Survival Strategy
The hot water scalded her body. But it didn't stop her from standing beneath it. For a while, it made her soul scream less, diverting the attention to the physical pains from the mental spasms. Standing under this boiling stream, she now understood why people took up drinking, smoking, cutting and scarring. It's not the fun or the high they await or wish for. It's for the distress and the low they want to escape. Scars on the body are healed easier than the scars on the soul. Nobody wants a miserable death, but a dying body is more welcome than a dead soul. The illogical things turned to be logical and the earlier logic had no stand now. When the broken heart takes over the entire machinery, it is apocalyptic.
The hot water turned her body red. Hotter than that were the tears rushing down her cheeks. Her eyes were red. Anger, frustration, desperation, distress, all came together. Red. That's how she used to describe you. Red! Anger is as much red as love is. She was cut-off.
Her stomach felt hollow, pit-deep. Words stuck in her throat, couldn't come out. But her soul screamed. Trapped in her body, her soul screamed, so loud, the voice pierced her heart. Just that, only she could hear it, not you. The saga flashed again in front of her eyes, the millionth time. The making and breaking of her, the highest highs and then the lowest lows, the euphoria and then the exasperation. It was killing her. You were her last salvation, her hope to cling on, her survival strategy. You were killing her. Mercilessly. And for the millionth time, she wished to close her eyes, never to open them again.
She stepped out. It was too much to take for once. She had to go out. Escape her pain, her heart. Find an escape from her own self. You had characteristically blocked her access to her breaths. She had to escape.
Her phone’s screen flashed: 3 missed calls. And for the millionth time again, she prayed for it to be you. And for the millionth time again, she was defied. ‘Maa’, the screen read. She tossed over the phone and went out. The earlier ‘Oh! Such a beautiful garden!’ had now nothing to appeal to her senses. Her eyes were dead to all beauty. A woman sat on the bench, a baby girl in her lap, dressed in pink. She had always hated pink. Black was her color, or the color of her heart, her soul now. The kid was unknown to all the worries of the world. She silently wished that the kid must never grow up and face the atrocities that the universe had thrown her in. She wished she were in her place. She was once, she realized. She was once in her place. She was once, dressed up in pink, and in the lap of a woman. The woman! Oh! The woman! Those arms had held her through all. The woman! And there, the universe signaled. It was all there, her salvation, her hope to cling on, her survival strategy! She ran back to reach her phone. Yes, you had characteristically blocked her access to her breaths, but someone raised her up to be a vindicator.
Story Teller: Madiha Zaidi