Shade

 My friends say that I am mad. I know that they are not very mistaken. Now, this is not because they love me any less but I shall hold myself accountable for the compliment. Let me tell you that the reason for it is that I talk. A lot. Be it a person I met the last second or a person I've known for years, I could talk to both for the same length of time. They call me a crackhead for texting strangers on social media. People I've never known before. If I were to be totally honest, I don't take the least bit of offense in it and I myself laugh along with them about these designations.

This particular habit has brought no particular gain with it except for the existence of an uncountable number of acquaintances and the trouble of attending to many at once if there was to be a public gathering. It does not instil joy in me to know that I have or know a lot of people but it rather feels very distracting to not be able to remain stranger at most places. Then why go through the trouble of befriending them in the first place you ask? Well then, watch me narrate.

I was not always this person. I was that person who would not talk to a person until and unless I was sure of us both being pretty well acquainted. I used to be the person that might not even have returned a smile from a stranger and now I am the one who smiles to every passing stranger (not to men, lest that be considered as flirting). Life made me the person that I am now (NB: this is not my life story, I have not yet had that part).

It has not been long since I have gone through that period where I have felt the most low than I ever have before. Let me not call it depression but that was the closest that I have ever come to heart breaking sorrow and life being what it is, did everything in its power to help increase what I already was going through. Let me make it clear that this was not a time where I was any short of friends, the number only increased after the incident. Despite the presence of all those friends around me and no rules of maintaining distances at that time, I could not feel anybody to be of any use. It hurts me to say that I, a person who had for years considered herself to be blessed with good friends and family, could hardly find less than one handful of people to confide into. Never before did I feel the need to have people by me and never before did I fall so short of people who actually cared.

From then, I knew; I knew that mine was no isolated case and that many others have gone through or are still going through far worse scenarios than mine; I knew what the pain felt like and also what the relief of having someone to hear you felt like. I knew what they did was not merely hear but it was something that proved to be far more to me. They heard without judgement, just a couple of people with a couple of ears each is what keeps me sane to this day. I know how grateful I was to have them and I know that to be that person would bring joy to my life too.

When people thought that I talked too much, I was not always the one talking. I was but merely the one sustaining the conversation by hearing to what they had to say. The messages that I sent to strangers online were consolation texts, compliments, reasons why I was thankful for their existence and whatever of that sort that I could find. I sent these not when I felt like it but rather when I saw in one way or the other that the person was hurting. I might have been ruled out as weird by some but if only that would have helped bring a smile to one face I would be contend of what I do. About forming many friends, it was not for my pleasure of having someone for me and not out of fear lest history should repeat itself. It is, on the contrary, an attempt to be there for those who might not have any one else. I know that it is not human nature to confide in people they merely know, but it is in dark times that you see the actual light of the people and if at all that would bring one to me, I would be all ears and no judgement. To be a shade on a scorching road or to be a shade in a dense forest, a shade is a shade nevertheless and when the tree has nothing to lose and the traveller so much to gain, why not give that shade?

-Fathima Naushad