Cracked Pink Mirror

Holding a small cracked pink mirror in her right hand she would stare at her bald head for hours. Her lifeless stone eyes would feel focused and concentrated as if they were trying to break the mirror into pieces with their melancholic gaze. Left corner of her bottom lip was swelled with bruises and clogged blood on it. A similar kind of wound could be seen at the center of her neck near the collar bone. Sometimes when she couldn’t stare at the mirror, her hands could be seen scratching her wounds with her sharp nails. It was impossible for her to rest her hands even for a few seconds. That’s what her Mother would say, three years ago, when she would keep herself busy in doing unnecessary chores along with the necessary ones. Three years later, her habits were more or less the same.

Close your eyes and think about the happy moments in your life if you want to end your depression, a voice would echo in her head. She would close her eyes but she could see nothing except the haunting black darkness. You come alone in this world and you have to return back alone. At some point in life, every relation fades away from your life. It is you who are left, hanging alone between the sky and the ground. Just start living for yourself, the voice would continue. She would look around gently and smile. He would smile back. She never was alone.

Thick tear drops would come out of her stone eyes and get absorbed in the pillow when she would yell and cry her throat out. Her feet could be seen rubbing against the hospital bed. Her fists clenched, struggling with immense pain. Eyes, closed so tightly as if they would crack themselves from inside, like her cracked pink mirror. She had to go through the same, everyday for three years. Her cracked pink mirror wasn’t broken yet. He always gives you the amount of pain that you can bear. She sure was made tough enough.

It spread in her blood through her veins, like the same way love spread once. Suffering was the same. The only difference was that love used to kill her everyday while this would kill her once and for all. Waiting for death is awful. Waiting is always awful. Death on the other hand is comforting. It gives life. It completes the cycle.

Love was necessary, so were the departures.

White is life, black is death. Living in the shades of grey is always painful.

She has Him. Who knows He would hold her hand gently and walk her to the black meadows or He would let her rejoin white.

Only in the darkness can you see the stars.

——————————————————————————————————

 

 

 

In My Dreams….

In my dreams I envision a place. A place that is not a magical wonderland nor it is a place where possibilities meet impossibilities. It is a place where I can do whatever I want, outside the walls of my home, and there is no one to judge me. Where cultural narrowness widens up and embrace me in its arms. Where I can breathe freely without heavy burden of boundaries occupying my mind.

Religion is never the problem. Religion is just a code that defines an individual’s life. Culture and traditions are what define rules for free societies, just to abandon them in an eternal invisible dungeon.

In the society where I live, I can’t step outside the walls of my home without a male person with me. Not because anyone of my family forbids me to do so. But because my society forbids me. Once a girl of my age steps outside, people start judging. They start binding their darkest thoughts with our emotions which results in massive destruction eventually. This isn’t happening all over my country. Their are many modern areas where going out alone is nothing like a problem for a girl. Girls appear to be satisfied with these cruel set of invisible rules but I may have a problem as I have proved to be weird in every sense.

When going out with my husband or father gives me a sense of protection and security, it also makes me valuable and respectable in the eyes of society. It makes me feel comfortable and I don’t have to worry about anything because taking my care is their responsibility then. And I admit, I wouldn’t be able to fight with the abnormalities that would have flourished in my society if girls would have been going out alone. This balance in nature is essential and here in my society, the balance come just like this way. Sometimes restrictions are good.

I can’t think about changing the norms because I won’t be able to handle the abnormality in balance of nature. I can just talk about my wishes and dreams. If I don’t like one thing out of many good things in my society, I have a right to express it but still, at the end, I end up loving it more. After all, no matter how many bad traits your beloved posses, you can’t stop loving him.

In my dreams, when I feel lonely, I want to go outside a take a walk instead of siting in my room, crying like a baby. I can’t go out in the morning to jog and I can’t throw out my frustration by running hard. I can’t wander in the city, I can’t stare at the birds and trees while sitting in a quiet corner. I can’t listen to shouting kids while passing by them and I can’t be a part of those silent sea waves that touch the beach. I am free but I feel like I was born in a prison and since then, I have been living in it. I know how beautiful the world outside is but I can’t go and feel it. I want to enjoy my loneliness instead of detesting it.

In my dreams, I just see that when I step out, people don’t judge me. Women don’t roll their eyes weirdly and men don’t start whispering and staring. I just want that people consider me as respectable as they do when I am with my husband or father. I just want that they clear out their minds and eyes of bad judgment and let me do my work. I just want a society where no one feels a need to poke into the lives of others.

We are beautiful, we just need to apply the rules of this society in a positive way rather than being negative. I guess this little wish of mine isn’t that bad. Or may be, that wish will remain in my dreams forever.

 

 

 

I Am That Little Girl Today…..

I am the 8 years old me today. Thinking about the time when I was laying in my dark lonely room and when for the first time I cried, not for some childish wish to get fulfilled but with pain… because of intense pain that I felt in my heart. For the first time when I was 8. When I saw one of my brothers sleeping on one arm of my father and the other brother on the other arm. I stood there beside the door staring at them while he told them stories, of fairies and brave commandos till they fell asleep. I stared at his arms and wished for sleeping there for once, only for once but that wish never got fulfilled. Wishes have been abandoned for me since then. Instead of telling my father what I wished for that night, I came to my room and cried. That was my first real encounter with tears. Tears, that have been my friends since I was 8.

And then I remember the time when I was 15. My uncle gifted me a cell phone and I used to send random jokes to my friends when one day I met a wrong number. That wrong number remained a wrong number for me, besides he would talk to me and I would listen. I never knew his real name or who he was or where he lived. What I knew was that he was the one person in my life who would listen to whatever I had to share with him. Every problem, every change in my life, every reality revealed… I would speak and he would listen. He became my one best friend. Back then, I didn’t know that my society don’t understand or accept this kind of friendship. All I knew was that I have got someone who understands me.

