Ground Zero by Anika Ghei
A downward spiral journey of a seventeen year old in retrospect
Seventeen: The year I realized bipolar is part of my share of the family inheritance. It’s scary but my mama raised a fighter. I fight through the day. I fight till the word bipolar is a forgotten fact, lost in the vast plethora of truths. I fight till there’s nothing left worth fighting for. Till the remnants of my past life escape to a better place, to college, leaving me to revel in this version of hell, designed exclusively for me.
Sixteen: I’m the sole visitor in my haunted house. The ones who could, left. The ones who couldn’t, stayed. Stayed, and became nothing but an arrangement of bones in my eyes. I’m tired and I’m scared. It’s just that when your hands are closed up in a fist for all your life, ready for a fight, it is hard to open them up, surrender, and ask for help.
Fifteen: I’m happy, but I’m mostly tired. It is the first time I have ever drank the sour, bitter, bile of panic. The way it clenches on to my heart for dear life, refusing to let go. It is the first time that I see cobwebs forming of the strings of words I was too afraid to speak.
Fourteen: I’m as happy as they come. Gratitude is a song I chirp as I skip down the road of life, and it’s nice. I volunteer every Saturday. The twinkle in the kids’ eyes seems enough to light up the few dim nights of my life. I wish my dad would volunteer, maybe this would help light up his eyes too.
Thirteen: My first kiss. My first love. My first heart break. A reality struck realisation that as dear as we hold it, as closely as we guard it, sometimes love is not the answer to all our questions.
Eight: The kids at school call me names. They say I’m fat when I’m honestly just healthy. At least that’s what my mum says. I eat my lunch with a cat, but she seems to have disappeared somehow and I have no one to turn to. My dad seems distant. He’s sadder than usual, my mama says he’s ill.
Three: I don’t understand much, but mom always seems to be crying. I wish I knew what the problem was. I wish it would just go away, even it if meant not knowing. I wish my parents would drop the ammunition, call it a truce and declare peace. We could all use some peace.
Zero: My grandfather refuses to take his medicines. He spends a lot and earns very little. He says he can be the next chief minister of Delhi.
My family used to find this funny, but I don’t know why no one’s laughing anymore.
