Coming back to life

She walked through the woods, all alone with only the whisper from the trees and the chirping of birds for company. And she didn't ask for more. Her mind was full of thoughts, so many that it was becoming harder by the minute to keep track of the tangential directions that her thoughts were taking. She stopped short in her path, for there was an unmistakeable presence of another person, or probably just another thought stream that was disturbing hers, she was unable to tell. But it was there and she could experience it as much as the breeze caressing her hair, or the leaves rustling against her bare feet.

She tried to focus, disentangle the multiple paradigms that the turmoil insider her was giving birth to. She chose a bench to sit on, trying desperately but in vain to streamline her confused mind - for her out-of-control mind began to wander, jumping from one world to another, unsettling her emotionally. Her soft sobs seemed to blend into the music of the woods. Her face buried in her palms, she tried to let go of the demons inside, clinging on to the ray of hope that peace will prevail at the other end of the agony. 

As she lost track of the time in the switching games being played by her mind, the world seemed to empty around her. Her twenty five years of life resembled a fading memory, as she struggled to recollect the faces of the people who mattered to her. Lately, she had been frequented by this experience of living in a parallel universe. She often found herself waking up, only to realize that she hadn't been sleeping at all. People around her had seen her go into a shell all of a sudden and then switch back, as if from a nightmare. She herself noticed her sweating palms and trembling fingers, unable to figure out where she had spent the last few minutes! 

But those minutes were real, so real that she ended up battling between illusions and reality to put her life story in place. She lifted her face to look at the rays of the sun that filtered through the leaves to touch her feet. As she dried her eyes, she felt a hand on her shoulder and turned with shock and fear clouding her, expecting to see a ghost or a spirit. It took her a few minutes to come to terms with what she saw, for there was nothing but the empty woods all around her. 

And then she heard it! Someone calling out, repeatedly her name as if from a distance. She snapped back to see a coffee mug in her hand, her mom yelling from the kitchen, "have you still not finished your coffee?"! She turned to look at the clock, remembering the last time she had noticed the time. Yes! It had been those same thirteen minutes! As it was every single time!