Ayra’s Awakening | #fiction

Ayra sat on the edge of the rooftop, her legs dangling above a city that never slept, nor once paused to notice her. Right below, a pulsating city murmured— horns bleating, tea stalls buzzing, people arguing, lovers quarreling, all beneath the glow of the neon lights. 

For Ayra, though, time had suddenly taken a pause.

This rooftop was her refuge, after she resigned from her 9-5 job at an IT firm, that had once felt like a lifeline. Today, all she felt was the suffocation from the fifteen years of endless meetings, working weekends and climbing ladders, only to find that she had been leaning against the wrong wall. Her grit, perseverance, and that dogged sense of discipline had led her all along, but the spark in her eyes went missing somewhere along the way. Her eyes looked sad and sunken. The spring in her steps was gone too.

Of course, there were tell-tale signs—only she had failed to notice them. In fact, even her family couldn’t tell how she had slowly been metamorphosing into a shadow of her former self.

The panic attacks came disguised as skipped meals. It was hardly noticeable how she smiled through meetings, but in the quiet confines of her home, she let all guards down and wept bitterly, staring into an uncertain future. She questioned her choices and often agonised over her decision to quit writing—the one thing that had always made her feel more alive than anything else. There were no clear answers.

When her sister came to visit her one evening, Ayra’s angst surfaced again. Sonya, her niece, all of nine and full of curiosity, came up to her, and gently chided into her ears—

“Why don’t you laugh these days, Maasi? It used to be so much fun with you earlier – now I don’t feel like coming here anymore.”

Hearing those words, Ayra felt something within her suddenly crack open. Something within her shifted—like a caged animal, longing for release from years of captivity, her entire being longed to be set free.

After they left, Ayra sobbed aloud, letting lose all her pent up emotions, into the universe. The tears flowed endlessly, until she sat up, puffy eyed, at her desk, ready to chalk out an exit plan.

A month later, having resigned from her job, Ayra sold all the gold she had and moved into a small studio apartment. After mulling it over, she finally reached out to a friend who introduced her to a writer’s collective, where no one really cared about who she was.

They were a group of writers who met up regularly, bound by their common love for the written word—they chatted, critiqued, argued and wrote, and often ended up reading and cheering one another, especially when the rejection emails would dampen the spirits.

There was clearly something about that felt nice, especially the vibes she got from the small community. But, she had to bear the uncertainties of a writer’s life, and truth be told, there would be days when she’d doubt her decision. Surprisingly, most days she felt alive like never before, in a way that the spreadsheets had never done for her. She’d wake up before dawn, watch the horizon change colours, while she brewed her coffee. It was the best time in the whole day, when she’d tap away on her Mac, often forgetting that it was time to grab a bite.

Ayra’s readership grew over time and occasionally, there would be emails from strangers telling her how her words had moved them, or how her stories had made them weep.

Slowly, as days rolled into weeks and months, Ayra’s world started to change. From chasing business goals and targets for clients whom she had never ever met, she was now writing about people like herself and those she saw around her: the battles that raged within them, the conflicts, the struggles, the doubts; of love and grief, and forgiveness that took years to come or never came at all and peace and closure that people had often given their entire life for. There was a connection that came to exist between her and her characters, drawn from life, of people she knew and saw around her.

And slowly, she rebuilt her life around them. One story and one poem at a time. Piece by piece.

She felt enough, in that small studio apartment, stringing words together, as if her life depended on them. It was precarious, living by the words she would churn out, but there was a strange sense of purpose and a deep sense of fulfilment that she had never known earlier. Even in her incompleteness and imperfections, she felt complete.

When she felt happy, her bond with her sister, once distant, became closer than ever. She realised the depth of her own emotions, and how she had earlier closed herself from them. A couple of months later, when Sonya visited her, they chatted like old times, while she held her hand through her fears and nightmares.

“Standing up for yourself does not mean being unkind,” Ayra reminded Sonya, as she brushed her tangled hair off her forehead and hugged her. Sonya smiled and hugged her back, waving as she left with her mother.

Haltingly and clumsily, it seemed that Ayra was slowly beginning to fall in love with life all over again.

For the first time, she let people see the bruises beneath her poetry. She didn’t armour herself with perfection, preferring to stay soft instead.

There were days when the fear of being too much surfaced, but she didn’t flinch or shrink. She let herself be seen. Without the usual overthinking and certainly, with no hesitation, she was learning to live unfettered and unafraid.

But not all days were gold-lit. Some were laced with doubt. Grief tip-toed in, through old doors. There were memories that stole her peace, every now and then, like the memory of her father’s passing and the silence that hung between them and the lack of closure, now that he was gone.

She often recalled the nights as a child when she and her sister would crave for warmth in their home in the hills. Years of suppressed emotions had seeped into her heart and all Ayra knew was the tightness that she felt in her throat, as the memories came tumbling down.

For years, she had cleverly kept them buried, but they slowly began to resurface now, much like an uninvited guest, who shows up when you least expect them.

Ayra let them move through her, despite the sting and the gnawing pain—it now dawned on her that this was just the ache of being alive; that one had to live with it, until one’s last breath. She didn’t have to hide from it anymore. They were all a part of who she was—the writer’s safety vault—where a myriad emotions, joys, aches, and a million memories were stored, all to be dipped into, whenever the need arose.

At forty-seven, Ayra felt every experience in a new light, like never before. When something beautiful reached for her—be it a child’s drawing, an old friend’s call, a quiet sunset or a stunning azure sky—she was happy to revel in it, soaking in the joys of being alive. Having spent half a lifetime trying to fit in, she often questioned—”Why fit in, when you are finally becoming who you need to be?“

Finally, it seems, she was carving her own space. That was enough.

One evening, after a celebratory dinner at the Writer’s Collective, Ayra came home feeling jubilant. She had just been offered a job as an Assistant Editor at a publishing firm in the city and she was now halfway through her very first novel. She began to look forward to the days again. A lightness of being came to settle inside her.

This was the moment that she had been waiting for and now, that she was staring at her own face in the mirror, a voice whispered in her ears, “I see you just as YOU are—and I like this brave, messy and real you.”

Wiping the tear that had just rolled down her eyes, Ayra smiled. It was her moment of reckoning—because all she wanted for the longest time was right here—she felt seen and heard by the world—something inside her said “life has come a full circle.”

Nothing could be more wonderful than to know that the world, in some small, tremulous way, had felt her presence too.