The void on the page
My safe haven where I feel content
My affinity to this place began when I was as naive as any other 10-year old. Pencils were being replaced by fountain pens. Cursive writing had been enforced. English literature was kindling our imaginations through poems and stories. Grammar was being taught so we could stitch together words into alluring phrases and sentences.
It was just another day in my English class, where we looked at our teacher with wide-eyed wonder, waiting to read another story from our literature book. Instead, the teacher walked by our desks, handing out a blank page to each of us. A title of sorts was inscribed at the top of the page. It soon became obvious, that I was supposed to be writing about the topic that had been printed.
I stared into the blank page, wondering how I would fill it up (we were also given two additional pages, in case we ran out of this one!). As the teacher hovered over us, hawk-eyed, I felt an unsettling feeling encroach upon me. It was as if, I had been thrown into a white space — with no instructions, no text book to refer to, no peers to discuss it with — and I was expected to somehow fill up this void.
Left with no option, I sat there, pondering, reading the only printed words on the page, again and again. Sluggishly, I began to drift away into a space, where my imagination was starting to crystallize. Words began to ooze out, forming sentences. The crisp nib bleeding ink, filling up the blank page. I was soon writing about the world as I saw it through my naive eyes, unaware that it is merely smoke and mirrors.
As my naivety withered, the blank page took me to places far and wide; where there was joy and sorrow, love and hatred, pride and humility, comfort and agony. It provided me with a space, where I could put my thoughts down, free of judgement. It enabled me to understand this world through the words that I read and wrote. It constantly amazed me — how a few words, put together, could reverberate with gravitas.
Needless to say, life is full of ebbs and flows. Becoming a slave to my mental illness, unaware, I gradually struggled to put words onto the blank page. Recalling words became an arduous task, preventing me from forming pithy sentences. I constantly strove to go back to my world of imagination. The one I had made my safe haven. The one where I could express myself. The one in which I felt content.
As ten years passed by, I slowly tapered off from the grasp of depression — thanks to medication and therapy! Ever since, whenever the pen touches the blank page, I find myself lost again, in the enchanted world. A world in which the words fall like drops of rain. I catch them, squeeze them into the sentence and pause to listen to the rhythm; speculating if the poem rumbles like the thundering sky, bringing a shiver down the readers’ spine.
Although this short story is a personal one, I’d like to emphasize — that we tend to forget who we are and the deepest passions we hold. We need to find the very essence of our being, not the one the world expects us to be.
Stigma around mental illness is one of the main reasons people hesitate to seek help. Reaching out for help does not make somebody weak; it is the first step of healing. It is finding your true self. It is being content. It is thriving.
© Neha Jayaprakash 2019
