I've had to say goodbye to a lot of things in my life, not always in a sad way, sometimes it was in a way where instead of feeling untethered, I felt free, the anchor was not a sliver shiny chain decorating my skin but rather a cuff suffocating my neck. It happens often, when you mistake swimming for drowning, you can't tell the difference between a chain and a cuff, not until you drown completely or you swim your way to the top. Today I find myself missing the cuff or rather the moments it was the chain decorating my skin and the water that killed me felt holy, calling it nostalgia would be a crime to my heart, which I've spent months repairing after my eyes deceived its owner, calling it grief would imply that I want it back, which, even the thought of repulses my whole body. What's important right now is not the name I decided to call this feeling, it is that they exist still and consume my thoughts for days at an end. Sometimes, I feel like the goodbye itself has become an anchor because my mind is racing a hundred miles an hour, I am sipping coffee and I am so profoundly happy at this freedom, and at the same time I am sipping coffee and I am so profoundly sad at this goodbye. I've started craving childlike naivety so that I could just be no anchor, no chain, no cuff- just plain simple joy at existing and being, but what I crave is quenched with the drizzles of rain on my hand coming through the net window of my room and could I really tell you about my sorrows and my joys if I had been a naïve little child just being.
There is a certain amount of interest that is added to your life when you're free after being tied for so long because you always have a story to tell and every time you're retelling that story, there is almost always some revelation to be made, whether that be about the story or about me or about the listener, so much interest in one conversation now that we're free. These revelations to me are the conversations that happen every time the sun disappears and the moon appears, every 24 hours the same story, rotation and revolution, the day then night and then day again, the summer then the winter and then the summer again but every day different than the last, every night less lonely, every summer more comforting and every winter less alienating. All the times I've told the story I've been less lonely and more revealed and more relieved. I wonder if I tell people about when I could've drowned to the bottom but I swam to the top, a thousand more times, maybe the unnamed missing the cuff will become grief for my cuffed self or the disguise of the chain will become nostalgia of not seeing through it sooner.
Maya Angelou wrote 'You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise.' Despite the violent diction, the sheer confidence of this poem gives me comfort because at the end of the day no matter how violent the imagery is, she chose herself to be air and so like she did, I've chosen myself to be air flying across the cliffside at all time, because they could push me into the valley or I could trip and fall, but still, like air, I'll rise. My old self is intermingled with who I am now and now that I've told my story a couple thousand times, I think my unnamed feeling is a bittersweet goodbye to the things that had to be gone for you to gift me a chain not suffocating but decorating my existence with you forever. There were times in my life that had been defined by feeling invisible but now with my story so openly read and my heart so closely accepted, I am so very seen, by the ones I love and the ones who love me. I think my definition of freedom is just being loved so closely, so intimately that my last thought before bed is 'this is all you ever wanted, oh my god, this is all you ever wanted.' I have a star-silver chain now that's decorating my scarred skin with a little message inside that says you have survived loneliness with grace.
Garima
Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar College, University of Delhi
Garima is currently a student of Economics Hons studying at BRAC DU. The piece submitted is about revelations and stories and most importantly about bittersweet but inevitable goodbyes.
Nice