Headspace (Book 1) ✓

07. blindfold

Because along with perks, there are drawbacks of being a human, too. You know what you're doing, but sometimes, it is not easy to figure out why.

Life had taken a lot away from me — my mother, my best friend, my will to live. But I found myself here, still. Living, breathing, existing. As if some force was holding me together, as if someone wanted me to stay. Now all I had to do was wait to find out my why.

My lips were cracked due to the cold wind and they stung slightly when I gulped down a few sips of hot water. My limbs felt lifeless as my heart constantly pumped the pain through my nerves. Agony surged through my veins, making each moment pass with more discomfort than the previous one.

Maybe humans are like hotspots or amplifiers. They attract any mood that comes in their range and start reciprocating it. Sometimes, with more intensity than the source. Just like all it took me to get into this melancholic headspace was a crumpled page - merely a few words.

I looked around the house to make sure dad wasn't home yet. The silence that greeted me on my arrival was enough to answer. He was never home anyway, though today, his absence was more of a relief than longing.

Bending on one knee, I pulled the drawer of the bedside table and took out a first aid kit. As if my body was nothing but a mass of involuntary muscles anymore, controlled by some unknown force, I found my fingers moving gracefully as they pulled out some cotton from the bunch. I washed my scratched knee with a disinfectant but the pain didn't make me flinch at all.

What I witnessed today played in my mind like a broken record, on loop. Because just after I finished reading the page thrown in the trash, I heard a sound that would haunt me, probably forever. As Lyra tossed and turned in her bed, I saw the way the tear that left her eye glistened under the yellow night light.

I knew why it was so painful to see Lyra cry in her sleep, scream and fall off the bed later. I realised why it was so difficult to hide there and watch helplessly as she tried to get up and pick the pieces of her broken self again. I understood why my heart clenched, tightening inside my chest when I read about how her mind was brewing thoughts of suicide. And none of it was just because I loved her.

It was because — just for a fraction of a second — I could see myself in her. Struggling, surviving yet smiling the next day so no one could notice the pain.

A tear betrayed my restraint and fell down on the scribbled lines of the notebook, smudging the ink on the paper. Not that Lyra was going to notice that anyway. But what shook me to the very core, tugged at my heartstrings and shattered my heart into a million pieces was when I saw what Lyra must have done. Though I couldn't see her notebook, I could see the dented imprint on the page thrown into the bin. It was enough to understand what she had done.

The exact space where I had written Lyra's name was scribbled over. Over and over again with a bold strike-through. As if witnessing her name made her sick in the stomach. As if the life she lived was nothing but a mistake she wanted to forget. As if she was trying to wipe away and cancel out her very existence.

The mere thought of a lifeless Lyra — picturing Lyra and blood together — moved something in me. All of a sudden, I was more alert, as if my brain was racing with the newfound knowledge. Looking down, I noticed blood trickle from the torn skin on my knee and felt the pain course through me; physical as well as mental. But the pain I was feeling wasn't mine. The way I fell flat on my knee while trying to climb down from the pipe wasn't what caused me this anguish.

It was love — eternal, unjust and unconditional.

The notion of being unloved, unwanted, undeserving. These are indeed very strong feelings; probably even stronger than being loved. Undoubtedly, it is what makes you want to give up on everything positive and take a turn to change your life. Rather, take a turn to end your life.