Okay

"Don't worry; you're going to be okay!" Were the first words she heard. They weren't even aimed at her. They were aimed at her mother, spoken aggressively through the teeth of a nurse fighting the urge to rip her crushed hand away from the patient's grip. At least it wasn't twins. No sooner than the words had been spoken, she had been delivered into the world. A world on the rise, on the cusp of a new age. Where Take That swarming the radio and Nelson Mandela walking to freedom existed in perfect harmony with tapered pants and mullets. But not quite with mullets. Nothing ever existed in perfect harmony with them. Into that world she was born and the room waited with baited breath for her first squeal. She wasn't born crying, she was born quiet. Too quiet. It was her mother to cry first. Screaming at the nurse for lying. She was going to name her baby girl Layla, after her herself. The silence hovering in the air put a stop to that. Or so her mother thought. It was at that moment her daughter chose to cry for the first time. A small sound, bursting into technicolour and the baby yelled her place into the world. She yelled her place into the world. A supernova. The cry chimed and her countdown began. Her cry turned her mother's into laughter, and the nurse laughed too, despite being half terrified. She wasn't named Layla, it didn't fit anymore. She was name after the stars.

The next time she heard the words her big sister was the one to sigh them. She was exhausted from holding the bike seat and pushing along her little sister around the cul-de-sac; especially when she wasn't doing anything other than running alongside her with a faux grip on the bike, a glorified, ersatz safety net. So she decided-or rather ordered- her little sister to ride the bike with no aid. "Don't worry." She demanded. "You'll be okay." After some stumbling and whinging on her part, eventually she managed to ride the bike and her sister was right.

It was during her grandfather's funeral where they were spoken to her again. In Urdu, but the phrase was all the same. She was crying, not because she was particularly sad at the loss, she was far too young to understand it at the time. One minute he was here, the next he was gone and suddenly everyone was crying. When she was older she would cry over all the things she never got to say but for now she cried because she was confused, and it seemed like the right thing to do. She was left with her aunt and said goodbye to her mother not realising where she was going or why; his funeral in Pakistan and to mourn of course. She was too young before this but after that summer she would become too old. Hailed as 'mature for her age', like it was a compliment to feel so burdened all the time. This time she remembered the phrase clearly whispered by a well meaning aunty. "Khair hai beta, saab teak ho jayega." Everything was so different now but everything was okay. Different was okay.

Different was good. It was better in fact. Life seemed to keep evolving from that summer, at rate so fast she would get dizzy reminiscing. School changed. Friends changed. Then again and again. Friends lied, but more were made. School became university and friends became him. And he was everything she had hoped and everything she had feared rolled into one overzealous, cocky, muscular package. One quick gaze across the cliché crowded room and the she we knew was gone. Replaced by a young lady quickly realising that this was it. This was love and the worst kind; at first sight. 'All at once and much too completely'. The higher her expectations climbed the more painful the fall became when he hurt her. This time there was no one to tell her everything would be okay. No one to whisper the words to her while she clutched herself crying in the middle of the night, soaking her pillow, keeping her sobs silent so her sister wouldn't hear. The pitfalls of a shared room and big family. I will never be okay, never ever, never ever. Until one day, 738 days later, she was. Walking down the familiar tarmacked tunnel of the train station, she realised it had been a week. A week since she last thought of him, and when she did think of him, it wasn't wistful, nor was she wondering what she did wrong, it was with the indifference only time can bring. Okay, I'm going to be okay.