Panic Room

1. 
   
2. panic room // 

   a secret room in a house or other building that is designed to be invulnerable to attack or intrusion.

(A/N- My first blog post in months, and all for very good reason. Boards, Entrance Exams (or their lack thereof- I'm a Medical Aspirant, you see), turning 18 and dealing with the fact that the most constant thing in your life, (apart from family and friends- with degrees of variability in the latter/former as well) is coming to an end- SCHOOL.

I could go on about the hundred things that changed my life in the last few months and the emotional turmoil that one goes through when change happens; but in the end the only thing that matters is what kept me from writing about them. What kept me from turning to my safe-house.)

All my life, I've turned to words when I experienced grief, anxiety, anger, love and happiness. Words have always been the light that guides me home. Home to me. Home to the part of me that isn't lost. And yet, there comes a time when even those words that made you feel so safe, and brought you so much solace, get lost in that very blizzard of emotions that once fuelled them. 

There comes a time when words are no longer weapons of self-defence, and no longer are they communicable. The world gets quiet, the streets silent, your own voice is but a whisper. Yet it happens to be the only thing that you can hear. The only feeling you feel is the beat of your own heart. And that's the sign. The clanging of a cymbal. The sign- Its time for you to know the sound of your own voice, and you'd better learn it or you never might understand what it's trying to say to you. 

It's time for you to let go of one part of yourself to find another (?) 

Insurgency of Emotions 1 - Panic Room 0 

And so, I managed to spend (and survive) the last 5 months away from my Panic Room. Away from my sanctuary- words, away from feelings of familiarity- hope, optimism, no longer practicing what I preached,  away from all predictability- I lived in the real world for once. I did not like it. Ambiguity is not nice. As much as we find predictability in fictional worlds boring, unpredictability is as terrifying in real life. And in times like these, optimism becomes a soft pillow but one realises that it doesn't exactly cushion the blows. One resorts to realism. It's true for me, and its true for any 12th grader going through this/having been through this already (except those that had already resorted to realism > optimism). You end up relying more on hard work than expectations or hope. Granted, you can't lose sight of either, but the future gets blurry when the world around you resembles Sokovia at the end of Age of Ultron. *enter mainstream pop culture reference* 

I realised that this is a journey EVERYONE has been on, or will embark upon. 

We once wished for the Yellow brick road to Oz, but Life handed us the thorn-riddled-through-the-Dark-Forest path. We then wished for a Treasure Map, but were bestowed an indecipherable cipher. We yearned for the lighthouse, but were sent to the crypt. 

In the midst of all the chaos and rubble, lies a simple truth- one of loss and gain. And since memory is the scribe of the soul, we all agree with this simple truth, because we have all loved and lost, dreamt and lost, wished and never received. 'tis terrible, but it has to be endured.

I don't really want to go into the medical entrance exam apocalyptic-drama details because I don't want this blog post to become a rant. I want it to be a bridge. A transition. Connecting the past and the present, and soon enough, the present and the future. For, I know a part of me still clings on- both the present and the future shall always have room for hope, just not in as much quantity as I would have liked, I suppose. Enough hope to fight adversity and hope for the best. And that leaves me ever a prisoner of Hope (with less-tight shackles).

Insurgency of Emotions 1 - Panic Room 1

As teenagers in the midst of our worlds (as we knew them) changing, we are excellent at looking at the negatives- because they happen to be the most obvious, the tip of the iceberg. The rest of the iceberg, well hidden from sight, is what I've been thinking about a lot lately. 

12th board results may have been announced only 2 days back, yet I did not mention them until now, despite them having been the actual destination (?)  of all that soul-searching and Sinbad-the-sailor voyaging. Which begs me to question, was it the actual destination? 

Nah.

They weren't kidding when they said the journey is what matters. I'm not going to say that Board marks do not matter, results of any exam in life DO matter, but there are other things, I've come to hold close to my heart, that matter so much more. If not matter, value. The lessons I've learnt, the better person I've become, the relationships I have established, the more I've gotten to know and love myself, the tryst with realism, losing words and finding them where I left them, the journey and the adventure of it all. It is one thing, after all, to know that our expectations of life will or might never change, but it is a little far-fetched to face the future with certainty that they never would. 

We're continuously being moulded by our experiences and heartbreaks. But, we are also constantly being given the strength to carry on by our own very selves. That voice that I was talking about, at the very beginning? THAT is what it's trying to tell you. You always have the words you tell yourself. Words of reassurance, words of wisdom, words of love. Luckily, they cant be lost. 

Insurgency of Emotions 1 - Panic Room 2

Words are my Panic Room. My saving grace. They are what saved me. Words strung together to build a bridge strong enough to walk on, to walk away from the cacophony of life and find peace within to love oneself with all that one has. To tell oneself to let go of expectations and stay in tune with reality. To remember, that all this chaos and confusion in life right now is the sad excerpt from a book that has NOT been written yet! We are all stories of ink dipped in absolute grey faith. Words on pages may fade in time, but are very much ingrained in your soul. For, they are words of your own heartbeat. It's all you. You are the unwritten bestseller. 

I found myself in my Panic Room yet again. It is in the form of a library. 
Life's still cloudy, with a random silver lining here and there. I need a book. I need my words. 
I find a book. I've read it so many times before. But. Something's different. 
It's not just my favourite chapter I re-read anymore. It's my not-so-favourite chapter too. I smile. We weathered every storm that threatened to rip those pages out and tear us apart. 
In the end, it's the story. Your heart beats within those pages. Here's the best part- you get to change the next chapter, you get to change everything-after all, you helped write it.