step aside, it's the gap year speaking

a very selfish, messy, and personal piece ps. the italicised sections are unrelated to the normal flow of the essay and every italicised section flows into the other :3

Last summer ended with me crying after overhearing my parents discuss how big of a failure I turned out to be. The way you'd expect a failure's summer to end—softly, shamefully, with the sound of crying muffled behind a door left slightly ajar. Their last hope, the easy child, the academic weapon had nothing more to give to herself or to the world. I wasn't great anymore so it wasn't necessary for them to be kind to me or to comfort me with the secret they were trying hide from me. The secret that I still have time, that I'm still young, that I can afford to lose a few days or weeks or months, and that my wasted potential is just a concept created to sabotage me.

(I’ve only ever been 3, 13, 15, and 17. 3 was when my younger brother was born, 13 and 15 I won't talk about here, and 17 was the year of rock bottom. The rest never quite happened for me— to me. Not really. Not in the way you’d mark birthdays or tiptoe to keep track of inches grown on a wall. Those were the only ages that mattered to me— about me. They stayed. They left marks. They were found with claws all over them. The rest passed like sand between fingers or water down a drain—too quick to feel, too much to hold on to…

I used to go out and walk with my mother every day till winters ended. I stopped because the pain of seeing my mother dodge questions about me ached in places it still hurt to unravel. I couldn’t bear to hear the strained laughter, the dodged questions when her friends asked about my college or the course I had chosen. I saw her lie about how no university had rejected me and that I was already going to a college doing something I aspired to do back then— engineering. Something which she could be proud of. She lies with such ease, it drove me mad because all I inferred from these exchanges was that a part of her is ashamed of me. My parents, simple people, always knew how to belong to society. They carried within them a manual on being digestible. I, the child who once fit into their neatly arranged shelves, had become too heavy to place anywhere. I no longer gave them anything they could show off to the world. No medals. No university admissions. No future plans stamped and laminated. I didn't give them much to be proud of.

…I’ve been a grain of sand. Small enough to get caught in someone’s shoe, annoying but forgettable. I’ve been a star, maybe, if you squinted. Or maybe just the dying kind, flickering in some far corner of the night sky that no one looks at. I’ve been a fish, slipping through dark water, unbothered and unseen. A flower in someone's garden, blooming only when no one came outside...

A year I stayed at home waiting for a chance to prove myself. The idea was to redeem myself quietly and reappear as though nothing ever happened. To erase the bruises from when I bit myself too hard, the hours spent crying on the bathroom floor, the envy that made my chest feel like it was burning from the inside out. Because I didn't want to ask them how brilliant their lives were without me or how they miss me so much, I didn't write to my friends. I am happy for my bunch finding their places and dreams but i can physically feel it mock me, the feeling of being left behind in a race hits me cold straight across my face. I figured that facing my parents for the whole year I was planning to stay at home would be the hardest thing i'd have to go through after failing. Not because I personally hated the idea of taking a gap but because my little world taunted me for choosing myself.

…No one noticed when I went missing. There was no announcement, no pause. Just the quiet vacuum of absence—so still it didn’t disturb anything. And no one cared when I came back. I returned like dust settling back on shelves, like I had never moved at all. Everything carried on. Everyone carried on. And I stood there, in my skin, trying to remember if I had even gone anywhere in the first place…

The year wasn't so bad as I make it. I watched a few more movies, read a few more books, wrote a few more such pieces and tasted a sort of freedom at my rock bottom. I felt like after all the hustle it took up till here, I was finally given a land big enough for me to do whatever I wanted to do. A space where I was allowed to exist without having to think too much. This feeling lasted for a while but it gave me what I needed most. It told me the other secret I'd been dying to know. The secret that a breath of fresh air is what i was chasing all along, that I cannot fail from here on, and that the choice I will be making for my future is to do all the little things I was putting on hold. To not perform any further but to do things for my own self.

…But I think I'm a black cloud filled to the brim with rain now. Dense. So full of rain I ache with the weight of it. I’m not forgettable in that dissolving way. I’m noticeable now, maybe not in the way anyone wants, but in the way they can't quite avoid. In the way the weather turns before a storm…

When the pandemic had just ended I told myself I could be a woman in stem. Learn obscure facts about how the world and our bodies work and pass them around like salt on dinning tables to make myself look smarter than I really am. But every single time I sat for an exam for the sciences, I finished it early and wrote poems in the margin. I never let myself know that I wasn't into how rockets were made and how cars moved or graphs make a heart, it was only the oblivion that i ever cared for— the stars the planets and all of these places I'll never reach. And that's just the way I've always been— unable to see what I really want or incapable of admitting it out loud, admitting that what I once might've wanted isn't something something I want now, and ashamed of God knows what.

…You’d notice me. You’d notice me as a chair with a broken leg and no arms, and you'll sit on it . You’d sit on it, knowing it might collapse, and still do it anyway. You’d notice me as the mole on the back of the girl you’ll fall in love with and you'll kiss it. Caress it. Hold her from the waist and pull her closer. You’ll turn off the lights and roll over, pretending the bed is smaller than it is. That we were smaller than we were. Are you holding out space for me or amputating a limb you lost?…

So I studied this whole year solely to pick myself out of the ditch I had gotten myself into. If it is truly my story, I can change the ending however I wish to or that was what I had learnt the hard way.  I left everything again but in moderation because I knew once I'm done, I'll have all the time in the world with me on my side. I depended on this exam like it was a hand in the dark pulling me out towards the light. I watched myself win prizes in make-believe universities, fall in love with fictional people, give interviews about books I hadn’t written. And then I’d wake up to reality and find my back sore from sitting too long, my eyes strained from screens and study. It was overstimulation mixed with paralysis. Assuring myself each night before I slept that it's enough, enough cloth to hold on to.

…And you’d pity me like I pity you. Not out of bitterness. Not even out of hurt. Just out of understanding. Because there’s a kind of loneliness in not knowing what to do with someone like me. Someone made of almosts. Someone who keeps coming back even when no one asks them to…

Nothing mattered to me more than this. More than the chance to disappear and come back without a word. As much as I hate being where I am right now— behind every single person I've ever known. Level 1. My envy turns to something meaningful. It whispers in my ear after it has made me cry that it's okay if I am a late bloomer. It's just fine that I fell till I couldn't anymore. Even though it felt like it, it wasn't the end of the world.

…Maybe I was always meant to be a passing thing. The kind of presence that lingers—not because it was strong—but because it was strange. Because it was once loved in a fleeting, confused sort of way. Because it fit into a space no one knew they had…

My exam is over now. It feels like a part of me is taking the backseat. It is cathartic. To know that it's all upwards from here. That after a year of killing myself with jealousy, it doesn't matter much when I start. I breathe a little lighter now. I walk a little slower. Look up more often. I take the moment in when I feel like. Almost forgot that this is all that there is. Almost forgot this was the whole point.

…I’ve only ever been 3, 13, 15, and 17. But maybe now, I’m finally becoming something else.)

xx