THAT SUITCASE UNDER THE BED by Rae Pathak

"THAT SUITCASE UNDER THE BED"
by Rae Pathak

There it was, that feeling again — running away and restarting your life somewhere else. Where? You don't know. Will it change something? You hope. All you do is hope and hope and hope that someday you don't stop believing in this hope you talk about so much. You have lived for almost 27 years and a decade has passed by since you felt this way. Just to be safe, some of you, like me, always keep a suitcase under your bed so that you can fly away whenever you need to. You wonder if other people feel the same.

Sometimes, when you walk into a room, the air suddenly becomes so heavy that you almost suffocate. You don't understand why you feel so lonely around the ones you love and the ones who love you. You have travelled to cities, and countries and none of them feel like home. Or I should say all of them felt like home at one point or another. Your heart has no idea of what it's seeking. It just knows it's not here, not in this place, not in this world.

What if you chase this feeling and keep running away? Will it be easier? Maybe. But you know this, too, that if you don't find home, someday you will run out of the places to run to.

Movies make it seem so easy— figuring out your life after moving elsewhere. But I think it's the hardest. The absence of people and places you love gives you a sense of emptiness. You feel like a foreigner everywhere and if someone loves you even a little, you find yourself tending towards their warmth. It's ephemeral but your reason to look forward to something. But then something happens, and you pack that blue suitcase and move again to an unfamiliar town or country. There is never peace anywhere.

My Mother says that acceptance is control, and denial is losing your sanity. If it's not the way you wanted it, build it. So, I accept and decide to give this life a shot. A real shot. We have to stop daydreaming about leaving and start figuring out the life we are living. And as I have accepted, I have come to realise a wonderful and terrible thing. This feeling of running away? It's never going to leave you. It will always reside in your heart in one way or another. Sometimes, faint and sometimes, a little too intense.

The good part is that you will realise that the life you have been seeking exists within the moments you have lived, the people you have loved, and the places you have stepped your foot in. The warmth of your roommate's lap after a break up, the hugs of your Mother after a long conversation, the phone calls from your sister, the kind smile from that one neighbour in a foreign country, the blue beaches where you have swam in all afternoon, the cold mountains you have made snow angels in, the banyan trees you have sat under— all of it has made you felt right at home in one way or another.

The life you have experienced so far, and the life that you are going to live in the future will all carry these parts of happiness and warmth that you have been seeking. It is not perfect, but it is still there and it will always be there as long as you allow yourself to see it and embrace it.

Maybe, I will always have that suitcase under my bed but I will also have moments when I will genuinely laugh, and come to find things I really cherish. One of these days, I hope you stop running away and learn to stay with yourself, too.

— Rae Pathak, friday reminders.

Follow at Instagram.com/raepathak

Illustration by Sam Yang

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