Misery and Men

I suppose out of all the amazing, talented and positively unique kinds of women that fill every inch of the world; I fall in what most would call the "unremarkable" category of girls. 

We are the girls you see everywhere- in bookshops, cafes, buses and trains. We are the girls you hear being talked about every time you open social media. We are the protagonists to your "relatable" romance novels; the curly haired, black-eyed average looking beauties who aren't eye-catchingly attractive, but pretty enough to stare at when the rest of the crowd looks plain. We are like every other girl you see- Not ravishingly gorgeous, but passably good looking. Not with an enviable body, but with curves enough to appreciate. Not a genius by any means, but intelligent. Not extraordinary by any standards, but ordinary with a spark that remains under wraps. We crave academic validation to sate the little kid in us who only ever learnt to base her worth on good grades. We clutch our storybooks to our chest in an attempt to escape reality. We are confident, the world bows down to us, even if begrudgingly. We don't shy from bad decisions; and our soul sparkles with a warmth that people who have just escaped cold hailstorms crave. We refuse to let the frostbite get under our skin, we are summer, and winter wrapped in a person. We are as remarkable as everybody.

Every girl you see around is me. 

And despite Un-remarkability having been one of the most dreaded adjectives through almost the entirety of my teenage, I have realized lately that there's a strange comfort to be found in being like everybody. No matter how glorified Frost's "road not taken" might be, there's a certain relief in walking down the worn-out street that leads to your parents' house. It simply means you aren't alone cruising through this world; but you have fellow sailors too, both ahead and behind you. You aren't the only one feeling all the hurt and pain that you are, you aren't the only one making the same stupid mistakes as you are, and despite what it feels like on your worst days, being you doesn't lead to utter and complete doom. 

Or at least that's what I told myself as I sat on the train this Monday, on my way back to campus after practically fleeing home midweek last Wednesday. Yes, ladies and gentlemen. Me, the woman who proudly flaunts off her badges of supposed bravado to anyone that is willing to see, boarded a train to Kolkata after her classes on Wednesday, and in the truest interpretation of the word; I fled home. 

If I were to fabricate the truth a tiny little bit, this is where I should've launched into an elaborate description of exactly what caused this turnabout of events, but to be blatantly straightforward about it, there wasn't much of a reason except that I got overwhelmed. The week hadn't even begun, and by Tuesday, I had already gone through a gigantic mental breakdown which included holding back tears through an extraordinarily painful chemistry class, followed by rushing to my room and sobbing my heart out to hideously discordant music playing in the background for an hour and then sitting vacantly, staring into space through a subsequent tutorial and a lab class. 

I suppose the sadness would still have had been bearable had it remained anonymous, but I have always been infamous for being thoroughly transparent. And I hated the concern I saw in everyone's eyes; because in my then twisted vision, it looked a lot like pity. I knew I could put up a really convincing act of being fine if I tried a little harder, but the crying had rendered me so completely exhausted that after a while, I forgot to wipe off the stray tears that welled up in my eyes every few minutes. Neither did I have a plausible explanation to provide to people when they noticed the moisture spilling down my cheeks, so I just remained quiet as almost everybody stared at me with a mixture of concern, cluelessness and confusion. The feeling was positively mortifying, and the thought of the questions that would inevitably start once I gathered myself the next day left me petrified. I decided to chicken out. Using the excuse of there being a holiday for Eid on Thursday, I rang up my parents and told them I was coming home, skipping Friday's classes.
Home brought along a sense of composure and a few much-needed reality checks from Dad, who as always, figured I was somewhat distressed and instead of talking about it directly; sat me down one afternoon after lunch and proceeded to tell me anecdotes from his life about how exacting revenge isn't a loud, brash process; but a quiet and composed one. I listened on intently with my chin on my knees, almost curled up in myself. He ended his speech with something that stuck to me:

"You have been trying to hit sixes at every ball, sweetheart. Don't do that. Let the bouncer ones go with your head bowed down. Be patient. Don't try to hit when it isn't your time; you might end up giving them your wicket. Hold on till the other end gets tired. They will, eventually, but you won't since you have been saving your energy. And when the right ball finally comes, hit a sixer they remember for ages." 

