Catch-22.
Everyone’s asleep, except for me and my almost sane mind. I sit on the railing of my balcony, tired from hosting the housewarming party, but yet, far from ‘wasted’, unlike my flatmate and his friends who lay behind me, inside the room like dead bodies and in weird positions.
I close the balcony door from the outside for a finer conversation with myself. It’s always, you know, stupid. I am stupid. I cannot resist to smile right now as I let the thick clouds escape my throat. Every time I look at those clouds getting away from me, it reminds me of how I’ve been running away from almost everything inside me.
“You’re living a good life, what else do you need?”, people tell me.
Sometimes, I think yes, I don’t need anything else.
Why am I worried so much?
Why do I want to be sad and depressed?
I don’t have a problem with my family nor do they have with each other. My academics are going well, no problem with that. I have a lot of friends. Nothing is actually missing. I am normal. But still these clouds, they’re uncomfortable.
I listen to the stories and the instances people tell me. They tell me about their troubles, about their problems. They tell me how brutal life could be, how bad a situation can be. They tell me and it’s funny.
My problems aren’t big enough. I don’t have daddy issues, I don’t have mommy issues, they don’t have any issues with each other, my life is good. I get enough money from home, there’s hardly any day when I’m completely broke, my life’s good.
The thing is, nobody ever asked ‘me’ about it. It’s not their fault anyways, it’s probably the way I portray myself. It’s all between me, my roles and my clouds. It’s not that I suffer from depression but honestly, I’d love to.
I’d love to tell people about it.
Because, apparently, being ‘Normal’ isn’t empathetic enough. I’d love to not listen to “You won’t understand!” anymore.
And now, my eyes don’t see the black sky anymore, it’s coloured. Red, blue, violet, yellow, dancing. I’m probably elevating and it’s divine.
It is probably the 3rd time in 19 years that I met myself and it’s always been stupid. Thinking about my ‘small’ problems and hence giving no shit about them.
Paying and asking for attention to my ‘bullshit’ issues because someone would always have a worse issue. People are suffering and I’m not. Social problems are not my fight.
My life is all about these clouds, their shapes, the higher they take me; and it is about the rains running down my cheeks to my jaw and finally falling down and never reaching the ground.
I’ve never been found and it’s better this way.
But what I’ve found is that the hardest goodbye was always to myself.
-Apoorv Mathur.