Lateral Zigzags

Musings of Shree Nadkarni

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Dark Room

Imagine you’re in a room. 

You’re stuck, and there’s no way out. 

The walls are closing in faster than you can push them away and they’re suffocating you. You can’t cry out for help and the walls are made of some sticky substance you can’t get off your hands. It’s infuriating and you’re trying so hard to breathe and make a sound but overtime you open your mouth you can’t talk. There’s no escape. 

Either you’re screaming as loud as you can or you’re silent. There’s no in between. And the worst part is, you know why you’re in there and this process will start again tomorrow. There is no sweet escape of death. It just keeps coming over and over and over and over again until you’re either senile or you’ve lost yourself somewhere in the walls of the room. There’s no fighting back against the walls of the shrinking room because as you wake up and you’re in the warehouse sized room the next day, waiting for the end of the day when you can only stick your head out of the tiny window to try and escape the hell that you’ve constructed for yourself. 

Deep down, you know that you designed your own hell and only you can escape from this room. 

But how are you going to face your demons when you get out? 

You strain as the walls once again touch your finger tips and start to engulf you in darkness. 

[lateralzigzags-blog]

2016

With New Years’ quickly approaching, I think about what I could have fixed in the last year. It’s a constant step of self-reflection, illumination, and a very interesting look into the past to ruminate on the decisions that I’ve made and the things that I could have done differently.

As I finish up my freshman fall semester in college, many questions have yet to be answered. There’s an air of indifference and the laziness that can only come with the holidays, although there is so much more to be done. It’s fitting that I begin my blog in a fashion that I’ve always began work—in a hurry, procrastinating on another assignment, hastily scribbling off my thoughts while beginning something new. For this personal blog, I will try to keep the posting schedule organic for now, and try to update it whenever I have a new idea or story to share.  

For posterity: celebrate the bad decisions because they make the best stories. Celebrate the present. Celebrate the little things in life, because they spur new beginnings.

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Standing at the edge of the world, I look out, staring at the horizon. The waves lap at my bare feet, while my toes anchor themselves to compact sand. The cries of the seagulls bring me back to the present, as I inhale the salty sea spray, while my mind wanders to thoughts of a world where stress is nonexistent.

The sea-wash never ends. It only repeats, repeats. The waves beat on, endlessly, as I lay in the sand and swallow sea foam—the acrid taste of the water keeping me aware of my surroundings. I look once more at the setting sun—or is it rising?

Only old songs? Is that all the sea knows? Soon, my arms are limp from the work that they have done to keep me afloat. I push my face into the current and feel the shells in the ground, of all different shapes and sizes. Struggling to open my eyes, I feel around using my fingers, and touch is my only guide.  

My eyelids slowly open. The salty water stings. The crystal-clear water illuminates the innumerable shells, and they reflect the glancing rays of light cast by the sun.

From the horizon, I stare into the light, which grows darker as the sea grows deeper. I stare out into the abyss—or is it staring at me? The sea-wash never ends. It only repeats.