Eshani Surya, Many Children Have Thoughts That Bother Them | L*STS

    

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Many Children Have Thoughts that Bother Them

Eshani Surya

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—The tightness on my third-grade teacher’s face, I didn’t understand it until I barreled off the school bus and into my mother’s ramrod center. She kept her arms slack, didn’t hug me when I told her about my day, such a great day. She answered like I should’ve already known, there’s been an accident, though it hadn’t been accident, it’d been four planes. After, there was the footage of the gray smoke, billowing like the skirt of the woman who’d jumped from one of the top-floor windows, as if that was better than burning to death. After, there were conspiracy theories. There were chairs in circles at school, which we sat in to use simple, fragmented language to talk about what happened. There was the footage of the long lines of cars, headlights on, as people tried to escape the city. There was the ritual of throwing my closet open when I was sent upstairs for bed at my father’s house. It was every weekend. It was dark on the tall stairs, dark in the hallway. Quick, I moved quick, to turn on my bedroom’s light, to cast a glow on the white, impassive, double-door closet. Every night I debated with myself, suggested not looking inside. No reason a killer would choose our house to make terror it. No way for him to get in. No chance he would hide in that closet without murdering us first. But then, also, no reason he wouldn’t choose our house, if he had to choose a house at all. No way I shouldn’t scream and alert the rest of our house. No chance I’d succeed, but—

—Twenty-four (or three times eight, or six times four), thirty-six (or six times six, or four times nine), favorite numbers because there were two ways to get there. Favorites, because they repeated. Favorites, because they became so familiar compared to lesser known digits. Favorites, because they stayed. When I was eight, I was fast at the timed multiplication tests slapped down on our desks, but my favorite teacher told my mother that didn’t mean I was good at them. I hadn’t memorized every x times y, just a few key equations. From there, I added and subtracted. It isn’t right, she said. My mother said, What does it matter, if she gets there in the end? They were both wrong. Right was the numbers, waiting for me. Right was their friendship, new, obsessional, in the way I’ve always craved, like girls who can’t talk to each other about anything but their melancholy— 

—Something my therapist and I work on is understanding that fairness isn’t always possible; that what I think is fair might not be fair to another; that fair might not be as fair today as tomorrow; that the way the universe is a loop, not a line, means some things become fair later on, when you least expect it; that the constant sum of fairness would be boring, expected, rote like the end of the alphabet, which is—don’t I know, as a writer—more engrossing when it makes words, or sentences, or paragraphs, or speeches, or poems, or advertisements, or proclamations, or proposals, or abstracts, or eulogies. These are things that weigh heavy in my mouth. My mouth, which I used to think of in two. When the left got a taste, a chew, so too did the right. When the right did, so too did the left. Equal, except when I ran out of bites. Then, in the lack, in the empty space, was apologies, which took the whole mouth to say. My therapist and I work on those too, apologies. I give them too easily, or not at all, depending on whose turn it is to beg, but—

—There were chairs in circles at school, which we sat in to use simple, fragmented language to talk about what happened. There was the footage of the long lines of cars, headlights on, as people tried to escape the—

—Writing came early, as I think it does for most people who still do it regularly, feverishly, into adulthood. What if this, that? What if the story could unspool into whatever direction it wanted to? What if I was allowed to tell a lie, because it was called fiction? What if I was even praised for it? Writing, it was a coping mechanism. It was an act of reclamation. It was terrors, slanted. My mother read every sentence, and she had ideas too. When she suggested a reshaping of a plot, a retooling of a scene, I clamped down, stared off, somewhere away. They were usually good suggestions, but they weren’t mine. What did stolen ideas make my genius? Pale? That isn’t a thing to be known for. My mother talked. I refused to listen. When we were the car, I concentrated my mind out the window, at the blurring pines. When we were at home, it went with the backyard trees that beat with the wind against the sky—

—When I was eight, I was fast at the timed multiplication tests slapped down on our desks, but my favorite teacher told my mother that didn’t mean I was good at them. I hadn’t memorized every x times y, just a few key equations—

—that what I think is fair might not be fair to another; that fair might not be as fair today as tomorrow; that the way the universe is a loop, not a line, means some things become fair later on, when you least expect it—

