The Art Of Slipping Through Your Eyes

By Manishika Shukla

If there was any trait that I fell into a love-hate relationship with, would be the ability to dissolve in the crowd.

The ability to fade in the tensest situations.

I was the least ‘opinionated about’ person from my class. The type of person who is known only by a handful of people who live in a close proximity to him. Nobody paid much attention to my presence or absence, I would not attend the classes and still slipped from everyone’s eye.

Few people tell me that it is the same way for everyone, the way it is for me

No! I’ve seen people being a active part of their classroom activities, getting themselves included in small discussions on the class that lead to a worthless conclusions. I’ve seen people do more better than I am doing. Not everyone is the ‘left out’ person always. 

Being not much ‘opinionated about’ in the class though usually seems more on the positive side by sometimes as I believe, it’s the dark corner of a room that though you know has no ghosts sitting there, but still would avoid for the ease of comfort. Until it comes to you, it always seems fair!

“Nobody hates me here”, saying this comforts my soul by little bits but how long will I pretend to be unaware of the reality that if nobody hates me. Nobody loves me as well! All that is in my case is the lack of curiosity that people have when the topic is about me.

Among all the headlines and underlines, I was always the midline. Cutting the class into two segments.

But do people acknowledge the knife that half cut the apple?

The best ones known for the best, the worst ones known for the worst. All in between somewhere resided my little self trying to creep away from reality.

It’s not that I don’t need attention. I always would have the desire to be loved, but never to ask for it. Never would I ever let anyone know if I too lived a life as simply complicated as theirs.

Although sometimes it seemed to be pretty good. Having no negative responses from anyone, because when the matter rose about me, they’d rather not speak. To make it more precise and summarised, the thing that only seemed something unusual to me was that not even the gossip girls try to talk about me.

I might be a good person to few, but only to the few who witnessed me first hand. Who did not bring the scene of having me to speak up. I don’t hate speaking, I hate being judged for it.

Maybe in the butterfly garden, I was the ladybug. Bright in colours, dull in catching attention.

Tomorrow if I were gone to a faraway place, on some distant land which remained as unnoticed by the world as I am, I’d love to stay there all by myself, all alone!

By Manishika Shukla