I Got Annoyed

There were stains on my bright yellow jacket. I had lent it out for a few days and when I got it back, it was full of stains, muddy even. Who does that? Take your things away, use them and when it's time to give it back, they destroy them. 

I guess, each one of us nowadays. That makes me scared to lend anything at all. I mean, I am fine for however long they use it, I am fine while they are using it, but I am scared of that moment when it's time for them to return it. I am scared it would be torn and rusted. I am scared it wouldn't be the same. And if it won't be the same, then I wouldn't take it back. Then you can keep my jacket. 

But just this one fear of it not being the same stops me from giving my jacket to anyone at all. The person might be decent and mature enough to take good care of it but there still lingers a doubt in my head that it will be stained and I am trying to find a cure to this fear. 

I mean, what would I do with this jacket? It's too bright for me anyways. Yet, there is a fear that the brightness that it shows to me while being with me won't be there when it goes to someone else. It's a fear that if it's gone then it's gone, it won't ever come back. And that scares me even more. I don't want to lose that brightness, it's the one thing that's good about it.

According to people I wasn't a good scientist to find a cure to my fear. So, I went to the doctor, I thought maybe he could help me but he only gave me the most bitter medicine of all time. He prescribed that I should face my fears, that there are no shortcuts to overcoming any fear. Be it for jackets, boots or even hats. 

I found this prescription purely absurd. So, I continued lying in fear for a long time. I did it for so long that I got even more frustrated with the budding feelings and thoughts, thoughts that suffocated me. The suffocation got so bad that I locked my bright yellow jacket in my huge purple cupboard and threw away the keys in the lake nearby. I thought maybe then it would stop, the nagging of my feelings would stop. But unfortunately, it didn't. It only got worse. 

My jacket was safe yet I wasn't comfortable with that safety, the feeling of my jacket not being used nagged me. The nagging got so bad that I thought to jump into the lake to find the key, so I could open the cupboard one more time and use it by myself if no one else did. The thing about the lake is it's not wide enough. It's actually quite smaller than a pond, I don't even know why they call it a lake. It's quite deep too. So deep that it would take hours to come back to the surface. Funny thing is you could breathe inside it. You won't feel so suffocated. 

If you are standing on the surface like I am now you'd see the light of beautiful colours coming to the surface from deep beneath. They are the lighted strings tied inside the lake. The coloured lights come from the strings. Blue, purple, pink, orange, yellow, black you name it and you'd see it. And my key? It's hanging on one of those strings. I just need to decipher which light would lead me to my key. Now it might seem like finding a needle in a huge desert, but it isn't that difficult actually. The lake gives you the answer if you connect to it. 

You need to sit down and breathe the air, feel it and connect to that one colour that will lead you to your key. Trust plays an important part for this to function. And that's where I stop. Trust. I am back to square one. Then I wasn't able to trust people with my jacket and now I am not even able to trust my gut. 

I got annoyed. 

                                                                                                          By Devanshi Saini