We all have our own safe spaces. A library, a gym, a friend, songs, writing so on and so forth. I, after 12 odd years, finally realized my safe space. And the best part is, I have more than one.
I discovered one about one and a half years ago and the other two... Came to me over time. Most of the times when I was vulnerable, I always sought for someplace, where I could write. Each time I felt low, broken, miserable, I reverted to my diary and my pen. Scooched up in a corner, on the floor of my room, I would let words rain over me. Hard, soft, showers that drenched me, like the first rain of monsoon. And amidst all this, I would close my eyes, and let my pen move. There would be blots of ink and countless cuts on the sheet but towards the end I always felt relieved. Everything that was weighing me down, seemed to have washed away with the tears, soaked in as the ink and, ripped off like the pages next to me.
In the past one and a half year I came to know how a person becomes your safe space. I am a person who's ruled by emotions. They wreck me, and when they do, they wreck me bad. But this one person has stood by me, and has seen me fall, seen me smashed into pieces, cry like a child who's lost his parents in the crowd and somewhere in all this, the angry and scared 'me' too. But if I may use the cliché "Hugged me and stitched me together", this person has done it over and over, and I know no amount of gratitude can measure up to it.
But recently I bumped into my safest place. Remember how we have varying degrees of anxiety, of pain... of violent tears and silent screams, of biting on to the end of your quilt to not let the cries escape? Yeah exactly that. I was there on my bed, with just a quilt on, chatting with my safe place. New Year had just passed and it was chilly. There was something that had been bothering me for long and that day, the dam finally broke. But unlike all the other times, that day, I plunged deeper than I had ever. I felt like I was coming down hundreds of storeys, and being hit by a thick glass slab each second, till I finally began to cry. And I went, I wept like I had never before, making it harder for me to see what I was typing. And between all this I went back to my happiest memory.
My memory of 'Zorro'. My four legged best friend whom I remember, wagging his tail as he saw this stupid friend of his climb up the muddy road home from school. Eagerly waiting to rest his paws on my shoulder and smother me with affection. I was typing it all on my phone a memory as clear and fresh like the first day I got him home 16 years ago. That small ball of love, curled up on my mother's lap, who feared all the way back home of him soiling her dress. I kept on typing... Remembering how I named him "Zorro" like the protagonist of the cartoon show who rode a white horse in a black tuxedo, owing to my buddy's black fur. The swordsman with his infamous signature of "Z" that he etched on the bad guys he would defeat. That day as I wrote about him, how much I miss him and how he was an ass to leave me, I realized that Zorro will always be my Patronus to any Dementor I face.
So this post is for you buddy, wherever you are, I just want to say that I miss you and I love you, and "It's been a long day without you my friend. And I'll tell you all about it when I see you again..."