Life Is A Name Unfamilar To Me!!
Life is a name unfamiliar to me, its sound is something my ears cannot understand. My mouth cannot pronounce the name anymore, I don’t know when it happened but, the train we boarded together met an accident. we were separated like a child from a mother’s womb. I waited and waited for life to come back. I searched every station, I looked at every tag.
A group was standing with names I’d left. They smiled and waved. I ran away and fell. It felt like yesterday when we shared our secrets, Life laughed with me Just when I thought everything was wrecked, a hand was offered for me to stand. I didn’t want to but I knew falling is not an option. Not when you have people around who care for you. It’s a war, a struggle, a hell within myself I have to battle with everyday.
It’s not about someone who broke my heart, it’s not about someone who broke my trust, it’s not about someone who took my love for granted, not about someone who left me without ever giving me a reason. this battle is about me, only about myself. it’s about me surviving the hell I have somehow created for myself, or somehow people around me created for me. it is not about you if you are reading it, it is about me and myself alone.
The hand was bruised but who am I to complain because I am bruised from head to toe. Nothing makes sense anymore, not to me anyway. I reach for the hand and stand on my feet. But I see how badly it is injured. Life used to train me how to walk even with these injuries.
They were healing and I could see the scars even leaving. But, not anymore. I see them bleeding, badly and I don’t have any ointment because it was always Life’s job to take care of me. Now that Life is gone, I don’t have anything. I don’t even know who am I, never saw my reflection in the mirror because I could see myself in Life’s face.
The hand offered to me is by someone I thought I had left in my past. I don’t think naming is a good idea because the moment we put a name to someone or something people start to judge and the last thing I want is to have all these stares. Nobody is looking at me except for the group I ran away from. Funny how no matter how hard I run from them, they always find a way to me. And they are here to protect me. One of them has a bandaid that they are applying to my feet. One of them is patting my back and just when they know I am about to burst into tears they embrace me and tell me it’s okay to cry.
I don’t realise but the knife in my hand pierces my skin until they take it away from me. “You don’t need to hurt yourself anymore.” One of them whispers and I realise this is not what I want. I don’t want to hurt myself. “Help me.” I want to say but my cries for help have always been ignored. Nobody takes them seriously when people think that is just a cry for attention. “I am too lonely.” Is what I want to scream but I know I cannot.
How many times have I opened my wounds and got them infected? Too many times. So, I don’t do it but I don’t know how they know. They know the battles I am fighting. We board the train and sit in a cabin that is too familiar. It feels like a string of memory that escaped and turned into a reality. It’s at that time that I see there are four of them and one of them is a child, no more than eight. One of them has long hair, thick curly black hair.
I used to have those once, but not anymore. The other has a sparkly smile, it reminds me of how I used to smile back in the day. But what day? It feels like the day was centuries ago. One of them is someone I don’t recognise but my heart tells me I know them. I don’t know where the train is going but all I see that I can see my scars sprouting. They are not healing but creating something else, something I never saw happening. I am seeing small jasmine blooming on my scars. How is it possible? I don’t know but then again, whatever happened to me was also not possible. Who thought I could survive even when Life and I separate? But here I am, breathing. You don’t call it living now, do you? I don’t know these people I am sitting in a too familiar cabin with.
But somehow my heart tells me everything will be alright because they won’t ever harm. I don’t know why but I believe them. It is not until we enter a darkened tunnel that doesn’t seem to end that I realise who they are and why this cabin looks familiar. It is not until I am in complete darkness that I realise how my reflection in Life’s eyes was too eerily similar to the child sitting across me. How the smile, life described I had back in the day, is too uncannily alike to the one sitting next to me. And how these thick curls were the ones I had, long before they gave up on me and left me for good.
But who is the one sitting next to the door, guarding it like they know what is about to happen? Why do they have all the bruises with Jasmine that are still sprouting on my body? And how come they have those brave eyes, like ready to kill the entire world if anyone dares to harm even a single hair on our body? It is not until I am in the darkness that I realise I am on a road to nowhere with myself. Because it is you who is there at the end right? People may come and sit in the cabin for a while, and some might stay till the end but the one who won’t leave you even for once, is none other than Yourself.
