Disclaimer: This piece is a continuation from a narrative published a little more than a year ago; it too was published in the Daily and is titled Embracing compassion against mortality.
My heart’s journey from my brother’s suicide a little less than five years ago to now has taken me from the depths of depression to the boundless joy contained in the adoration of others. My path has been driven by pain; that is, I have come to realize that losing my most important teacher, my favorite friend and my beloved other half has been, and hopefully will be, the worst thing to happen in my life. This is not to say the legacy I leave will be heartbreaking. My heart is strong, and I choose to cultivate love in the vastness of my human experience. For though my dance with the devil means turmoil has embraced my soul, my choice is to live in the light. Suffering is what drives my compassion; this has been my greatest triumph. My compassion is now what must dictate how I approach loving who I am; this is my struggle to love myself.
Why is my love universal to all those except Ajit? Whenever I meet someone new, I strive to make him or her feel comfortable. This may seem to be a burden, and it is. But it is a burden I love to keep. The joy of those who smile in my presence imbues me with energy to make them smile even more. This is why compassion is an inherent positive feedback loop in the best of ways.
Yet, the problem is not how I approach social interactions, but why I approach them the way I do. I convince myself it is because I am an extrovert, which is true; I am an extrovert. But underneath the surface exists truer intentions: I generate comfort for others because I am not comfortable with myself. Why? Because at the time of my brother’s death, I was considering the very actions he endorsed as his glasses shattered on that cold Pittsburg floor. Survivor’s guilt takes on special meaning in my situation: I am enclosed in a steadily shrinking box between the death of who I want to be and the life of the Petrified Boy who is naked in vulnerability.
Disgust for myself started when I was around five feet tall in the form of the lies I told. To the day, I struggle to tell the truth about my roots to even the best of my friends. For instance, many reading this might be shocked to know I never did track in high school. I never had a long-term high school girlfriend. I was nerdy for my whole life, and though now I embrace my intelligence as a gift, until I was about 19 I didn’t. During freshmen year, numerous friends would time and time again figure out when I was lying, further fueling my efforts to search with manipulative spirit for the paragon of my soul. My first year at college trapped me behind a decievious* wall. Luckily, by the start of my sophomore year, the addition of new lies stopped. But the damage has been done; I currently live in someone else’s shoes, a person I deem Ajit 2.0. He is my “ideal” self, yet is ironically far from ideal. Ajit 2.0 functions to protect the Petrified Boy, yet is nothing more than a mask dissolving in the deterioration of its wearer.
After five years, I still cannot remove my mask. Why? Deception is a widening crevice in the confidence I display versus that which I possess. Undoing the knots my lies have weaved involves taking leaps that will cause pain to those I love, and most importantly to the Petrified Boy. I am vulnerable in that both my heart and my brain have become exposed for the world to analyze and critique. This may seem to be a burden, and it is. But it is a burden I am willing to keep for the sake of those I love. My past decisions to dig the Petrified Boy’s grave may have been of choice or of fate, but this is irrelevant. What matters is my current decision to embrace Ajit in the love I show my friends, family and all others that I encounter in my journey. I choose to expand my box by destroying the walls my past is responsible for.
I will always suffer from the death of my dear Rohan. Survivor’s guilt will always subject my soul to the Devil’s dance. Darkness will always grimace at my face, but my heart is strong. I decide to take off my mask and fall into the abyss, for I know that my love will prevail. The light will shine its eternal love on the Petrified Boy, and I will embrace myself in the compassion of all those who matter. My struggle to love myself is not over, but my leap against deception’s crevice has been made. I will come to love the entirety of Ajit one day, for I know my love will prevail.
I love you Rohan.
*decievious is a word I came up with in freshmen year as a mix of deceptive and devious. I lied to my friends that I had submitted the word to Merriam Webster in high school, which came back with the hardest of bites when my friends deduced the story was a ruse.
Ajit Vakharia ‘16
Contact Ajit Vakharia at ajitv ‘at’ stanford.edu.