Imposter

 You always wish to feel something in your bones, until it's all you feel - your bones. You may wonder what it's like to be around people or have friends. I sometimes wonder if I was just all alone. My body seems heavy as if it’s tied with chains to the ground, and the world is eyeing me, treating me like a savage. Maybe- maybe I am one, I am a savage, I am a freak, I am stupid.

“But what if you’re not?”

No, I definitely am. I can’t even function properly, I can’t take a single breath without feeling like an imposter in my own body, and something is growing, crawling all over me. I feel as if I share this breath with a parasite.

“God, don’t be so dramatic, I am not that bad.”

And she’s here again, that is her- my parasite growing all over me. Although she resides outside my body physically, mentally, she is all I feel. Look at me, what has she made me into- a cry-baby who can’t even function or do basic things.

Lavanya snaps, "Yeah, it's cool, blame me. When it’s your mom who makes you feel this way. I always tell you to just leave that fucking asshole–"

“Shut up, Lavanya, just shut up. You don’t get to talk about my mother this way, however, she is-“

“‘However, she is?’ Wow, she makes you feel the worst about yourself, and you are defending her. See, that is what’s wrong- you don’t have a fucking backbone, you are just too weak to stand up for yourself. Sometimes I think, How are we even friends?”

“You are not my friend.”

“Please, spare me the drama. No one even looks at you, babe. I’m literally the only one who puts up with you.”

I burst out, “I made a mistake, I thought you were my friend. When you first came—I thought, finally someone who doesn’t think I am a weirdo. But god, you made me worse, Lavanya. I hate you, and I wish you would just leave me alone, forever.”

“I will go, but then no one will listen to you.”

There’s silence. She’s finally gone; that generally never happens. For the first time in weeks, the air didn’t burn my throat, and I felt calm. One, two, three, my heartbeat is finally normal. I see my sister across the room in the hallway, studying and cramming up for her test, and then there is Mom, standing over her head, stroking her hair like she’s her most prized possession. I wish my mother also loved me as much as she loves Didi. I want my mother to stroke my hair too, I know I can only get that if I score good marks. I have to study- I do study, but its never enough.

They say ‘villains are not born, they are made.’ I might not be a villain, but there’s one inside me. I was not born with all of this. I was normal, as my mother would say, but when I was 9 years old, something happened.

I have always been a shy and awkward kid; I never had friends, and my dad saw that, so he was my best friend. He was always the one who picked me up from school because I used to get bullied on the bus. My mother thought that bullying would make me tough, but it just made me weaker, so my dad used to take me every day on his shoulders, and there was always Didi too. It was always three of us; sometimes, there was Mom too, but it just never felt like she was. She was always bickering and sighing, and we just ignored her. With dad, I didn’t have to say anything; whenever I felt lost or sad, he always understood me and helped me understand. I was normal, and I was okay because I had him. But on one unfortunate day, it was raining and as usual, dad was supposed to pick me up, me and didi I were waiting for him for almost an hour. There was a call on the reception from my mother, “your dad got into an accident-” I couldn’t hear any further than that because I knew where this was going. It felt like someone just kicked me, beat me up, and left me on a rain-soaked cement road, and there was blood coming out of my ear- suddenly, I was deaf.

I couldn’t wake up out of bed for 2 weeks. I had a fever- it was going up and down. After a while, when I went to school, I was performing really badly, my teachers understood, but my mother didn’t because Didi was still the same, not emotionally but academically. I was then diagnosed with depression after 1.5 years, which I knew was always there, but I swore to my mother that there was something more. But she told me it’s bad enough that I have depression and told me not to make up new excuses to delay school.

There was definitely something wrong with me; if my mother didn’t see it, my sister surely did. She saw that I struggled to sometimes even wake up from bed; you could even call me Gregor - Kafka’s little bed bug. I wanted to just end all of this. I was 11 years old, and I was thinking of just killing myself- no 11-year-old should think that, ever. She knew this was a sign of depression, but something wasn’t right. Obviously, it wasn’t; I was going crazy- there was paranoia of sounds that seemed to pull me back, there were distortions in my vision, and gloominess in my head. Sometimes when I managed to sleep, I could hear someone whisper my name. My therapist said that’s how I was dealing with trauma and gave me sleeping pills. But they won’t work either. Wow, I was screwed. I knew my mother would scoff at me, so I reached out to my sister. Every night, my sister would sleep with me, holding me tight and protecting me.

One day, when my sister went on a sleepover, I was again sleeping alone. This time, I was done with the voices controlling me. I meditated and I chanted every shloka my dad taught me- I would be the one controlling these voices this time, and I succeeded. But I felt alone, just as soon the voice of emptiness was engulfing me, I heard a voice- it was deep yet comforting. It was no other than my parasite- Lavanya. She came from the silence I begged for — and now, she’s the only one who speaks.