Stranger

I lean back and watch her. She looks back at me, with those sad, wistful eyes. Why is there so much sadness in them? I want to ask. The animation, the spark of life, the unbridled joy I first beheld in those eyes - where has it all gone? Why has it all gone? I do not know for she will not tell me. Every day, I watch her struggle - against what, I do not know- and I watch her fail. With each passing day, her struggle weakens, her failure intensifies and I watch her sink deeper into this bog that she is entrapped in. It kills me that I cannot help her. It kills me that she will not let me help her. I look back at her face. It cuts a very poignant picture. The face, still so childish but the despondency in it, so adult. 

At times, I want to lash out at her. What right does she have to grief? She, who was born, brought up and still lives in the midst of love and luxury. She, who has faced no hardship, known neither pain nor loss, death nor deprivation. She, with her picture-perfect life - what reason could there be for this misery? She smiles when I tell her this but offers no reply. At other times, I want to take her hands in mine, offer her support and consolation, let her know that things will be alright, that all this, whatever it is, is just a phase and will pass. I do this. Again, a wan smile. She is still silent. It is her silence that is unnerving. Debilitating. And more so because it's so drastic a difference from her usual ebullience. I watch her operate in class. Those brave, half-hearted smiles - put on for her friends' benefit - lest they worry. I watch as she goes about her work, telling no one about what's wrong or even whether something is wrong. I watch as the boys tease her. She smiles but does not fight back. She has no will left in her to. Sometimes, she laughs, talks but an oppressive blanket of silence seems to shroud it all. It is not failed love, she has told me as much. But then, what is it? And why does she not tell me? What is she afraid of, I wonder? Why these walls between us? After all these years, why this barrier against me? Does she not realize that her existence is inextricably linked with mine? Every breath she takes is mine. Every step she moves is mine. Every look, every thought, every word is mine. She has to let me know what's wrong. She has to let me in. Because if she doesn't, she will crumble. And with her, I will crumble. I look back at my reflection in the mirror. The girl in there is not me. She is a stranger to me. I am a stranger to her. I am a stranger to myself.