You tell me it must've been crazy. I laugh thinking crazy is just an understatement.

                              


                                  Mole-like burrowing in the darkness,
                                 Grasping for the spiders thread,
                                 Always thwarted in ambition,
                                Until the living join the dead?


In hardly a five minute long conversation, with almost a complete stranger who knew a little too much about me, who wondered out loud that how crazy it must've been for me, moving half way across the world one too many times.Yes, I have changed 9 schools. I have lived in more than five houses by now. Packing and unpacking never went out of season. School admissions. New friends. New people. New neighbourhood. Yeah all that.
But you know what? All this time I carried my home with me. In my heart; The backyard where I learnt to walk, here in Pakistan. The windows overlooking the forest in Houston. The rooftop of this house, from where I look down on the street, the life down below being a little too close than they ought to be. That small bedroom in New York, twenty stories high. The staircase up to that apartment in Cali, flooded with orange leaves. I carried it all with me. And I fell in love with traveling.

I wrote that earlier today. Around 12 in the afternoon. I wasn't done. I went away for lunch, leaving this in my drafts. And then I forgot about it. I don't usually forget things. Especially not ones like this one. I never even forget dates, you know. Birthdays, anniversaries and random events stay with me, with precise details. Made me a good history student back in eleventh grade.

Anyway, I came here to say that you call me transparent. Even proved it? Well, I dunno how that works. Only people who bother to look close enough can see through me. But I have to say that I only agree to the part where you say I'm good at hiding it.Or good at trying to hide it? The hurt. I'm good at blocking things out, the things I don't want to know. I can be with you and go away in my head. And you wouldn't even be able to tell the difference. I'm good at protecting myself like that. So I am not vulnerable okay. Not anymore. Remember that.