BORDERLINE

Her right foot stuck out of the blanket, and she wiggled her toes to shake off the cold. Thin fingers traced the fur on the blanket, mapping out a secret message no one could decipher. An emptiness, growing steadily, was clouding her senses. It was only seven in the morning and her mood was already marred.

Countless are the occasions where I have felt myself be consumed by darkness, spreading within me. If you think about it, so have you. It is universal, and yet it can make us feel so lonely. It is not an overwhelming flurry of emotions, but a numbness, which is perhaps worse, pulling you into nothingness. You do not know why, and so it is so hard to fight it. You are alive, breathing, but are you alive?

A voice called out, ‘Ann, are you awake? Can I come inside? I want to show you something.’ She couldn’t refuse. Clearing her throat, she replied, ‘Yeah, come in.’ In a swift motion, she sat up, making a feeble attempt at settling down her hair. Her focus shifted to the door when a seven-year-old boy walked in, holding a piece of paper in his hands. Without meaning to, she smiled. Big, innocent eyes, sparkling with life, scanned her room. ‘You didn’t clean up. Ma’s not going to be happy.’ ‘We’ll see about that, Jake. What do you have in your hand?’ ‘Ah, yes. I wrote a letter to Mary. I wanted you to check it once.’ Mary was their neighbour’s daughter, the same age as Jake. He wanted to befriend her, but had been too shy to say anything. ‘Is it a love letter?’ she asked, teasingly. ‘Love? Ew. No.’ The candid look of disgust made her laugh, dissipating the fog building up inside.

If our being is so dismal, how do we continue to bear with this existence? Despite the pain, we carry on, and there are times when we feel pure joy. The smell of freshly made pancakes or aloo paranthas, the sound of your mother humming, your friends pranking each other, an unexpected star in your notebook or a visit to your cousins’ house warms you in and out, doesn’t it? It might take the joint effort of every little positive thing in your life to bring out a small smile, but eventually, it happens. You are alive, then. So, is the knot in your stomach an illusion?

Jake scurried out the room, racing to meet Mary. Ann remained in the room, swinging her legs back and forth, trying to catch hold of a single chain of thoughts from the millions running through her mind. The Annual Basketball Game was today, and she was the star-player. A tingling sense of anxiety creeped up her spine, as it did before each match. She embraced it. Getting up from the bed, she went to get dressed. She stood in front of the mirror in her sweatpants and t-shirt, which she wore to each practice session, tying her hair up into a bun. Assessing herself, she noticed that she looked sullen. She touched the sides of her mouth, and gently sketched out a pathway for a smile, her cheeks and lips following suit. She sighed at her smiling face, nodding approvingly. Swinging her bag over her shoulder, she walked out the room, shouting a short-lived farewell to her family and to the hollowness in her chest.

We scrap our knees, and giggle as the blood trickles down. We cry when our favorite character dies, but are happy that they were with us for three books. We are never completely devastated, or entirely happy. Our resilience finds a way out of any cavern, and our pessimism finds a way back. We exist, in a constant state of conflict between the happy and sad, the good and the bad, the dead and the alive. We exist at the borderline.