Minus the somewhat dead-on-the-face cricket analogies, his words gave greater clarity into the rising bubbles of indignation that were blossoming in my chest. I recollected the incidents of the last day, and the fact that a bunch of esoteric jokes and a widespread perceived notion of myself which I knew to be untrue were the only two things that had reduced me to a sniffling mess, felt like a version of my character that didn't quite sit right with me. The true version of me I had so intricately crafted since high school wasn't this. I hadn't always been this. I had been the one to mercilessly cut off the people in my life who disturbed my mental peace. I cherished and treasured the sanctity of my own mind, and even as a precocious teenager, I had dealt better with "mean friends" than I apparently was doing at eighteen. The realization was a bitter pill to swallow, but it cured a few doubts, the effects of which would be visible from the next week. 

The rest of last week passed by in a blur of relatives, visits by family friends, lazy Sunday mornings and an impressive amount of productive studying. And soon; perhaps a little too soon, I found myself on a train back with my two best friends, a tad bit scared about what waited for me back in the campus, but mostly with something that felt like a lot like the fabled female rage simmering under my chest. The rage, I realized, came from not having the right to be angry because "technically", nobody did anything wrong, but you knew in your deepest subconscious, they knew exactly what they were doing when they did it.  It was a strange sensation; I didn't know what ensued as a result of this rage, or what I was to do to extinguish it. There was one thing I knew however: I had to go to class, at least looking better than I felt. It was a feeble attempt at something completely nonsensical; I didn't know what dressing up was supposed to achieve, but I was fixated on the resolution. Thus, on Monday, as soon as I reached my hostel, I rushed over to shower despite there being a bare half an hour left for class. I dressed up in a long red Kurti I had brought from home, put on my favorite pair of jhumkas and a Bindi, and while it didn't fix much, the mirror said I looked pretty, and that instilled a tad bit of confidence in me. I left for class. 

By the time the day ended, there were a few things I had realized. One, ignoring certain people really gets a whole lot easier when there's a latent anger simmering for them under your skin; Because a) you aren't just trying to ignore them at that point, you are trying to ignore an inevitable fight and b) If the anger stems from something that borders on sadness, you are too busy trying to avoid their eyes since that would inevitably cause you to burst into tears. Two, Taking power back into your own hands is a really simple process; one that almost entirely consists of practicing indifference, even if it's feigned. Three, I was really good at feigning indifference. I always had been; only at some point, I had forgotten about it. And thus when I heard a chuckled comment about my sleeveless Kurta  asking "You aren't cold?", said with a snark that almost reminded me of the infamous skirt scene from Mean Girls, I turned around to face the person in question with evident irritation on my face, asked her to repeat what she asked, which when said the second time around didn't hold quite as much conviction, and then replied with a simple  "No" before turning back to my work. S had noticed how the interaction went; my comeback had been subtle but effective and she gave me a small smile as our mean girl awkwardly reverted back to work after not managing to get her time of the day out of me. I realized with an imperceptible shiver that I had finally grown tired of playing nice. It was a scary realization, and the evident change I was choosing glared at me in my eyes. This wasn't the first time she had been snarky about the things I wore, and each time I had either laughed it off, or simply walked away. I had snapped back for the first time that day, and my heart thundered in my chest at even that minute interaction. This wasn't something I was used to, no matter how rude I was perceived to be. 

