The Archer (or the prey?)

 (TW: self harm)

Tick tock tick tock, the hands circling around the time continuously every day, in this case, I cannot even use the phrase “since the beginning of time” but this phrase seems to fit aptly into my vicious circling of time. My days of bleak life have proved me wrong that maybe monotony can be for one’s entire existence. “Nothing’s new” has become my new pet phrase and at this point, I have said these two words so much that they have lost their meaning. But I cannot complain because I chose to be this way. A life with titter tater of gossiping under the sheets, I realized is not something I want to do. Perhaps I have bored the siting for people who used to acquaint me. There is winter in me now even if my surroundings are burning up in flames, I find myself calmer and distant from the acid burns of this façade world, how I realize I was just as part of that “façade world” a few moons ago. 

Although calm as I am from before, there is a much more real riot in me now. A decision of whether the life I have spent so far was worth it? Is it worth my future? I’m drowned in “what ifs…” even though I firmly believe that every known second was consumed with only contentment. Then another thought struck upon me with whom I had prolonged fights for days for what I have lost count of, has defeated me and I found myself on the ground with a deep cut. “What do I want to be?” whoever asks me this “conventional” question I always find myself answering differently, mostly with convince but sometimes with absolute confusion as if that’s not the only thing I think about. 

My whole life as a kid I spent I had always been assertive and always standing on my tallest tiptoes, a shiny bearing medal for the family from whom I was nothing more than a golden retriever who spread love, emotions say- fear, terror, or even embarrassment feared me. A jovial child with the biggest smile and crooked teeth in the room was tormented and terrorized like acid flashing on its innocent deposition leaving scars so deep that nothing seemed to fix them. From delighted to disconsolate, my patience was tested every day my days went by in a blink of me weeping in my mother’s lap asking “If karma is real, does it also punish kids who love their life?” The time has not stopped though I have, I never grew up but it's getting so old, I just wanted something to hold on to.  I saw my peers laughing and achieving golden stars, thought maybe that was the only thing that could fill this void, and acid burns for what I started to work for gave me a little then retook it all, leaving much more hollowness in my bones. It became like a drug that I had to consume to make myself full again and again and again till it filled up my body whole, if I didn’t, I would be just as same weak kid on the playground whom everyone left even when she was bleeding. For that, I had learned in my days of creaking the empty walls of my room that everything in my life that had to come would always be with pain and strenuous effort. 

So that my life couldn’t get harder than it already was, I left it to my parents to make the biggest decision of it all, I trusted them to know me enough to choose the only right thing for me but they chose something completely differently than who I really was, what did they know about me anyway anymore? But the decision was already set and carved on the bark of an oak tree. For days it troubled me, for when I addressed it my mother gave an example of her marriage “You will get used to it” was not certainly my motto in life before that’s all she started to tell me. The only thing that would come into my life with my own choice also became a hefty burden on me. I spiraled, I rioted, and I made compromises to get rid of what had strangled me tight by the neck but I couldn’t get out of it anyway anymore. 

I started to like it now, I thought maybe what my mother said did really happen, it grew on me like a creeper who still somehow strangled me. I heard people loathing on the things I desired, and applauding the things I hated and the things which I was made to do. I thought I couldn’t get frowned upon anymore, like I was before so maybe my parents did make a decision that would save my life after all. I started to appreciate it anyhow and looked down on things that I was made for. I was thriving at faking my interest so much that I deceived everyone around me with the outcomes I gave, they were not two red circles on my paper but a very proud tall ‘1’ in front.

 One day, I was sitting on my white furnished desk with all my itinerary, books, and aspirations laid on my desk. There was a candle, I lit it to feel the warmth. I felt that my whole body was there burning, and my hand was on fire. There was satisfaction, freedom, and a roll of excitement rolling up my abdomen- but I was caught in the act by my sister, she pulled me back by my shoulder in a hurry and screamed at me. I, then looked at my hand all red almost bleeding, that pain suddenly shot up in my eye and I felt as if my whole body was burnt- I was trembling and shivering. I looked up and I could feel the ceiling falling on me, before any more damage could be done, I felt my hand in ice-cold water which my sister had drawn out for me. “Why would you do that??” she kept asking me, I had no answer to that- I mean why would anyone do that though? That too deliberately? I did not know. She kept asking me, but my answer did not change, she thought I was lying to her but the explanation for this particular act- I did not have. I mean I could have said “Because I wanted to” which was true, that was the reason or explanation or whatever my sister needed. But why would I want that? The next morning I woke, to a knife lying around in the kitchen I thought if it accidentally cut off the ties with my body how would it feel? I stared at it like in a starring contest; it spoke to me in different languages which understood me, and the eye contact was cut short. But now, how do I explain this thought of fearing my own reflection?

As monotony was still my middle name, my life spurted out globs of discomfort every day. Each day passed by and I was getting closer to death, which satisfied me for a second and feared me another. Nonchalant and drowsy had perfectly described me nowadays, the music that used to make me groovy has become background music of the worst TV show ever. 

(Alexa play “No Surprises by Radiohead)