I Close My Eyes.

By Aashi Krishnatray

Home isn't a place that feels cosy and loved, it is a place where you feel safe and secure.

Like nothing can harm you.

But right now, this night, laying in my bed, I suppose this isn't home. This is just a house, which was strung together by lies, until tonight. Now no one looks into your eyes and sees your heart. No one even feels like saying- ‘It will be alright’

This night doesn't feel right. And this time, for once I am not going to let it slip by with another horrific incident. I have had enough. When pain engulfs you, there is only one hope which makes you live- maybe I need to leave this place. Start somewhere new, on my own.

I roll out of the bed and peek downstairs. The lights are off. I slowly, move into my washroom, without switching on the lights, I change. From my nightgown to something more...comfortable. I pull my hair up in a ponytail, and rush outside.

My heart is pounding, if I do this, I know how it is going to turn out. I would not be able to return home again. But there is something different about this scenario, I am running away because of what happened to me. What others did to me. Because of the scars, inflicted in my heart, never to go away.

I open my wardrobe, and carefully pull close a stool. I stand on it, and then I find it. The bag.

This has everything. My entire life. All I need is some food, some clothes and... memories. Of my friends who were like family and Dad who supported me through everything.

For me, the idea of life is in the memories. How many you make and spent. The souls you cherish and the hearts you break. That’s living life.

This idea helps me think of Mom as alive. Not here on earth, but somewhere.

I know the idea of afterlife was created because we cannot digest the fact of someone not existing. But life doesn’t end when a heart stops beating. It ends when the person fades away from our memories. When we forget about the souls they cherished and the hearts they broke. That’s real death.

Thus, I imagine Mom as alive, because she is in memories. I see her an angel in the sky.

Twinkling.

I see her happy and alive, looking over at me.

Watching how empty I have become.

I know I will always be the girl who ran away when she was sixteen. Another depressed teenager too afraid to live in her own shoes. Another girl who wanted something more, more out of her life. Another human, overwhelmed by fear.

I open my windows and step onto the thin ceiling beside it, its wide enough to fit both of my feet. Then, I pull out a rope, from my bag. I tie it to the water pipe’s open mouth and throw it down. You know, I really have planned this. Once I am down, I leave the rope there. I don't care if people think that I have run away.

I slowly take my cycle out of the garage. And I pedal, as fast as I can. For a minute it feels good. Like my soul can roam in the sky, and be lost. Like a coin in an ocean.

But soon, the flashes come. Of the friends that I am leaving behind. Oh! How much would I miss our planned Sundays, when we would walk around town. The summers we spent together and how many I will miss. Memories of Dad and I, every day at the kitchen island, struggling to make breakfast.

A smile takes over my frown at this moment. This feels good. The wind is in my hair, the endless bittersweet memories are rushing through my mind. Like a movie in fast speed, just more personal. People are asleep and the town is dead, no one is watching me. I am free.

But soon the wicked remembrances come. Mom’s death and the infinite friends I thought were honest but backstabbed me later. Everything good comes to an end.

A splash of black.

And now the nights feel like suffocation. Your body goes numb, every time you feel their absence. You feel like dying, when you breathe every other air without them in this world. Like losing yourself to someone unknown. Losing what made you stand up when the worst thing had happened.

How do you keep going when the worst thing has happened? I asked my myself this ever day.

Now I know.

Hope.

Hope keeps you going. Maybe in the future someone will look at you in a different way. And it would be different from when people looked at me in school - with pity. How my true friends looked at me- with undying love. How Dad looked at me- with pride.

Hope keeps you going.

Thinking the past, no matter how beautiful it was- will end. All you really want is difference. In the future, no matter what happens- you wouldn’t live like before. You would be different.

And here I am, running away from this life. And I am happy.

A different life.

A glimpse of white.

Gently, I surrender. My eyes are too watery for me to cycle anymore. I get down and walk towards the flickering street light. I stare at it, my bag on my back, Mom's locket in my neck, swaying. I hold it, close to my heart.

I want to forget it but I won't. I want to remember it but I know I can't.

I close my eyes.

By Aashi Krishnatray