Post-Adrenaline Diwali
Because who needs fireworks when your brain is already exploding.
For everyone who’s ever felt strangely hollow when the world is lighting up.
You’re not alone.
For the first time,
I’m feeling sad because I miss giving my exams.
I know, I know, I’m shocked myself, but let me continue.
The exams I’m talking about ended three days ago. Three days. Three plus days, actually.
And yet, my body behaves as if it is still sprinting in a sleep-deprived haze.
The adrenaline that had me running has evaporated, leaving a desperately stubborn buzzing underneath my ribs.
I thought post-exam relief would feel light (pun intended).
Instead, it feels like emptiness ripping apart my chest to reveal an extremely empty heart.
Outside, the city has exploded into celebration.
Lights are everywhere, climbing up balconies, even mine, like strands of glowing ivy that decided to take over the city.
Fireworks sit in cardboard boxes waiting for someone to set them free.
The air feels alive, heavy with the scent of fried sweets, warm ghee, and too much incense;
It sticks to your hair and seeps into your clothes.
Happiness feels kinetic, a physical force that I can’t stop feeling.
I want to move with it, but my limbs are betraying me.
They are heavy with the inertia of panic, the inertia of stress.
I want to feel pure optimism without the usual shadow of pessimism that clings to it,
but today does not feel like that day.
(If you know, you know.)
Eventually, despite this emptiness, I manage to start cleaning my cupboard,
which somehow feels more difficult than negotiating world peace.
Every stack of fabric is a tiny rebellion,
a microcosm of everything unfinished, undone, and probably judging me.
I called a lot of people today and texted even more,
each message a desperate little SOS,
hoping someone, anyone, might confirm I exist in a world that still functions.
No one answers. Not a single soul.
They are busy with their own Diwali preparations,
caught in the same kinetic happiness that now feels poisonous to me.
(Poison ivy for a reason?)
But still, the silence hurts.
Not because it makes sense, but because I keep waiting for a reply,
a call, a sign that someone’s out there thinking of me, too.
It’s that quiet ache of wanting to be seen,
of realising I’m just here, stuck inside my own head, with no one else in it.
I feel low on iron.
I stop and sit on the floor.
My hands hover over the pile of clothes that I hauled out of their shelves in a frenzy,
unsure how to fold, to sort.
Should I leave this for tomorrow?
I can’t.
I have already delayed it for long enough.
My mind races.
How can I crave productivity and yet be so incapable of it?
How can I feel both desperate for engagement and paralysed by it?
I feel a billion feelings at once: guilt, boredom, shame, panic, emptiness, anxiety, restlessness.
A reddish-brown spider crawls out of the closet.
Its movements are awkward, and I recognise myself in it:
Hesitant, struggling to carry my tiny existential load across the floor.
In its crawl, I see the tension between wanting to move and being unable to do so.
In its tiny limbs, I see the oscillation of effort and inertia.
The lights outside flicker. Fireworks pop.
How long has it even been?
I should feel something.
I should feel joy. Excitement?
Right??
I don’t.
My nervous system has definitely misread the festival memo.
The world is all sparks and sugar and spice and laughter and prayers;
My brain is a quiet warning siren that keeps blaring.
And yet, somehow, there is recognition in this.
That buzzing in my chest is proof that I am alive.
That absurd craving for productivity, for connection,
for feeling something in a world that demands energy
is the wiring of a human being that has been running flat out and now has nowhere to go.
I finally feel like lighting a diya on my windowsill.
Its flame wavers in the slight breeze,
like a heartbeat struggling to normalise itself after looking at someone they love.
I watch it, and somehow my chest doesn’t feel so hollow anymore.
The diya barely illuminates itself.
And yet, that tiny, trembling light feels like a signal that even in post-adrenaline chaos,
even in lonely silence,
even in unproductive inertia,
There is still current running.
Light breathing.
Life living.
Tomorrow, someone will ask how Diwali was.
I’ll smile and say, “It was fun!”
They won’t see the cupboard, the spider, the crash of energy,
the buzzing emptiness that followed me around.
But I saw it all, I felt it, I know it all.
I know how I sat in the mess and managed to clean my cupboard,
And it was fun.
ॐ दीपाय नमः
Om Deepaya Namah
(Salutations to the light that removes darkness.)
WOW
This is so beautifully written, oh my God 😭