It hit me like one of those moments in movies which make your heart shift a little to the right and your pupils grow bigger and your fingers twitch; the moment when you start to feel things. When Alan Turing breaks the enigma code when Annie finally meets Sam at the top of the Empire State building when Forrest Gump runs for 420 days and finally stops. It hits you like that. I was seeing myself as something else, someone who was growing up in a world of anxious love. A world that takes you for a crazy ride of emotional disbalance full of pain. A moment of true consciousness.
The first time it happened, I felt my brain would malfunction and I’d stop breathing in front of people. I looked at my friend with complete confusion, as I felt this ache in my head and how suddenly my body didn’t seem to be MY body anymore. It was like I was staring at myself with my eyes open and imagining the worst to happen. This ticking voice inside my head was saying, “any minute now!” I told her I needed to go out. I mean let’s be honest if this was going to happen, (‘my death’) I’d like to at least, make it a fight. So, I got up and started walking in a hurry, not knowing who to go to or what to do. I walked back and forth restlessly trying to understand what was going on inside my body.
Why was my head giving up on me? What muddled up chemical was inside my head trying to dope me with complete melancholy? But I bet that eerie inside me was laughing at me as it had decided to make things worse. That little devil had now reached my throat, and I felt this huge ball surrounding and crushing my windpipe, making it very difficult for me to breathe. I was in pain, in complete physical and mental pain. Now, if I was in one of those Quentin Tarantino movies, this pain I was feeling could easily be controlled where I would just grab my Heckler and Koch 416 assault rifle and shoot the brains out of whatever was giving it to me and the only thing that’d scare me later would be the unimaginable amount of blood on the floor. But guess what, this wasn’t one of those movies, this was the real me standing outside the library square building of my university, and this wasn’t that kind of pain. Stay with me as it gets better at the end.
The stubborn devil causing me the pain was me. The other part of me. And I couldn’t kill me. I’d be pretty darn stupid to do that. So, all I did was wait, wait for it to stop killing me or wait for it to kill me. Whatever it decided. And I waited. I waited for 14 ½ long hours. And by then I was exhausted. I was exhausted from the pain. I had given up. I hadn’t cried. I hadn’t died either. But I was lifeless. You know how sometimes you are so hungry for so long that at the end you don’t even want to eat. That’s what it felt like. As it finally stops, you don’t even want to know what it felt like to not have that big rock living on your chest.
But let me state the worst yet the best part.
Now that it comes to you. It would never leave you. That ache is going to stay with you like a parasite and remind you of that curious confusing disturbing pain from time to time. It’d hit you like a million bullets when you’re sitting with your family playing a game of monopoly, or it’d sting you lightly every time you went out with your friends to your favourite bridge to watch the sunrise. And even if it’s asleep like a pig after a giant meal of your beautiful mind’s nerve cells, it’ll never let you forget about it. When you’re having your happiest moments in life and watching your favourite TV show with your favourite people in the world having a good nerve cracking laugh, you’d innocently find yourself thinking about it and scare yourself with a little prayer for your health and safety.
And that is the best part about it too. First, we need to remember, this feeling does and will come down, you can and will feel a true sense of happiness with time. Secondly, don’t mistake me for being optimistic as I’m only being realistic. Being reminded of the worst at your best times gives you a true sense of appreciation. (If that’s even a word) Only a broken heart can know how to truly love. Only a crying baby can feel true laughter when you drop one of those random stunts to make those weirdos laugh. Only a rotten soul would feel true freedom after it’s brought to light. Because, as they say, there wouldn’t have been light in the first place if it wasn’t for the darkness.