The lure of coveted bliss

Once upon a time, a girl wanted to fly, but she was afraid of the fall. But then on one eventful day, she took the risk. And she started flying. And boy, did she fly high! She flew so high that everyone was astonished at her wondrous leap of faith. But above all, she was surprised at the magic in her new wings. Like any sane person, she wondered how a normal human like her grew wings, wings so beautiful that she couldn’t believe her own eyes. She wondered what had she done to deserve such a beautiful pair but then someone quietly whispered, “Throw the caution to the wind & fly away.” Suppressing all her fears about the fall, suppressing all the nagging thoughts of being just a mere human girl, she used her wings. At first, she took them as an illusion but when she flapped them, slowly at first & then rapidly, she tasted the heady cocktail of ecstasy & euphoria. Drunk on that mixture, she frissioned, not knowing that it might turn into her kiss of death, she soared even higher, leaving all her inhibitions below, on the land where the commoners lived. And in just a very short while, she got addicted to the flight like a druggie, not realizing that some things are too good to be true, that maybe those wings, which she found a godsend, were maybe the devil’s prop for her to lose her years of built-up pride & dignity.

So, just when she was about to reach the noble zenith, just when she thought that maybe there is something good left in this world, just when she thought she can trust again, she found herself coming down, at a very fast speed. She realized with a jolt of terror that she was falling, her biggest fear, the nightmare that had always haunted her was coming true right in front of her very own eyes. She could see the unfathomable blue when she looked down. Panicking, she flapped her trustworthy wings but nothing happened. The blue below her kept becoming clearer & it kept coming closer. She flapped harder & looked down again in panic, and then another realization hit her like a truck. As the blue surface became clearer, it dawned upon her that she couldn’t fly anymore because her beautiful ethereal wings had vanished.

But still, she was a warrior, a survivor with a fighter’s mind & she kept hanging onto the tiny loose invisible thread of optimism. She looked around, tried to grasp onto some hope since the wings had abandoned her, but unsurprisingly, all she was able to grasp was disappointment & rejection. And that was when she gave up her fight, when she lost the battle of searching for those wings that were never hers to begin with, so, she stopped waving her hands around like a fool. She stopped panicking. She surrendered.

She could feel the numbness spreading all over her body. She could feel the withdrawal while coming down from that high (pun intended). At that moment, she felt something that she had never felt. Regret. She regretted tasting the drug. She regretted the flight. She regretted him. But above all, she regretted losing herself for a brief coveted bliss. She was ashamed at herself for selling her happiness for those transient wings.

She was falling & she was falling fast, into the deep blue ocean of despair & depression. She looked at her reflection into the clear water & she was stunned at what she saw. She saw the haggard face of a defeated weakling, who got robbed again by the cruel circumstances. A constant thought plagued her, “This wasn’t what I wanted.”

As her body suddenly hit the ocean’s abyss, her eyes widened, the instinct to survive protested but her body was paralyzed by the vision she saw above her – another naïve girl with the same beautiful set of wings, soaring high & high. She could see a part of herself in her guileless smile. She wanted to warn her, but how could she have helped her when she couldn’t even save herself? For a moment, she felt envious of her joy, but knowing the ultimate demise, her envy turned into pity.

Soon, her vision blurred as the water came to rescue her from the torture she was putting herself in by watching the scene unfold in front of her – the gullible girl had what was previously hers & that was the final nail in the coffin of her misery. She closed her eyes, and her heart along with that, effectively blocking out the scene above her. She couldn’t feel a thing even when the water was choking her down; only one thought sustained in her dead body, surfacing on her lips, “Why?”

But the question drowned, just like she did.