She had been swept by these waves earlier too but this one was bigger and vicious than anything that she had experienced before. She could have been dead. Maybe she had been dead for a while. Her ankles and toes felt numb. She couldn’t tell, but her fingers went about orchestrating her routine. She cooked, cleaned and ran the household with same efficiency as before but failed to recollect anything during the course of the day. She was the walking dead, a captive of her own mind, a prisoner in her own body.
She looked at her hands. She had square palms and short fingers and they felt grainier and not her own. She didn’t remember the last time she had looked at her hands. It is strange that how you overlook something infront of you and only live with a recollection of it from years ago. She never saw the wrinkles come in and take over. The back of her hands was a mesh of criss cross lines and neglected nails.
She stood in front of the mirror and noted that she looked messy despite having just gotten dressed after stepping out of the shower, minutes ago. Her hair were unkempt and her eyes droopy. She felt stiffness around her jaw and saw a smile was permanently plastered on her face making her reflection look like someone else. Her happy pills were forcing her to smile even as she cried inside.
She couldn’t decide what was worse – her smiling a fake smile for others around her so that they felt comforted by a false notion that all was well in their world or the fact that she would burst into tears for no apparent reason when she was off her medication which made her company less conciliating for others. She couldn’t decide if she was better off with a mask on or without it, if she was more vocal when she was silent and writing or when she had company.
It wasn’t perhaps her decision to make. She thought it was chronic, maybe from a rogue gene that she had inherited and thought it was only befitting that she continued for as long as she could, serving to be an amicable, less conflicting and more appealing human around the house and often doled out her consent for things that didn’t quite matter to her.
Her strength would give in at times and she felt the aches returning. The craving cleaved her being and she felt an unfathomable desire to run away from her surroundings. She could feel a thorn lodged inside her heart that would give her unending sleepless nights at a stretch. Her refuge was the bottle that she managed to coax her medic to prescribe for her. One pill a night and she felt her joints soothe down and the cuddle of an arm that she yearned for, pat her to sleep.
The purple haze was her asylum, her comforter. It was her ship she would set aboard on when she wanted to sail away to a starry horizon. It took her away and beyond everything that could possibly tie her to an identity. The drug induced cloud, could hide her well, allay her fears and sedate her devils like nothing else could.
It also took a piece of her soul one bit at a time. Every time she took a dip in this lake of purple mist, she would emerge out slightly different, a tad lesser. It was a price she decided to pay for her immediate relief.
Tonight, I saw her off on the shores as she was about to set off on her purple voyage again. I tried persuading her to not embark on this journey but then I have never been significant enough to make my say count. She will perhaps not be the same person when she returns. She may not see me as the same person either.
I bid you farewell for now and will wait by the same rock I stood by when you left, hoping that this will be a short trip and that you will come back looking and will find me too.
Take care.
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