# Ankle-Deep After All

The water was there when she put her feet down.

Cold, almost felt like sharp needles on her soft feet. It rose over her ankles and Amaya sat frozen, staring at her pale toes beneath the surface. She rubbed her eyes hard. When she looked again, the floor was just the floor, dry tiles, a random stray sock and a charger cable. But the needles still felt the same.

Some part of her wanted to understand it. That part felt very far away now, like someone calling her name from the end of a horribly long corridor.

She had to go today, ‘twas at least eleven missed classes or maybe twelve. She used to record her missed classes in her calendar before, just to keep a track of it, but that now felt deeper as the burden piled up.

Getting up took her at least three tries. She made it to the sink, brushed her teeth and watched a girl in the mirror who looked like her if someone had described her badly.

Then she stopped. Her hands on the cold ceramic, the whole day standing up in front of her.

“I’ll just lie down for a while.”

Next, she woke up at 11:05 AM, she still could have managed to go to her 11 AM class, had another one at 12. Being late was fine, but being absent would have caused the sharpest pain in her mind. She laid on her bed anyway.

The guilt didn't get time to crawl in. It arrived all at once, like it had been waiting outside the door like the grim reaper. “Argh Useless, you Idiot”.

Quiet and certain, the way facts are. She wanted to hurt herself. Not to die, just to be punished, to give the feeling of somewhere to go. She lay there with her fists against her stomach and held it until it passed.

At one, she opened her laptop, reading the first slide four times, she had to catch up with the course. The thoughts wouldn't stop. A hundred voices, all at once. “You're behind Amaya. You used to be smart. What is wrong with you?”

It never stopped. It never ended.

She slept at 6AM. Set three alarms, each one begging her to get up, to end the cycle, to not feel like a failure everyday.

She didn't wake up.

Tanvi would have known what to say. All through the first year, she was her roommate, she acted like the catalyst to push her to classes. They both went to classes together. She knew she had to get back to that but that was the hardest part. Knowing what to do and being able to do it were two different countries, and nobody gave Amaya a map to navigate.

They didn't really talk anymore. Tanvi's last message was a reel from August. Amaya had liked it and never replied.

The first small thing happened at the mess, long after lunch was over, she was late to mess by 15 minutes. Mess dada looked up from the serving counter, looked at her a second longer than usual, then came back with two parathas folded in newspaper.

*“Kept extra for you didi”* he shrugged.

She ate them on her floor and cried and couldn't say why. This was her first meal in, nobody knows how long. This tiny act for an unknown stranger, she was surprised, yet admiring the kindness.

Mehak from her wing knocked to borrow a charger and stayed forty minutes, talking about her roommate who went to Darjeeling and had maggi on the mountains that ruined any other experience of having maggi forever. She didn't ask why her door was locked from inside during class hours. On her way out: *"I have Organic notes from Monday, you can take them"*

Then an email from Dr. Soumyajit. “*I've noticed that you’ve been missing from my classes. I just wanted to check if you're alright.”*

She read it six times. She felt it cliche to feel good about these interactions, yet she couldnt stop feeling a little more touched.

The next day she copied Mehak's absurd, colour-coded notes. There was a tiny benzene ring in the margin and there was the sound of cycle brakes right outside her classroom. Her brain was still speed running, but speed running in a room with someone else in it. That was different.

Tuesday, she woke at 8:15 and nearly lost the negotiation with herself. At the sink, she stood there and thought of the instances around her, despite her not being out there. She didn't feel fixed or neither did she hope for an immediate solution. She just felt like more hands were holding her rope than she'd realised.

She went this time, late but present. Dr. Soumyajit gave her the smallest nod. She understood forty percent of the lecture. Forty was more than zero.

That night, she sent Tanvi the August reel, it was two months late. Eleven minutes later: “*AMAYA. omg. I thought you were mad at me. are you okay? like actually?”*

“not really, she typed. but I went to class today.”

*“that's huge. can I call?”*

The water still floods back some mornings. But one day she put her feet down and noticed something, it only ever reached her ankles.

All this time she'd thought she was drowning. But she was sitting on the edge of her bed, the water was ankle-deep and her phone said *discount in Keventers today, RUN.*

There she was standing, the water being cold and real around her feet.

She walked through it anyway.