If you get close enough to the shallow ledge of a deep well and look below there is nothing but dark. Nothing but nothing. It is so deep that you do not know if there’s water or it’s dry. You don’t know what lives there, what thrives, what journeys upward toward the sun, but dies on its way, what’s already festering at the bottom. If indeed there is a bottom.

As a child I tagged along with my grandparents to the Agiyari on several festive occasions. The temple had a large garden at the back with incredible views of the Arabian Sea beyond. In the middle of this garden sat a massive open well. My persistently droll imagination conjured up all sorts of scenarios of what would happen if I’d fall into the well: I’d drown and everyone would miss me and cry, I’d sink to the bottom and be rescued by handsome water creatures, I’d thrash around and make lots of noise – if heard I’d be thrown a rope and climb out, if not I’d float and become a spirit. This well still exists (now safely covered with net) as does the temple, though the garden and the view is gone. On my last visit I peered into it, almost unblinkingly, willing my vision to find the end of the tunnel, some closure.

Haruki Murakami wrote a novel in which a large part was devoted to a man spending time in a well (The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, a must read). The silence enveloped him, the space confined him, the dark fed his soul, hurting at first, liberating much later. Like any clawing pain.

Depth and water have long been conjoined twins in the visual vortex of the descriptive. Yet for some reason the picture has mostly been about something hidden, something terse and meaningful yet enigmatic and incomprehensible. It’s seldom been about pain. It was recently that Chris Nolan’s Dark Knight depicted the hero deep in a puzzling earthy underbelly, shattered both literally and figuratively, eventually climbing allegorically upward on his journey toward healing redemption.

What is pain? Being in that well is pain. Darkness around you is pain. Exposed to the naked indifference of the sun, the quiet of your crying is pain. Your rasps ricochetting off the cage of your bones is pain. How do you know you are at rock bottom? Will you fall farther into your own pain? You most probably will, just when you think it’s the last pitch into that deep space, the chord will bungee you up and plunge you merciless down beyond. It hurts like hell – all that movement, it makes you giddy, faint with fright at the uncertainty. Pain does that.

If you’ve stuck with me so far, you would have guessed by now I’ve had my share of sitting at the bottom of a barren blackness. Friends who visited me then ranged from Despair to Sorrow, Deceit to Hardship. They dropped like pebbles, some sinking quick to be at my side, heavy with their own weight. Some exploded on my head, gashing my raw wounds open just as they were healing. It helped to be in a well with water. Even as I drowned I was surrounded by the protective fluid of hope. It’s what Pandora released last, it’s what kept me alive.

Of all the deepest darkest chasms of pain I have had to endure, being an adult remains the biggest one. How does a person do that? How do you take the shit from your past, try not to pick at the scabs of your present and set about constructing a future where you’ve healed, where you’ve arrived at a space within yourself which is sacred? How do you become an architect of your life sans any misgivings, where the suffering has collided with your joy, where the well has been inverted… Where your inner Batman has swung fecklessly free from crippling confines to exit into the light like a fantastic Phoenix?

Sitting in the well requires courage. To be aware of your environment, the dankness that cold hurt brings, the immediate need to violate something, anything, the absurd thoughts, the brutal exposition to your own fallibility. You want to maim, you want to scream till the hurt in your heart echoes up through the tunnel in which you’ve dug yourself and gets out of you somehow. You are but one microcosm in a universe of endless stars. Who are you? Why does your pain matter, and for that matter, why do you? But you endure it, as we all do.

You bear your cross, you smell the loamy desire to resurrect yourself. Deep within you resides the spring of wellness, so you start to cobble together a survival box of tools to get out. You pray for Kindness and Benevolence. You start to unfriend your previous companions. They get the idea and reluctantly remove themselves, albeit fussing all the while. Eventually you reach a semblance of balance, fragile as an eggshell, with the promise of a better tomorrow.

It’s such hard work, growing up, growing strong, forgiving yourself. Those bandages you stuck superficially to control the damage at first now fall off with ease, the scabs below reveal agitated scars, but they’re healing. They will always be a reminder to you of your strength. How have you done it? How have you come out of that well?

You must do it alone. Only in our absolute independence do we know ourselves absolutely. You must do it with patience – Healing is not a one-night-stand type. You must learn to love yourself, because your ego is not you, your pain is not you, just as your joy is not you. All of it is only the learning of a life well spent, the earning of a deep self-empathy. The whole point is to let go of what is unnecessary and hold on to what is… how simple.

The estimated time of arriving at yourself is indeterminate, it’s a work in progress. There will be moments where you will thump back down and break a leg, other times you will make leaps and bounds only to hit a snag with the volatility of your climb, your hands will be pulverized, your heart will constrict. But you will make it out, because you’ve been in that well with the purpose of dwelling inside yourself. You’ve learnt about the parts you wish to discard, the ones you will hone, the disused bits you will dust and polish to brighten, the love you have slowly managed to edge toward.

Congratulations, this it’s a changed beginning. There’s a balmy breeze, a chattering of starlings swoops hypnotically across the sky… you stand there, absorbing yourself, small, complete. You are a bowl, the cracks are gold.

You tell me you’re cold on the inside
How can the outside
World be a place
That your heart can embrace
Be good to yourself
Cause nobody else
Has the power to make you happy
– Heal the pain, George Michael

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hello! I’m Peri Desai

I’m Peri, welcome to my space. In it you will find stuff that moves me, maddens me, captures my attention, makes me question its truth. You will read what makes me curious, annoyed, energized, joyful, vulnerable.