Metamorphosis

It is a wonderful feeling. It feels like all the happiness in this world has surrendered to your desires. It feels like all the worries have disappeared. It feels like a grain of salt thrown in Deep Ocean. It feels like I could hear from my heart and sing through my eyes. All my life I was told that it is the most painful feeling for the social animal. All my life I thought I could just avoid this feeling.

Now I can’t and I don’t want to.

It was just four years back, we were kids, holding hands, kissing each other, cuddling in bed and fighting like cats. When we began creating a world for ourselves, we held ourselves firm, to face the most testing times. And we succeeded. But he wasn’t strong enough then. He was like a kid who did not know what was best for him. Or maybe I saw that in him more than anyone could. For some reason I never wanted him to grow. For some reason I wanted him to do it on his own. Without me.

Life is too demanding at times. It asks too many questions. Sometimes more than we would expect and we just chose to not answer them. We chose to love each other despite our cultures, religions and beliefs. We just chose to be stupid. All our lives. And maybe that’s how the world made sense.

On my eighteenth birthday, he managed to light up a beautiful bonfire near the sea and proposed to me in the most awkward way I could imagine. There I realized that he was trying too hard to grow up.  All that he could do was kissing me on my forehead and dampening my burning desires. In the end when I chose to surrender, he clarified that there was a time for everything. Yes he was growing up. Or maybe not.

I woke up this morning and found out that I had slept for a week. It was a strange place. I felt like I was a part of some scientific experiment. I got restless and realized that I couldn’t speak. All I could do was blink my eyes. I chose to believe that I was dreaming.

Sometimes, when you are alone, you tend to recollect all the bad things you had been through. I couldn’t. He made sure that there was nothing bad that could make a place in my subconscious. All he wanted for me was the best in his own stupid ways. Where was he? I wondered.

I tried hard to recollect. I was brought here by my parents. Did they abandon me? No. They would never do that. What on earth is this place? My mind tried to decipher everything that I could see with my limited vision. Everything was a blur. I could see a lot of machines. Beeping machines. Buzzing machines. I hate machines. Can he take me away from here?

Sometimes, pain takes away all your sanity and you start becoming delusional. When I heard them saying that I was losing weight, I was overjoyed. Every girl wants to get rid of that extra. But I began losing more than that extra. I am half the women I was when I met him the last time. He promised to take me to a play on Valentine’s Day. He didn’t!

I couldn’t have hated him much to have left me here alone in this strange world which we never created. This world was never a part of our imagination. I bled through my periods and couldn’t even cleanse myself. They had a woman to take care of that. My self esteem began shattering every time I looked at the strands of hair falling apart from my head. Each morning I was lifted and thrown on a different bed like a toy. I don’t remember much but they did not bother asking me how I felt.

Today when I woke up, I saw hundreds of chrysanthemums around me. Dry and withered.  Not the way I liked them. May be they waited too long for me. The last thing I remembered doing was reading about an insect that struggles constantly to break free from the shackles that contained it. And then it was all a blur. I now want to know what happened to the insect next.

My delusion stopped me from believing that he was sitting beside me all the time, holding my hand, caressing me the way he always did. He didn’t complain about me not fulfilling my part of promise to go to the play on valentines. He was always there. Silent yet loud. I retrospect into the times we spent together. He never kept silent. Neither his promises. What could a girl ask for?

I was always told that death was the most painful feeling a human being can endure. I fail to agree on that. It may be as calming as falling off to deep sleep. It may be as soothing as building a world within. A world with no jurisdictions. A world with no conspiracies. A world with just our memories.

When I decided to subjugate my fears of losing him, I began cherishing the silence that he maintained for two weeks while I slept. It hurt when I saw him wiping off blood from my neck. It hurt when he ran, begged and pleaded to bring me to life. It hurt when he hugged my parents every time they cried. I wanted to hug him, hold him and not leave him ever. But sometimes, life does ask you questions that you cannot ignore. Life questioned my abilities to articulate my emotions in form of physical communication.

In my last moments, when they decided to put the machines to rest, he came close to me and stared constantly into my eyes. All his fears disappeared. Maybe he had been praying to the Almighty to release me from the shackles of an unconstructed world. As my vision began to blur, I saw him coming close to me kissing me on my forehead and holding my hand tight. My heart was opening up and my eyes; closing. The buzzing and beeping of the machine finally muted. A silent moment that I could have never imagined. Blood refused to stick to my body and yet again he chose to clean it with his hands. I had no shame. I had no fear. I had no worries. All I wanted to tell him was ‘Thank you! For this life. Thank you! For this moment’

A last glimpse. He walked back. Smiled and cried.

The insect had indeed released itself from the shackles that contained it.

A butterfly began flapping its wings coloured by love and pain.

Metamorphosis.