A 25-point-summary of my college life

1) I remember that girl was once having a panic attack, all her friends around her. I had asked if everything was okay, but hadn’t wanted to intrude any more than that. I haven’t seen her in months, haven’t even heard her name being spoken. And the sad part is I only realized it now.

How easily the world goes on without people we thought it couldn’t go on without.

2) How much joy I had felt just by looking at their faces, just by being among friends, among camaraderie, that feeling of being a part of a team, of something bigger than yourself. The laughter had flowed, behind science and numbers and poems and somehow that had felt like a luxury, like a place I wanted to be at.

3) That time when the then head of department had given us an introduction to Psychiatry and maybe that had been fate too. For once I had felt there was space for me, or had at least felt the need to work towards creating space for myself.

4) September that year felt like spring,

Somehow the cherry blossoms grew with it,

And October brought with it half a promise of a dry summer, of short nights spent in a different realm, either scaling a mountain, or experiencing someone else scale it,

November brought with it butterflies, the kind I hated, but also the kind that left me vacant if they didn’t flap their wings every day.

And now, I am a ghost house, haunted by all the butterflies I’ve killed,

Year after year, day after day of alarm clocks and worrying too much about the lack of happiness.

5) I remember the time I had stood at the podium and spoken. There had been no pebbles than, no leashes, only words that had been graceful as they had been said instead of pushed out.

6) I am more and more tired now. I remember nothing most days.

7) I remember precisely the moment when I had hated those walls and then hadn’t. One moment they bled, imprisoned, another they healed and protected

8) I only saw the backs of that girl and boy. But even without seeing their faces I could tell what their expressions would be. The stars their eyes would hold. How, even without realizing, they were leaning towards each other. How there was both comfort and electricity there, like snow fall on a gushing river.

9) The girl was like dew drops.

How grateful I became for her presence during times I thought my heart was beating so hard it was going to explode. How her voice brought comfort, her smile, sunshine.

10) She saw in the boy, pastels and a chemistry lab. The colors that some times he got washed in both awe-striking and out of place. Like an over-rated artist’s canvas, that keeps catching your eye despite being unimaginative and absurd.

11) 26th November 2019. Sitting there with you directly in my line of sight, I had wondered what it was about you that had me falling so deep. You were smiling, and talking animatedly about something, and I had wished, how I had wished I could be a part of that conversation. How I had wished I was near you.

12) I had a great friend, a constant companion, who I kept leaving behind. Kept wishing to be in another’s company rather than her’s. I hope you all learn to be happy with what you have and not keep yearning for what isn’t meant for you.

13) 27th September 2021. The girl and the boy became my muse. I kept seeing the way he had looked at her, like she was the only one there, like she was home.

14) Maybe they thought me a desperate fool, maybe they laughed at how hard I was trying to fit in, to be a part of them. Maybe they didn’t even care enough to do that.

15) I kept becoming like all the people I used to hate. Like a bad horror movie, in which I wasn’t afraid when I should’ve been. In which all the red wasn’t enough of a signal to turn back until it was too late.

16) I tried to count the number of people there, who would be at my funeral. It didn’t take long.

17) To the teachers who taught not just about the body but about the mind and soul as well, thankyou for giving us people to look up to. Thankyou for being the legends in our stories.

18) To the boy who had a crush on her, though she does not regret not giving you a chance, believe her when she says that your prayers have been answered one way or another. Because she felt the same as you too, how the ground feels looking up at the sky it loves. Only there was no horizon for either of them.

19) What did we do? Where have the years gone?

20) I was angry at all the dramas and movies and books where characters took chances, were brave. All the the people I met, could hardly look me in the eye, and neither could I look at them. We were all just so stuck trying not to be vulnerable, to not be the first to ask the other for the fear of having our egos hurt, but then crying ourselves alone to sleep. Such fools.

21) Do you have any idea how much time we waste thinking and talking about things that are out of our control? Yeah, me neither.

22) Did you ever feel like an extra too? Without a given role, just filling up the dark space so the protagonists could shine in the light? Most of my time was spent wishing I was in different scenes then the ones I was in.

23) 2020. Finally I stopped. And took a breath.

24) “…Lying next to you, is the quietest my mind has ever been, all this distant noise finds peaceful harmony and for a moment I am free to breathe…” (Bianca Phipps)

And somehow you became a part of it all too. With you, I finally stopped feeling sorry for myself. Stopped thinking, long enough to look at you and tell you I love you.

25) If time could bring all those moments, all those songs back, which ones would I choose to listen to?