The question of whether life has a purpose or holds any significance can be a nuanced one.
When we look at wars or outbreaks of disease, we see 100, 500, 10,000, or maybe even millions of people die. When we casually read the newspaper in the morning with a cup of tea in hand or scroll through Inshorts, we are bombarded daily with news of tragedies and conflicts, and as a result, we may have become desensitized to them. At night, when I look up at the stars that are infinitely far away from me, human life seems so insignificant, and so do all our problems. But as individuals when we observe closely and see a person walking by, someone with a huge smile on their face, someone with a frown, or someone clumsily dropping their coffee while being late for a morning class, we are reminded of the preciousness of human life.
Recently, someone precious, someone close to me left me completely startled. She lay on the bed, and she wasn’t herself. Gasping for air, fighting for it, yet so still. It wasn’t right, there was a sensation so strong, it made her chest fill with the fear of the unknown. She kept diving deep into the abyss as if she had fallen off a building with infinite floors. Everyone and everything seemed so irrelevant. Remember the guy who didn’t text back? He didn’t matter. Neither did the assignment that was due the next day, or the fight she had with her best friend the previous day. The only thing that mattered was this moment where everything was moving, yet she was so sure that the next second it could all be gone.
I look at her in the mirror and I don’t recognize her. I feel like she has failed all the people she ever met; everyone she was a cumulation of. Her first-grade math teacher who taught her how to add and her younger sister who she hugged while sleeping every night. Every person whose face she put a smile on and every person she became a part of. Everyone who looked at her huge smile, her frown or her just clumsily dropping her coffee while being late for a morning class.
Yes, it was I who left myself completely and utterly startled. Never had I ever thought that a girl who loved skipping rope in the sun, picking flowers, and solving puzzles would ever feel the need to indulge in substances, yet there she was.
I pick myself up and try going to someplace safe. But for me, it was always the people and not the places that felt safe. At 2 AM I call him, hoping to hear his words after exactly 1 month and 20 days but his phone was not reachable. I was stuck in a whirlwind of missing him, not knowing who I was or where I was and seeking comfort from every passing minute where I could breathe. I felt the walls of the room closing in on me. I constantly reached out to people, and some tried but none could secure me, and make me feel safe. I was shouting, screaming, crying for help, but everyone and everything seemed indifferent to me. There was nobody coming to help, there was nobody to talk to, the world was ignorant, and why shouldn’t it be? They have their own problems, their own issues to deal with. And I think this is when I gave up, went back to my bed.
Isn’t it crazy how out of the 2209032000 seconds that a person lives on average, just a few seconds could determine the rest of it all? Well, I was saved that night, from myself and from the world and I swore I would never let that happen again, to me or to anyone dear to me.
So now I keep her close to me. I bathe her, I brush her teeth and I caress her to sleep every day. I keep her close to my heart and every time I look at her in the mirror I pause and let her breathe, for now, she is so much more precious, beautiful, and important to me. I love her, I cherish her and I hope to be the person she feels the safest with because at the end of the day, she is all I’ve got.