Solace In My Soul

This is about a girl. Not just any girl. A very ambitious one who has goals, studies for exams, writes poems, has hobbies, works on projects, laughs with friends and family, and usually is the one to light up the room.

Except that no one sees the days when she’s tired, she’s incapable of shining anymore and she needs a break from being everybody’s light when she herself is filled with darkness inside.

She looks fine, in fact happy and energized when she laughs to jokes in class, runs around in the school ground, asks a question. And she indeed is fine, working on her goals after going home, being productive, making the most of her day. 

So it’s just another average Tuesday. She is prepared to walk home by herself after school and start studying, filling pages, accomplishing, doing, just…working.

She starts to walk home normally, bag clutched firmly on her back, wind behind the trees whipping little strands of hair in her eyes.

She halts her walk and moves her finger delicately to brush the hair out of her eyes, until she sees a group of kids cycling home with their friends, chatting loudly and seeming to have everything together.

And that’s when something hit her.

Did she really feel happy on the inside the same way they were on the outside? And then suddenly, setting all her goals and life philosophies aside for a while, she just longed so much to be one of those kids, laughing without pretending to, being the light, feeling like a kid her age, and just living. 

And that’s what she thought every time there wasn’t another goal invading her mind. What did it feel like to be a kid, to have the care-free childhood everyone pictures in their mind, to not bear so much weight in your chest that no one even sees?

She continued looking fine, but no one noticed the cracks on the inside. The bittersweet longing for friends plagued her thoughts until suddenly her eyes stung with tears and she cried quietly under the desk in Math class when no one noticed.

And yet, she kept going. Kept doing the things she loved. Kept talking to people she loved.

But then she realized a few weeks later, that something had changed. The things already there in her life were too meaningful that she simply couldn’t care about having a group of friends anymore. She learned to enjoy her own company. And it was okay.

She realized that she didn’t need to be everybody’s light. She just needed to have a little flicker of hope for herself even on the darkness days. Because that’s just how life is. There’s always hope. There’s always light at the end of the tunnel.

This journey wasn’t pretty for her, and she sometimes still quietly longs for everyone else’s life. But at the end of the day, everyone struggles. Just because nobody can see it doesn’t mean that stars don’t get tired of shining all the time. 

She never despised herself for longing for care-freeness. She found that sense of care-freeness within herself. 

Maybe one day, she will find a group of friends to laugh with on the way home. Maybe she’ll still grieve the loss of the old ones. 

But at the end of it all, at the end of the tunnel, she will still have one thing; the solace within her soul.