Selcouth

By Teesta Lahiry

She's terrified of change. At the same time, she's terrified of staying the same way forever.

They say when things change inside you, things change around you. Laying on the floor of her room, staring up at the ceiling, her room lit with fairy lights, the very ones she threw a tantrum for, listening to the chirping of the grasshoppers outside her window, she tries to analyse the past few months of her life. She tries to figure out if she had been fair to herself to begin with, if she had been fair to those who loved and cherished and helped her, and if all of it was worth it. She despises the fact that the answer to the first two questions was a simple 'no', but is not quite sure about how her heart feels about the third one.

She rewinds in her mind, the pain, the struggle she had to go through to become the version of herself that she was in at that moment. She remembers the screams she stifled by holding a pillow to her face, the blood that flowed onto the very floor she now laid on, the silent battles she fought with her very own self in that very room, the pain she had caused her friends, who not only tried to help her, but successfully managed to save her life, and yet her heart doesn't seem to be convinced that it was all bad. Somewhere within herself she believed, or rather, forced herself to believe that despite whatever she went through, despite how gruelling it was for her to not give up even when everything seemed to be against her, when giving up seemed like the easiest option, it was important. It was the much required step towards finding herself. It helped her realise that no matter what life threw at her, no matter how much life decided to test her, she would be able to bounce back every single time, she will rise above whatever may bring her down. There is no progress without struggle.

Even if she had a hundred reasons to give up, there were a hundred and one reasons not to.

She was done resisting progress. She was now ready to accept the consistent, slow and quiet process. She was now okay with having setbacks and with the need for do- overs. All she wanted was to move forward. She accepted that as long as she was slowly moving forward, she was not failing. She started allowing herself to be proud of herself for all the progress she had made, especially the ones that no one else had seen. Her progress does not need to be seen or validated by other people. She refused to let anyone have the power to make her feel bad about herself.

She freed herself from the responsibility to prove to others that she was lovable. She started learning.

She realised that she didn't have to be good enough for people to love her. All she needed to do was be good enough for herself, for her to love her. She learnt that being self aware did not mean being able to control one's thoughts, but to stop letting one's thoughts control them. Being self aware did not mean putting a stop to making mistakes, but to learn from them. She learnt that there is hope even when her brain tells her there isn't.

It took her nights of ripping her skin open and torturing her body to stop comparing herself to others, to realise that she was enough. She started admiring the beauty of others without questioning her own. She liked herself better when she didn't pay attention to anyone else.

It took her these past few months of putting herself through one of the worst phases of her life to stop stressing about things that were beyond her control. She started taking life day by day and being grateful for the little things.

She was finally ready to forgive herself for not knowing better until she did, to be kind to her mind. She was ready to be gentle with herself, to accept herself as she was. She started enjoying her own company rather than being terrified of her thoughts. She convinced herself to move on from the evils of her past as she no longer believed herself to be the reverberation of what happened to her, but as that of what she chose to become, as a version of herself which she looked up to and was proud of. She started looking at life as a mystery to be lived rather than a problem to be solved.

The only one she was looking for was herself.

By Teesta Lahiry