Let me tell a story.
A girl came to a college and found the best group of friends. To her, it felt like home. But then the girl was selfish and wanted more. Because the girl wanted all the fun and didn’t want to be left out. So she made more friends. And one of those new friendships blossomed into more. It was good and nice and all the good words. But it made her float. It made her float so far that she lost her tether to other places. She could only be with people who were there where she floated off to. It's not like she lost her place. But still felt like that. Then she started to realise that she hated floating. It was good and nice and all other good words but it made her feel breathless. It started suffocating her because she had lost the tether. So she stopped floating and jumped back. But as we know she had lost the tether already. Then she lost the place she floated to. So she was lost in the middle, somewhere between past and present. And then she fell and she might have hit her head because then the girl couldn’t make sense of anything at all.
She felt alone. She felt like she wasn’t home anymore. She felt too much and too little. And instead of tying the tether back the girl just moved to another place. The new place felt like home but just sometimes. Sometimes it felt like a prison. Sometimes it felt like a shelter. Sometimes it felt like darkness. Sometimes light did come. But it was never enough. Then she started learning to loosely tie herself to all those places. Never a strong tether like before. But more like a flimsy one. A flimsy thread. Not the red ones she expected. But it was white, blue or pink. Green or black. The girl had a bunch of them now. But she still at times misses the red ones. She sometimes cried herself to sleep over the fact that maybe they weren’t red enough because they did break.
She then learned to take some light with her whenever she floated. And learnt to face away from darkness when it crept too close to her heart. And she was learning to love the new threads. A few times the threads did cut. It bled. Like her last birthday? There were too many friends. Some were acquaintances but let's call them friends. For now. Yeah, so friends turned up. She was happy for a while and then the girl saw how the light felt too much. It was burning her. Somewhat. Then she saw the darkness. She did try to turn away. She did make an effort. But it was her birthday and she was weak. So it bled through the light and the girl suffered. Was it her birthday or someone else’s? Was she happy? Did the girl miss the tetherings? Hours before it happened she had desperately tried to hold onto the lost threads. She went to her lost friends so that they could take her back. But the girl could feel it then. The red threads that were cut, now tied together, weren’t strong enough to prevent her storm. She had lost it forever. Right now as I write I think all that remains is the ghost of those threads. They haunt her every time she sees them and make pleasantries with them.
She does cry herself to sleep sometimes. She talks to her mother about it. Her mother consoles her and says that time will heal and you will laugh about it in future. But the girl can feel the pain and she doesn't want to invalidate her feelings of present. She doesn’t tell her father about it. Because she knows he wants her to be good to all and to try to be friends with them one-sidedly.
She sometimes talks to her new friends about it. But all of them have suffered something else and she involuntarily compares her story with theirs. It feels too small many a time. She tries sometimes and sometimes she gives up. Sometimes she forgets. And sometimes, she laughs.