There is immense melancholy in me for the past few months. Been trying to manage study, work, expenses, and all. There was some trouble from a few last days, but I kept myself firm for a long time in waiting for time to smoothen out things.
Recently, graduation has added one more load on my shoulders. As I set my post-graduate life in my third year, I arranged my financial documents for study abroad, a step that was ready to fight until I make something and give my family everything they have wished for. But wheels do not always turn according to plan, and stories do not always unfold as they are written in books. So began the unraveling of my plans. Somewhere in the present, I have truly lost all energy to fight. Seemingly, every path was stranded, every door I knocked on slammed shut, and every hand slid right away after holding it. The value of deep resilience had been ingrained into me since growing up, but of late, the well has felt completely dry.
Expecting a reset, I accepted a small 3-day bike trip with friends post completion of our final year defense. The feeling was that I would come back refreshed and go for my proficiency tests, setting things back to zero. Everything was going great up until the ride back to Kathmandu. While riding on a moderately rainy highway, our bike slipped. We were not speeding much, but the crash was very hard for me and found myself sliding on the road from shoulder down.
On pure adrenaline, I got up. The realization came in when I saw blood dripping down my arm and face. My friend was fine, standing there looking at me in horror. A few moments later, the dizziness struck, and the next thing I know, I wake up in a nearby hospital. By gods grace, no bones were fractured. I could walk, but a significant layer of my skin was just gone. We took a bus back to Kathmandu, and I've been recovering in complete isolation ever since. It was almost like a death experience, an eye-opener, and made me realize that maybe my story could have ended right there on that wet road where i've so much left to do.
Sitting all alone with this realization, I went to the corner of the room and picked up a stack of books that I had bought months ago, intending to read but never got around to reading them. I always try to find lessons from characters facing deep struggles, so I picked up The Plague by Albert Camus. All I know is that it's about a doctor and a priest in some village where death is dancing in the streets. I thought of reading it to see how these characters perform their roles in the midst of death and understand their perspective , perhaps how meaning is found when everything seems so totally out of our control.