The high from standing up for myself felt a lot like an adrenaline rush, and I gladly rode off of it for almost the rest of the entire week. Someway through it, I realized I wasn't doing it now out of anger; A lot of which had died down as the hurt and pain had subsided, but I had now started doing it out of self-preservation. I was tired and sick and positively done with feeling sad after almost every conversation that ensued between us; ones that almost always ended up with a strange side of "him", that curiously only emerged before his friends, insulting me in front of mine. A version of me would've interpreted it as a twisted form of interest, I suppose, but not this version, for she valued her unperturbed mental peace more. And I finally saw the pattern. The ever-twisting pattern. The pattern I had fallen into unbeknownst to everyone, even myself. The pattern of always giving a little too much. And when it all blew up in my pretty little face, nobody was to blame but myself. Because nobody asked me to scratch and bruise myself to give; I always did it of my own accord. And I always ended up asking myself the same question when it was all done and dusted, "Is giving love, something I consider so essentially and fundamentally a part of my character, really that bad a thing?" The answer was never conclusive. I liked loving people. It gave me purpose; it gave me the conviction that I was indeed a good human being. Perhaps it was a Machiavellian way of making myself feel better about myself. The fact that I could give love so selflessly was my sole shining lantern through the dark abysses of my million flaws. Perhaps it was a congressman way of do-good so the faults of my character never came into the spotlight. But at the end of the day, the fact remained that Loving consisted of me. I loved with the innocence of a child, I loved with all of myself. I didn't love with restrictions and inhibitions; I would pick flowers for you a week into knowing you, and bring you food when you are sick even a year after being with you. I didn't distinguish between who I loved and the way I loved; I loved everybody with a strength, which while often not reciprocated, filled crevices of my soul. And while that non-reciprocation stung, I sleep a sound's night sleep, and perhaps that is the only thing that matters at the end of the day, doesn't it?

And thus I avoided all of them like the plague. Despite my fervent wishes, this didn't escape everyone's notice. After I had all-but stormed out of the library one night when he made an impromptu entrance to talk to his friends and returned only after he had left, one of his pals subtly brought up my exit in a conversation. I dodged his questions as well as I could have, mostly because I knew all too well that if I had actually started talking about it, a bitterness which nobody deserved would have been evident in my voice. 

And then the week went on in a rush of activities, and soon Friday was there. It was Mess Day in college, and the halls had been decked up in celebration for the grand feast that awaited us for dinner. We sat in together, and an hour passed away in the blink of an eye, basked in the glory of laughter and good food. A dance floor had been set up right opposite to the mess, and as we exited dinner, filled to our throats with incomprehensible amounts of food, the DJ started playing Bollywood bangers that caused skipping footsteps all around. What started out as just a slight tapping of heels and a little sway of hips soon turned into crazy ass dance moves, and by the time I had collapsed on the sidelines, exhausted, the dance floor was brimming with enthusiastic first years still dancing their heart out without a care in the world. I stared at the grinning faces with a wide smile as something similarly warm glowed in my heart. Before the happy embers could die down into the ashes of the hollow feeling that always seize me in the midst of loud parties and crowds, I left for hostel, shooting my parents a call on the way in an attempt to ground myself a little after all the chaos. 

 I stayed back for the weekend which mostly passed by in a haze, except for an impromptu rooftop visit with a friend. As almost everybody from our college would know, the department roofs of campus are officially inaccessible to all students. Yet the math department's roof remains one of the most consistent hangouts of all pupils(and some professors, who go up for an occasional smoke), owing to the splendid view it provides, coupled with the general animosity of the place. It had long been my escape; almost since the day one of my friends  had taken me up on it for a stargazing rendezvous. It had been locked down since this semester began, and I had not been up there for quite some time. Hence on Saturday, when this friend of mine (To make this easier, we will name him A), offered to take me up to the terrace for some fresh breeze while I struggled with an assignment on partial derivatives, I didn't find it in myself to refuse. We went up, tiptoeing our way through the Math Department, and after shutting the terrace door behind me, I inhaled a deep breath of the sunset breeze as A lit a cigarette. Languid conversations ensued, and since this was one of the very few people I could speak to without actually speaking to, we sat on the staircase in silence, staring at the orange sunset.

We watched as the skies colored yellow, and subsequently red, and the apparently stupid questions took a turn for deeper meanings. His voice sounded through the smoke ring after a beat of momentary silence,

"Which would you rather give up? Hands or legs?"

"Legs. I need my hands." I replied immediately without thinking.

"What do you need your hands for?" He asked, staring straight out into the horizon.

"To write" I answered in a whisper, and my voice immediately faded away into a gust of wind, unquestioned.

Adios. 

Signing off, 

Shaona