And one day my mom caught me texting with him. She read our texts and all that she understood by reading them, was that I was talking to a boy. That was the first time when I got cursed. At the age of 15. My mind will collapse if I’ll try to think about what happened next but all that I remember now, is a miserable me, sitting next to my mother and staring at her lap with a boiling wish of putting my head in there and crying out loud. But I never was able to gather that much courage to do that. I used to crave sharing my matters with her and cry on her shoulder but never got a chance. I wasn’t strong enough to tell them who I am. I was afraid they would abandon me if they’d know the real me.

Every night is a night in hell for me, since then. These nights taught me how to fake emotions and how to wear a smile in public. They taught me how to collapse in the dark and weep till I gather strength to stand up in the day light. I admit, I am emotionally weak and I craved emotional support since I was 8. Yes, I am selfish because I never got expression of love that I wanted and every illusion of love felt real to me since then. I admit that I am hateful because I forget every other thing when a little ray of love strikes my heart. For all my life I have begged for love and care, I have rubbed my heels on broken stones to get a single second of peace and serenity.

I may have done thousands of sins to get a little satisfaction of being cared, but I am not that bad, am I ? Every time I loved, I ended up empty-handed. I am shedding tears in this very room of mine for 14 whole years and I am tired now. I understand that I am hateful and you have every right to hate me. I too hate myself so much that no one can even imagine. I understand that I screw things up for everyone whether it be my parents or the person I love, or the person that I was meant to love. I am tired. If I get to bear the same pain all over again, I would die. And that pain has started consuming me once again. It would have been better if it wouldn’t have gone at all, in the first place.

I really wish memories could be erased just like that…. with a little push on the button of backspace. And I really wish I could sleep one day without the burden of endless regrets, pain and guilt on my shoulders, In tranquility !

 

 

Wounds That Turned To Wisdom

Credits : This is no dream by Alessio Radice

There was a time when things were different.

At that time, I wasn’t aware how life’d treat me. I was in school when I came home with my first hole. After repressing the pain while I had lunch with my family, I locked myself inside my room and bled for too long.

Then, the next day, I came home with two more holes. One on my upper thigh and the other one on my shoulder. A stinging pain sprout out of them that made my whole body, a wound.

The next day, after returning back home, I left my mother shouting and hustled towards my room while leaving a trail of blood on the white carpet. I slammed my bag on the bed and lifted my shirt in front of the mirror. Half a dozen holes were revealed that dotted my stomach and chest. It was hard, bleeding for hours that day. I needed someone to treat my wounds with gauze. Instead, they were left open. It took half the night to stem the flow of blood and I was exhausted. Excruciating pain was the price of healing.

In the morning my mom made my favorite pancakes for breakfast. I wished she’d have kissed me on the forehead instead of stuffing me with those delicious pancakes.

I returned home that day, more battered than usual, covered with holes from head to toe. I gazed inside my mother’s brown eyes, longing to see the reflection of my holes. Instead, they were filled with every other dilemma our family endured.

I locked my room that day, and stood beside the mirror with blood pit-pattering on the linoleum. The holes looked like tiny flickering tongues. A sucking wound on my back, square between my shoulder blades was hurting me the most. It was too wide, too deep and a gentle touch brought back the memory of my best friend at school. May be that’s why the wound was the worst.

I stood there for too long, dribbling blood on the surface of clean mirror and staring at my face. The taste of loneliness mixed with the sleepless night was bitter. I heard my family talking, my brothers fighting over stupid things. My mother knocked at my room’s door. She waited for an answer but silence was all she could hear while I struggled with my cries, cupping my mouth firmly with both hands. She screamed and called my dad.

I got up, wiped my eyes brutally with one hand while holding a knife in the other. After hiding it under the bed I slammed the door open. My eyes saw fierce expressions on their faces and their lips moved angrily but my ears heard nothing. A shrill sound as if a drill was making a hole in the wood echoed in my head.

After it was all over, I shook my head and locked the door, again. My steps felt heavy as I motioned towards the mirror. The two days old wounds sprang open. Blood spilled out of the crusty scabs that were peeled off.

In the morning, I left the bloodied bed sheets as they were and headed towards school with my head cast towards the ground. I came back that day with more holes but they didn’t hurt that much as they did before. Because, I made dozens of holes that mustered over my torso, to avoid pain from the ones given by others.

“Soon these holes will all turn into scars and they’d be the reminders of how tough I’m“, I thought. The light had started entering inside me, through my wounds.

I bled that day on my bed but the door was wide open. My parents passed by as I lay there, un-noticed, for they had their own monsters to fight with -and I had my own.

“She was not quite what you would call refined.
She was not quite what you would call unrefined.
She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.”

That was the day I promised myself, that I’ll try to fix my daughter’s holes with gauze, made with love and care. But as they say, life is what happens to you while you are busy making ‘plans’.

Every one of us has to unfold one’s own myths.

———————————————————————————

This 695 word story is written for Speak Easy. The task this time was to use “There was a time when things were different” as the first line and to give a reference to a photo that was of parrots. I should admit that, while writing this story, my mind started wandering in my own past and when I read my story now, it seems more like my real life story than fiction. I have decided to leave it unchanged, as it reminds me of my ‘fresh’ old wounds.

This story can be an end, or a new beginning of my writing career. I am getting married this coming Friday and life had been hard on me, lately.

Meet you after my wedding ! Miss me and pray for me, Please. Love you all.