Behind High Walls

By Yashila Vikas

Edited by Vasvi Singhal

Fears, you know? They're terrifying to talk about. You know why? Because they expose me. They put me in a spotlight, showing people my scars, my vulnerabilities, and all my naked truths. Knowing about my fears gives them ammunition to fire poison-laced bullets from their mouths, letting them puncture my heart and make me bleed from the inside out. The world is cruel like that. You give them your weakness, and they will turn it into arrows.

As it is perfectly evident, I have an irrational fear that the world is here to get me. They call it paranoia. But sometimes I wonder, maybe it's not all that irrational. The world is a scary place, and after a few eye-opening, soul-crushing, morale-shattering experiences, you learn to keep your eyes wide open, always watching. You look over your shoulder at all times. When the light flickers, you question—was it just the wind? Or is something lurking, waiting to tear apart what's left of you?

To cope with this overwhelming anxiety, you pick up a few tricks. You learn to trust no one. Every laugh feels like a threat, every whisper a conspiracy. You start reading between the lines that don't exist. You build up your walls so high that you are left all alone in a dark tower of your own making. Is it a prison or a protector? With the illusion of being safe, you're just suffocating yourself, feeling the air thinning with each breath, screaming into the void. The worst part is, you're too afraid to carve yourself a window, so you cannot even let your hair down.

I do sometimes wonder—is the world really out to get me? Or is it all just in my head? Either way, the fear is real.

Maybe someday, I will let my hair down. But the question is—will somebody climb up, or will they take one look and walk away?