MAP OF MY SOUL

I want to scream. I want to run. I want to hug anyone who’ll actually hold me and not ask for my marks afterward. I was never the quiet type. I used to laugh loud. I used to drag friends to stupid cafes and dance until we were breathless and sticky with cold coffee. Now my laughter is rationed. My world is a timetable. My rebellion is a five-minute dance choreo when nobody’s looking. Home feels like an interrogation room disguised as a living space. Conversations are sharp—short—and mostly about what I haven’t done. “Why didn’t you get 95+?” “What were you doing?” “You’re acting weird.” They call me names like I’m a diagnosis. “Psychotic,” they say, like it’s a badge of shame. They call me disappointment like it’s a homework assignment I failed to submit. What did I do to deserve this? I keep asking that. Over and over. It’s meant to sound rhetorical but it’s not. I actually want an answer. Did I laugh too loud as a kid? Did I dream too big? Did I annoy them by being alive? I’m st...

It was my last day of  normal  school.  Just writing that down feels unreal. Fourteen years, four schools, a million memories. And somehow it all ends quietly — on Teachers’ Day. Poetic, isn’t it? We had our celebration, the kind that’s half program, half chaos, full of music, dance, games and awkward messy laughter and fun.  And somewhere after that chaos and energy... I wandered into an empty classroom. My classroom. For the last time, probably. I opened my books like some ritual, plugged in my earbuds (literally XD), and let my old favorite tracks play, songs which have been with me since I was a tween.  But barely ten minutes in, I found myself just... staring out the window. And  oh god , the sky. It was the prettiest shade of blue I’ve ever seen. And something about it — the stillness, the finality — made it hit me. Hard. Fourteen years. Gone. All those years of showing up in uniforms, hanging out in corridors, scribbling nonsense in notebooks, cryin...