Schizophrenia. Or what I like to call it, stoned 24/7.
I mean that is if you hallucinate a murderous clown when you're high.
To say it all started one fine day would be a lie. The day was nowhere near fine. This is my story. A 19-year-old college guy, trying to differentiate between what is real and what is just in my mind.
As the clock struck 12, my heart began to pound. The periodic ticking from my wall clock always soothed my mind. Something about time and it being a countable infinity gave me peace. Like we had all the time in the world. Like we owned time itself. I was wrong, but if believing in something brings you peace and happiness, how wrong could I really be?
"Kill yourself."
"No shut up"
"Die b****"
"Shhhh get out"
"You are worthless"
My mother enters, her eyes shining under the light. She smiles as she approaches me, her hand holding a glass of water. She trembles a little. I look at the glass for a minute, only one thought spinning through my exploding mind.
"She poisoned it. She wants you to die."
I feel my breath escaping my body as I turn to her. She looks back, expectantly.
"I don't want it" I say, bitterly. She has a worried look on her face but she bites her lip and refrains from forcing me. She knows how I can get when I am forced to do something. Walking out, her slim figure sways.
"I'm smarter than that" I think to myself, proud of escaping yet another attempt at my murder. This household is no longer my home. I do not feel safe anymore. Every step I take, I feel their vicious eyes on me. I knew they hated me, the second I was born. I was but a bane on their finance. I was just an accident to them. I was just a responsibility.
As I lay down on my bed, I toss and turn until my eyes start feeling heavy. Insomnia is a side effect of Schizophrenia. If only I had known.
My life was pretty much a series of "WHaT ThE hElL iS tHat?!" and "Kill yourself". College was unbearable. My parents wanted to kill me. These voices in my head wanted me dead. And I gained an extra 3 pounds. The last point of course the least of my concerns.
But life changed when I met her. Maya.
She was that light you never knew you needed. That map to get you through life. Indeed, she was this divine, heavenly angel come to save me from my curse. Or so I thought.
Strangely, we met at a graveyard. If it were up to me, I'd have chosen a nice romantic restaurant but that's God for you. God works in all these weird ways.
My grandmother died of suicide. She took her own life for reasons nobody seems to know. I guess, you never really know what goes on in the mind. But before she left she had gifted me this tape recorder for my 17th birthday. It had the song she used to sing to me as a child when my insomnia got the best of me. In fact, my grandma was insomniac too, so watching me struggle to fall asleep was something she would do often. However, somehow she always knew how to get me to sleep. Sometimes just singing that song would help. Sometimes her very imaginative bedtime stories would do the job.
I'd listen to the tape recorder every day back when I had got it. Now, I just listen to it when I come to visit her grave. I stood before her grave, purple Lillies in my hands. I would come here every time I felt suffocated with what life had handed me. Nothing about graveyards was soothing. As a matter of fact, it was probably the most depressing place an average teenager could be at. But for a guy like me, who's reality is as blurred as a typical Friday night for most college students, the graveyard was the single thread holding my sanity together. I knew that even if everything else in my life was just my imagination, this grave was real. My grandma was real.
As I stood there, staring at the grey stone upon which was engraved "Here lies Latha Sharma", from the corner of my eyes I noticed this girl.
"Rooh se behti hui dhun yeh ishaare de" played the tape recorder
At that very instance it was as if I had sought nirvana. Her eyes moved from left to right like that of a Bharatnatyam dancer only it was to the beat of my heart.
"Kuch mere raaz tere raaz aawara se"
She smiled and I knew I'd hold it as if it were a secret I swore upon my grandmother not to tell.
"Kho gaye hum kaha..."
The breeze blew a sweet kiss as it rustled through her long, dark, and messy hair. My heart skipped a beat for the first time.
"Rangon sa yeh jahan..."
It was as if a canvas of colors splashed through my heart, a feeling of ecstasy I could not describe. She wore this white sundress, with a black diamond-studded belt. Her body was slim and she carried this grace I have only seen in my grandmother till date.
She simply stood there in all her beauty, staring at a grave. Her eyes held her tears as if too afraid of letting them go. I want to console her, to hold her however I restrain myself from any kind of contact.
After a while she ran her fingers across her eyes wiping away any trace of tears and started towards me.
"Soo, dead parent?" she asked, solemnly.
"Uh, no grandma" I respond.
Her hands were playing with the belt she wore as she looked into my eyes, pursing her lips.
"It's funny isn't it? How we talk to stones hoping they'd hear, how we pray for stars thinking it's them."
"Well, if there is one universal truth we'd all agree on, it would be that death changes even the strongest. I mean not that I never talked to inanimate objects before" I grinned, trying to hide how serious my words really were.
She laughed. And her laugh was music to my ears. I swear, her laugh could make it rain even through a drought.
"Can I ask you something?" she says. I nod, confused.
"Well, what is it you miss about your grandma the most?" I think for a while and respond
"I guess it would be the way she would struggle to fall asleep all night, yet every day at 6 am she would go out to feed the sparrows. She would talk to them and everybody would call her the crazy lady down the street, but she never paid attention to them. In fact, she was so busy living her own life, the way she wanted to that she completely ignored what anybody had to say of it." There is a silence.
"Well, people can be so stupid sometimes. Just because their definition of normal gets challenged they start naming anything beyond it lunacy."
"Yeah..." I say, my own experiences bubbling up as I bite my lips.
"You've been through some tough times" she says looking in my eyes.
"What gives?" I ask, smiling softly.
"For starters your eyes talk of a haunting past."
"Really?" I say, amused.
"Nah, lucky guess" she giggles.
"Hey, the world has 7 billion people on it. Now if it starts making lives easy for all of them, then there wouldn't be much to watch from heaven, would there?"
"You say some controversial things" she laughs, the sound echoing.
"You say some beautiful things" I reply, looking into the deep oceans her eyes beheld.
She blushes, her hands getting fidgety as she raises her face to look me in my eyes. For a moment there, time stopped.
I hear some footsteps from behind me and I turn to see a family approaching the grave near my grandmothers. When I turn back to Maya, she is gone.
