The Mind Doodles Of A 20 Something Person

1

Once on a late night drive, I found myself caught in a moment. We were driving around on the sleepy Kolkata streets.

I rolled down the window and put my head out a little, the smooth cool breeze felt nice. I pushed my head a bit more and looked up. Big dark sky above me.

The night breeze blew me to a quiet corner in my head. Ribbons of light and dark played over my face as we crossed the Howrah Bridge, upside down it looked like a massive steel web.

As I drowned deeper in my mind, the music, chitchat and the traffic sounds became more of a distant mumble. I closed my eyes.

My most restless being was quiet right now, breathes were slow and steady, my thoughts were lining up there was no rush to utter something, conjure an answer or come to a conclusion. There was no social trigger I had to respond to "How am I this calm?" I thought to myself.

I started to think about the past couple of days, weeks...months. There have been countless moments when I wasn't quiet. I was loud I was restless. I was hasty. So were people around me, yet I was the one to erupt.

"Think before you act. The way you are escalating might bring trouble to you." I was told this by someone I knew. As bad as it sounded it was true. I used to think I was just a hot head. I am but more so "emotional" sometimes too much for my own good. Now that I think about it, there's always a sense of haste in me. More like a need to run. Run towards. Run away. The innate tendency in me to seek something, results me to get exhausted.

Now that I am thinking about it, sometimes I don't have a goal as to why I am choosing it in the first actually. There's reason in that run, the reason being others.

"Don't do things for others. You will run out of yourself making up for others."  I was told this by another person I know. And obviously I replied ( I don't know why I have the urge to always give a reply). "Oh please I'm not a people pleaser." 

And I am not. I just find reasons to "be there" for others. I realized I don't put people on a pedestals, I put myself there. My expectations puppet my actions I am not a people pleaser to others. I am to myself.

I move a little trying to adjust myself on the back seat, with my head somewhat still outside the window. I keep myself steady and my eyes shut tight as my mind walks on the path I've conjured in the past moments. Lately I've found myself getting sad over the fact that I've changed.

I am not who I was. I've felt a revolting sense of homesickness in me. It seems as much as I had jotted down why this change came down, there's no one more to be held accountable for this, than myself.
I grow a bit soft at this realization, my eyebrows ache, my eyes although still shut sting at the corners. Light peep in through the small gaps of my eyes as I decide whether or not to open them. As I walk on the narrow limbo of being physically in a car or being in my mind, I hear music. Somebody increased the volume.

Ranjish hi sahi, dil dukhane ke liya aa
Aa phir se mujhe, chor ke jaane ke liye aa 

I open my eyes. The sky is still the same. I breathe a slow deep breathe and I beg to myself the old self the quiet self I am now in this moment. I beg for it to persist, to settle.

***********************************************************************************************