It’s hard not to indulge in some self-pity/self-hate when the fact that you got suddenly terminated from your 6-year-long life-consuming job starts to sink in on day 1 of week 3 of unemployment. Especially when you find yourself wasting time alternating between social media and a game app on your phone, while your 10-hour OSHA certification is waiting for you to pick it up again on your snoozing laptop.

I had spent a good hour hate-searching google for “cliches” just before turning to scrolling through Instagram stories, to hate on strangers trying on cliche face filters. As a part of my mindless hate-scrolling, I like to click on cliché filters to hate-watch my Jabba The Hutt face distort, and then I hate-make faces at myself.

So I hate-clicked on the cliché red lipstick filter and satisfied my hate-urge, after which I came across a lady with an unusual face trying on the same face filter.

It turned my world upside down.

This girl was trying on the face filter on her acid-burnt face. Her lips were slightly open as she allowed the virtual bright red lipstick to cover her slightly distorted lips with a virtual bright red relatively normal looking lip shape.

I naturally clicked on her profile. I naturally scrolled through her entire Instagram page. I naturally clicked on her husband’s profile. I naturally searched for her face before the acid attack in a (low-key) frenzy. I naturally stared at her previous face for more than a full minute, taking in each and every curve of her face, her nose, her hooded eyes, her thin upper lip, her hairline.

And then, naturally, I dove head-first into the online world of acid attack survivors.

And then, I went to my bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror, motionless. All I could think was, my face can go away in under 3 seconds. It doesn’t have to be sulphuric acid or nitric acid. I doesn’t have to be a grease fire. It doesn’t even have to be a cobra bite.

But would I go away with my face?

My stomach has dropped into an abyss as I’m typing it and I’m not even trying to go look for it.

I was talking to my American friends about returning home if I couldn’t find another job to transfer my work visa to. I was slowly getting excited about leaving behind capitalism to go back and engage in social service. Now all I can think of is melting flesh and searing pain and prolonged death. I am scared – could I be an acid attack victim if I go back? Would I be able to hide myself behind face mask and loose baggy clothes to not attract unwanted male attention? And what if that didn’t work? What if nothing worked?

Is this how future-acid-attack-survivors feel? Is this their day-to-day life? Does this consume them?

 Why is this a thing? Why isn’t this a normal conversation? Why do I feel like I am excavating this from a long-forgotten or rather suppressed part of my memories?

I can feel the pain of these burnt women and men on my phone screen, in every part of me, especially in my back and neck. My chest feels hollow.

This probably isn’t the best post for my personal blog. But I need this here, in case I allow it to sink back into that suppressed corner of my mental memory bank.