That Day The Sun Shone Gray
A light shines bright enough at each terminal of our lives to lighten the dark but make the betwixt gray
It was December when it all started. I felt meek for I couldn’t make it, not even barely, while everyone thought I would have mastered it. I was rushing faster than I ever did, with all my breath, with all my energy but it was still insufficient. I still remember when I saw the others making through it while I just lacked behind, my incentives started to fade and I became slower. A voice spoke for me, just in time, I regained my spur and I made through it but at the same state as the kickoff. That day wasn’t a defeat; it was the commencement of a series of failures.
Everything seemed dim but not blurry. My fate knew I had to burn, feel the heat of failure, of being a losel. Nothing had to be blurry, it was a tenet — I, in no circumstances could have deviated from the rage of losing. It was a compulsion that I had to endure it all, secretly. To be true, it was heavy, and heavier was the pain to hide it especially when it all happened a moment ago.
Going back was not an easy task. I knew a thunderstorm was raging and that it would be profusely destructive. To my astonishment, it wasn’t just massively destructive, it was catastrophic. Like the ground expunged itself and the world had to fall down, all at once. Here’s a part of it, the most significant one–
“On my way, a crow had fallen down from a tree — where all its mates stood — right between a rushing road. Vehicle after vehicle rushed. I saw him right in time, to remember it but unfortunate enough to write about him now. Yes, I couldn’t help him. I saw his anxious face, his hopelessness for he couldn’t fly up to save himself, while his pals made noises above in the green. Is he alive? Well, I don’t know. My vehicle moved so fast that I had to turn my head to see his fate and then later understand it all. Not sure if someone helped him but I think he met with his death shortly after I left.”
It’s been one and a half years now and yes the world did fall down but to a bottomless pit. I felt what falling down is and even though I didn’t crash into the ground, I felt it — as if I crashed into the ground but just not superficially. I want my fall to break, to feel it relentlessly, and crave for it to end, it is excruciating. It keeps on proceeding and proceeding yet the end is nowhere to be found but only felt, close enough to be not dead. This pit isn’t closed at any end, which is what makes it gray. This light comes from somewhere, it does have an impact on all but it is never to be found. I would sit, lay down, stand or take any other posture yet it would feel all familiar. To me, neither the end is near nor the beginning; no way to return, no way to defeat. All I do is to ruminate — caught in a reverie from where I couldn’t be pulled out neither by myself nor with the aid of the other — a million times yet the only conclusion I derive is death. That all feels like death and as some might believe in an afterlife, I did too. But what if that felt stifling too? How was I supposed to iterate out of it then? There’s seemingly no way to die after you’re dead. What shame it is for me to crave for death even after I am dead while a thousand live with content and pain long enough till they meet death, by chance.
Am I a pessimist? Do I make things lousy or are they miserable in reality? Of course, they’ve told me things are better for you than they are for the others’ but apparently they don’t feel the same way as I do, they don’t know how I felt, so they had to say it insignificantly. They didn’t have to crash a million times only to deduce that no liberation shall feed them the salvation of self-destruction. And now that they’ve left me empty I became nothing. I wasn’t supposed to be so good and simultaneously bad at hide-n-seek, that if at once I was to gain victory for hiding my pain but failure to hiding myself from the same. This. This is what led me to self-loathe. And now my fate loses its confidence too, for no tomorrow can bring me back my yesterday and no afterlife my salvation because what has to happen will be endured in time but what has happened lays pale in a dark corner side moving with me, with time.
© Aasma Gupta 2021
