Lessons from my best friend

A couple of weeks ago, I did a spontaneous trip to Madison. The exciting trivia is that I went alone. I didn’t plan anything; the only thing I knew was that I had only a window of 5 days to spare between the end of the semester and the beginning of an internship and that my enmeshed relationship with procrastination could result in 5 days of being a sloth bear who finds food crumbs in her bra at the end of the day.
90% of my friends have travelled solo and they’re addicted to it like its meth. They’d narrate tales of wanderlust, the bonds with strangers, the embrace of mother nature, and how food tastes better and how their adventures had enriched their souls. Uff! They are the most wonderful stories. It sounded like an unbeatable, fool proof way of become a 2.0 version of oneself and well, the ‘FOMO’ hit me hard.
Very hard.
I wanted to get a taste of this esteemed crystal blue, so I boarded the Greyhound and then another bus, and then another bus till I finally made it. Now I won’t ramble about my itinerary for each day, because there wasn’t any. My hostel wasn’t bustling with young hipsters who were playing the bongo in the common area and the streets weren’t flooded with sights to see with a map.
But I did have some interesting meetings.
My most favourite thing to do in Madison was to sit by the lake. I have an attachment with water. I love staring into its deep horizon, hearing the waves, see the fishes cruise in clusters and watch the sun set in all its shy glory. I can do it for hours at a stretch and funnily, I couldn’t remember the last time I did it. In fact, I couldn’t even remember the last time I sat in the company of only my thoughts with no book, laptop or phone to influence them. And the more I sat in the company of the gremlins in my brain, the more friends I added to this party. I never got bored as a child and I believed that everything around me was my friend. By that, I mean EVERYTHING. I’d sit with my lego set for hours and create a story about a city where the police were my friends and there were criminals out there that we had to put in prison. I was convinced that ripples in the lake were a group of friends who were whispering dirty secrets to each other and that the branches of trees were one big family with parents, siblings and grandparents. I thought that the Gods chose the accurate shade of blue for the sky, every morning; and that the sun used it as a canvas for the vastness of its orange hues. In fact, I was confident that the paper boats I left in puddles during the monsoon were going to be lifeboats for ants. I’d imagine conversations in my head, create languages for each of these species and stitch stories about their woes and victories. And at the end of the day, I’d narrate all of this to my 2 best friends — my dog and my imaginary best friend at the age of 4 which was my reflection in the mirror. I was quite the weirdo but I had the vividest imagination. And the more I read the tales of the famous five, the secret seven, the enchanted woods, Malory towers and everything Amar Chitra Katha, the more friends I made. Then I started going to school, and friends became living, breathing human beings. My stories were derived from real experiences, events and people from my life while the mirror became a tool to spot upcoming pimples and the unavoidable unibrow. That 4 year old weirdo got lost in the norms of socialising, fitting in and being a part of ‘the circle’.
Becoming reacquainted to my childlike wonder that stared at fireflies and watched clouds move in pairs taught me that we are a reflection of who we were as children; that we are defined by stories of our childhood and the foundations for strength we built when we were the most vulnerable. Growing up as an only child, my imagination was my best friend, for the longest time. It was a depiction of me and everything I believed in. It wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns, it was also a lot of bitching, nastiness, thinking how nice it would be if the girl who was the class monitor had cockroaches in her lunch box just so I could laugh during recess. Raw, uninhibited, unapologetic. Even today, my mind can never be silent or blank; it’s usually a conference of 300 people which is mostly a bane than a boon as a functioning adult. It’s also heavily influenced by judgment, it’s enveloped in the fear of being shamed and laboriously filtered by the norms of right and wrong. But sitting by the lake, in the company of nobody in flesh and blood, I thoroughly enjoyed listening, visualising, living everything my mind was conjuring.
It’s funny, isn’t it? That we seek validation, encouragement and even acceptance from the world for all our identities, when as a 2 year old who could pronounce only 3 syllables at a time, worldly approval was the last on our priority list. I, honestly don’t think I cared about what Reema aunty would think of my ability to pronounce lipstick as ‘eeeshtick’. I am not a preacher on ‘why care what the world thinks?’ because it’s immensely easy for me to toil at the dilemma of ‘am I doing well enough?’ in a heartbeat; but putting the world on mute, listening to condescension, judgment, expressions of anger, laughter, love through all the stories I have lived and all that I still imagine taught me that I will always be a depiction of how I see myself before the world determines its way of seeing me; that raw, unapologetic and uninhibited in thought translated to bravery in reality.
So I didn’t have the textbook solo traveller experience to etch my stories of wanderlust or befriend the wonderful strangers I met over there, on facebook to create lasting friendships; but in the absence of familiarity and in the nothingness of priorities, I met my best friend, again.
