An Encounter with Self

Himanjali
Himanjali
Sep 3, 2018 · 3 min read

55, 56, 57, 58, 59…. The number kept changing rapidly 00, 01, 02, 03…
She kept staring at the screen, blankly, without once blinking her eye. She was oblivious to what was happening around her. Even if the world would have fallen apart around her, she would not notice, she was too enchanted by the numbers blinking on that tiny screen. If someone would look at her, they would assume that she is lost in a daydream, gazing into the future, but it wasn’t like that with her. She was focusing on that split second where the number would just change and one would never experience that second again. This moment will never return and it is just going to exist in the past, linger there forever. She thought to herself how quickly all of this would fade away, in a moment of time hundreds of cells gave up their lives, in a moment of time even she will cease to exist.

She usually wasn’t scared of these thoughts (about dying) anymore. And it took a lot of patience and self-introspection to get there. It wasn’t that she didn’t value the life she was given, but she had come to an understanding that it wasn’t in her hand to control this decision. But today a new kind of fear engulfed her. She was rather shocked at this feeling. She was afraid she didn’t believe the skin she was housing. She felt as if her body and her mind are two different entities, having troubles about coexisting together. She didn’t remember feeling like this before or even if she did, she had a very quaint feeling.

She was still reluctant to look away from the screen, she was hooked. She was worried that if she looked away, she is going to miss out on a lot of things, and she wanted to gather it all, not let her limitations stop her from experiencing the world.

The holy ritual these numbers were performing had forced herself to look beyond the obvious, things she had missed in her everyday life and commute. She was afraid of the answers, but maybe she was starting to enjoy the process. It was weird to her that she knew she was looking for answers, maybe even had the idea where she would look for one, but she was worried that she didn’t have the right questions to ask.

At that moment, she thought of something, something that she knew had helped her in the past: poetry. The whole point of poetry for her was to dig beneath the surface, to know herself a little better, dive into the deep lingering thoughts and make sense of what actually worked for her and what she believed would work for her. They were just not rhymes and sounds, it was a tool that would dig up fossils, clear them out and give them a name.

She started mumbling something, random words put together as they flew her mind, she wasn’t worried about them making sense. She was starting to believe that eventually, everything falls into place. The catch was, the universe had a big role in it and her very little although powerful. She just had to keep doing, and doing some more, and then some more till she knew she had given it all she had and then she would leave it up to the universe to make sure the pieces fit where they were supposed to fit. She knew that it is not the way she would always want, but she did not have any power over that decision.

It was something she was very new at but knew the powers were immense: the art of relinquishing control. She was getting there, getting better after all these conversations she would have with herself. She wondered if all of these really made sense in the bigger picture, but she knew she had to keep going in order to find out.

04
05
06
07
08


The screen went blank and all of a sudden she could not see anything. She closed her eyes and tried making sense of what was happening around her. She did not feel in control of anything — her mind, her senses, her body. They all felt different parts floating in space, like the paper that breaks down into pieces and keeps floating till you stop noticing.

The next thing she knew was her alarm ringing for the nth time.

She was anew.


Day 3 of 30

Himanjali

Written by

Himanjali

Learning, Always. Currently: Learning more about self-care

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