—I’ve never decided how to pass a knife. As in, in the kitchen, dinner boiling over, if your harried mother, your exacting father, asks you to hand them a knife, does you point it up toward their eyes or down toward their stomach? My wrist is stiff either way. Got it? I say, and don’t let go. Medical advice says to keep the blade lodged in the person who is gored if you hope to save their life. In any case, I’m not the only one who agonizes over violence. When you believe in reincarnation, you discuss generations past, what happened to them. I was told there were two sisters, as close as my mother and I are, in our family. They were murdered, cut to slivers, but they found each other again, through me, through my mother. Safe, now. That’s the story I remember being told, though the details feel misaligned. Do people even say these kinds of things to children? Maybe not, but my mind is good at constructing memories—

—it was a coping mechanism. It was an act of reclamation. It was terrors, slanted. My mother read every sentence, and she had ideas too—

—But they found each other again, through me, through my mother. Safe, now. That’s the story I remember being told, though—

—In my father’s house, I was moved from the upstairs to the basement. My half-siblings were coming, and my family needed my room for them. Below, it was furnished and quiet. No one knew how long I stayed up alone in the swell of night. There, I thought of closets and doors. There, I thought of the fire that overwhelmed my childhood home, when I was four, or five, or the date is somewhat unknown to me, but it happened. To save the rest of the condominium complex, my mother ran back in. I tried to run after her. My father held me back, as he was supposed to. But down here, in the basement, if there were flames, it would be harder to reach the front door. I calculated my routes, imagined the direction of the destruction, how I would respond. Thought about it until I didn’t. Until the basement held too much life for me to manage. There were the new babies. There were the classes, full of despicable, stunning knowledge. There were the friendships and rivalries I’d made, and the politics that came with both. There were the crushes, and their texts, and their shaping of all I thought love could be. There were the lists of schools I dreamed to escape to, then their rejections and acceptances. All at once everything went wrong. All at once everything went right. My hands were full, but never with what I thought they would hold. I hated it. I relished it. Everything was burning already, and there I was—

—There was the footage, as people tried to escape—

—I was fast, but that didn’t mean I was good—

—the universe is a loop, not a line, some things become, when you least expect it—

—an act of reclamation. terrors, slanted—

—Safe, now. That’s the story—

—No one knew how long I stayed up, alone, in the swell of the night—

—The car flipped over. The car backed into a child chalking the driveway. The car drifted into the wrong lane when you fell asleep at the wheel. Driver’s education was meant to enlighten the inexperienced, but I’ve always known that a car is a weapon. Even today, I can’t drive. Behind the wheel, I get headaches. After a practice round of the neighborhood, I weep. I could never drive cross-country on my own. Never off-road. Never summit a mountain. But, once, a therapist was affronted when I told her I wasn’t brave. This, after a series of sessions about confronting the unknown, the uncertain, and knowing I was making the choice to do it. I’m afraid of it, you know, the twelve possibilities of time converging together, the universe’s mystical, violet swirl of moments. But it turns out, that the stars are just benches to rest on, but you can’t sit forever, not if they’re going to metamorphose into black holes. Space is where you’re meant to skid on for most of your days. Space it where you’re meant to live to tell the tale, like it or not—

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On the Johns Hopkins page about OCD in children, they state, "While many children experience intrusive thoughts or habitual behaviors from time to time, these behaviors are cause for concern when they begin to cause distress for children and their families." From there came this essay: a list of those very obsessive thoughts that should have caused the adults in my life concern, that might have caused it had I talked about them to anyone. When I was diagnosed with OCD in 2022, I found myself desperate to map it onto my childhood self, not as an exploration but as an explanation that I'd obviously always had OCD and thus my diagnosis must be real. My therapist noted that weaponing understanding to prove my OCD was becoming an obsession in itself, as I couldn't handle the uncertainty of what would happen should I learn my intrusive thoughts were actually realities and not symptoms of a mental illness. Today, I feel more able to examine my childhood with curiosity. 

Eshani Surya is the author of Ravishing, which was a Chicago Review of Books and Debutiful Best Debut of 2025, and received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Eshani is a Publishers Weekly Writer to Watch, a Finalist for the A.C. Bose Grant for South Asian Speculative Literature, a Mae Fellowship recipient, and a Semi-Finalist for the Key West Literary Seminar’s Marianne Russo Award for Novel In-Progress. Her writing has been supported by the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation, the Asian Women Writer’s Workshop and the Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, The Rumpus, DIAGRAM, [PANK], Catapult, and Joyland, the anthology, Tiny Nightmares, and elsewhere. Eshani serves as a board member and instructor at the literary non-profit Blue Stoop in Philadelphia. Find her online @eshanisurya or http://eshani-surya.com.