Abhaya

The chair creaks again. I tell myself I won't check my phone again. I check it anyway. No messages. It's 11:45 pm. My suitcase is still half-unpacked in the corner of this new room. The fan makes the same tired sound as my old room did, but this isn't my old room. This city doesn't know my name yet. On my phone, there are three missed calls from home. And one Instagram story. The two of them, at our chai stall back in my hometown. The same stall where we used to sit for hours. I was not in the picture. I watched it three times. Then I turned my phone face-down. That was when the tears came. A year ago, life felt full. Too full, actually. My diary was full of plans, my phone was full of groups named "us forever," my evenings were full of people who said, "We'll be there no matter what." I believed them. Eight months ago, on our last evening before I left my hometown, we sat at that stall. The chai was too hot, like always." Distance won't change anything," she said, holding my hand too tight. "We will video call every day." "Every day is too much," I laughed, crying at the same time. "Every week. Promise." We promised. We took photos. We made a friendship bracelet - a cheap black thread with a small silver bead. I am still wearing it. The thread is fading now. The first month, we kept the promise. Long calls. Long texts. "I miss you so much." The second month, the calls became shorter. "I have coaching." "I'm out with family, will call later." The later never came. By the third month, I understood something no one tells you. People don't always leave with a fight. Sometimes they just... fade. Slowly, A seen at 9:14 pm. No reply. A story you are no longer tagged in. A joke you don't understand anymore because you weren't there. I didn't lose them in one day. I lost them in a hundred small silences. And tonight, sitting on this cheap second-hand chair that the landlord gave me in this new city of UCO, I am not just crying because I miss them. I am crying because I miss who I was when I was with them. The girl who never had to think about being alone. The chair creaks again. I wipe my face with my sleeve. My eyes fall on my laptop. It's open. The screen is dim, but I can see the document. The title is "Chapter 1." When they started fading, I started writing. At first, it was just to not feel empty. A diary. Then a paragraph. Then a small blog. I wrote about distance, about trust that breaks quietly, about how you can be surrounded by hundreds of people and still feel homesick for just two. I didn't notice when, but the writing became something else. It became the friend that stayed. Two weeks ago, I sent one of those pieces to a competition. I didn't tell anyone. I thought, what if it's bad? What if I'm not good enough? This morning, the email came. "Congratulations, Ira..." I haven't replied yet. A part of me is still waiting for someone to say, "Did you see? You did it!" But there is no one to forward it to anymore.And maybe that's okay. Maybe growing up is not about holding on to everyone. Maybe it's about learning who stays when the noise goes quiet. I look down at the black thread on my wrist. For months I wore it like proof that I was loved. Now I think I wear it like proof that I was loved. And that is also enough. Not everything has to stay forever to be real.I am still crying. But I am also doing something different now. I pull the chair closer to the table. It creaks one more time, like it's saying, "I'm here." I open the laptop. The cursor blinks on the empty page under Chapter 1. I start typing. Not about them. About me. About this chair, this room, this 11:45 pm girl who has lost hundreds of things in a year - people, home, a version of herself - and is still here. Still growing. Maybe growing far better than before, in a quieter, stronger way. The first sentence comes out slow. "The chair creaks again...

Ray didn't choose the corner bench. The corner bench was just what was left. In the first week of the new class, everyone found their people. The second row was for the football boys. The last row was for the three girls who shared one lunchbox. Ray knew all of them. He said good morning, he shared notes, he laughed at jokes. Good vibe with everyone, but no one he could actually call when he needed. So when the bell rang for break, he stayed. He put his bag on the seat next to him — not to save it, but so no one would have to tell him to move. For a while, it hurt. The kind of hurt that comes from being alone in a full room. He would open his phone just to look busy. Then he got habitual to it. The hurt became quiet. One afternoon the classroom got too loud. A project argument in the front, a speaker playing in the back. Ray picked up his notebook and went to the small balcony behind the library. No one went there. Just one bench with peeling blue paint and a neem tree whose leaves touched the railing. He sat down. No earphones. No phone in his hand. The tree moved. The air was hot, but the shade was cool. He opened his notebook and wrote, not for marks — just thoughts. What am I doing wrong? What can I do better? How can I be a calmer person? For the first time that day, his chest felt light. He wasn't waiting for someone to come and talk. He wasn't checking if someone noticed he was gone. He was just there. A thought came, clear: _Let it happen. Whatever is happening, let it happen. Everything will get better. I deserve good things, and what doesn't deserve me, won't stay._ He sat there for forty minutes. When he walked back to class, he felt full. He spoke more that day. That was the first kind of alone. The kind where you choose it and you come back recharged. Solitude. But there was a second kind. Last month, a boy named Aarav started sitting with him. He shared notes. He waited after class. It was nice. Maybe too nice. Ray felt a small, tight fear. The last friendship didn't end with a fight. It ended with a misunderstanding, a message left on read, a trust that broke quietly. No one shouted. They just stopped trying. So when Aarav said, "Bro, can I tell you something?" Ray said, "Later, yaar, I have work." Later never came. He went back to the same balcony, the same blue bench, the same neem tree. But this time was different. The notebook stayed closed. The chai in his paper cup went cold. He wasn't thinking about his life. He was thinking about what would happen if he let someone close again. The bench was the same. The small space was the same. But the story inside it was bigger and heavier. He wasn't recharging now. He was hiding. That's when he understood it. Enjoying your own company and isolating yourself look exactly the same from the outside. Same room. Same closed door. Same boy sitting alone. But from the inside, they feel completely opposite. In solitude, alone feels like coming home to yourself. In isolation, alone feels like hiding from the world because you're scared to trust again. One gives you energy. The other takes it. The only way to know the difference is to ask: after this alone time, do I feel lighter or heavier? The next day, Aarav walked past his bench. He didn't stop. Ray felt that old fear again — _what if I trust and it breaks again?_ Then he remembered the two afternoons. The light one and the heavy one. He tapped Aarav's shoulder. "Yesterday, you were saying something?" Aarav turned. "Yeah. Nothing big. Just wanted to ask if you want to go to the library after class." Ray nodded. "Yeah. Let's go." It was a small yes. But it wasn't hiding. He didn't need a big group. He didn't need to be alone forever. He just needed to know when his alone time was his home, and when it was his hiding spot. And now, sitting on that corner bench, he finally knew the difference.