misfit. You failed them. This feeling assaults you. You fall on your knees, gripping your hair, wanting to rip it out of its roots. The rage builds like the storm. There’s nothing to restrain it. No amount of skillful expertise you have inculcated can control it or diminish it.
As the night goes on, you speculate, unable to fall asleep. Was it because of your past mistakes? Was it because of the numerous legs you pulled? Karma? Past life? Being a skeptic of such absurd norms, you try to eliminate it. But how can you? What do we know? I couldn’t predict that this moment would come, washing me away like a tidal wave. But it did. And no one saw it coming. Your speculation gets worse, resulting in numerous sleepless nights.
This moment changes your beliefs, yours thoughts, notions, and opinions. It changes both everything and nothing. Incapable of doing anything to fix it, you let it go. You slip away. You let fate (one thing I believe in) handle everything. After all, what are we to do when life screws you up?
You take longer showers, hoping the hot water washes away everything, giving you a new slate to begin with. The cut stings. The clot dissolves. The diluted blood seeps into the drain. The throbbing head hits the tile with a gentle thud, with only one thought consuming your mind.
Hope.
Varsha Seetharaman is an old soul drifting between thoughts and reality. She’s addicted to the euphoria music brings her. She writes to entwine her heart and soul, both often adrift. She’s always on the lookout for interesting minds, so if you are one, contact her: twitter.com/violet _227