In the afternoon, when everyone is asleep, I sit by a window and listen to the echoing cacophony of crows.
In the evening, when the streetlights get switched on, I sit by a window and stare at their haloes of light.
At night when you can still hear the distant rumble of vehicles, I sit by a window and count the seconds passing by.
When I go to bed, I don't fall asleep. And when I do, the last thought to consume me is,
"I want this to be the last."
My nightmares are an eventuality and a constant comfort of ice-cold hands on feverish skin.
In the morning, thoughts I do not want haunt me. They jab and leer, and I think,
I spend time with my family. I talk to my friends. I study and answer questions and attend classes. I eat and bathe and dress up.
The mundaness of it is something that used to choke me, when it wasn't something I had harnessed and learnt to tame.
"I want this to be the last".
Have I tamed something I can never enjoy, just for the sake of remaining sane?
A year or two ago, when my eyes used to shut at midnight, I would think,
"I want today to be the last.
When I fall asleep tonight, that is not what I will think. Instead, I will repeat the same lines I have been telling myself for quite a while now.
"I want today to be the last.
The last day I spend in this haze.
I want to wake up tomorrow.
And finally say goodbye to the mist that is always clouding my vision."
Somehow I have given myself a bud of hope, although I do not know if it will ever bloom into a flower.
When I speak with the ones closest to my heart, and they listen and I do the same, the flower is watered. When I take care of myself and when I pay heed to my needs instead of burying them, the flower is fed.
I can feel the petals starting to open.
Words float around inside me without any shape or pattern. They form phrases, sentences even, but then fall apart again and again as I fail to rescue them.
They are ceaseless creatures, swimming in me, holding on to each other for dear life.
And I am afraid that I will not be able to save them from drowning.
What will be left of me then?
When what I think and feel will die inside of me, and not bleed onto paper? When my words will breathe their dying breath buried somewhere deep inside me and never be uncovered by another?
What will happen, when the bud that has slowly been blooming into a flower, does not get the light it needs so desperately?
Will it wither away like all the other times?
Little by little, you will be able to see its petals droop, then its colour fade, and finally it will fall off and merge with the soil as if it had never really been there at all.
I know how to save the light that the flower needs.
At times, it is so hard to look inward and see the words piling up there. At times, I wish I could just pluck them up one by one, like tearing petals off of an inconsequential flower, a forgotten game of "he loves me, he loves me not".
But these words are not single flowers. They are daisy chains, hydrangea clusters, sunflower patches. You cannot take one without ruining the other, without leaving behind a hollow.
You cannot just save one of them.
But I have taught myself to swim.
I know what I have to do to save the light.
Even though I have never known the flower to bloom before, I can try.
I will not give up on hope again.
