I sit back and I watch. I watch and I listen. I hear everyone talking and I can not shut it out. Conversations filled with details I find inconsequential. This is fine. I have patience, I can wait for the sounds to dull, and I do just that. Though, the sounds don’t stop. They continue talking, whispering, laughing... I don’t want to, but I think to myself “What if I could talk to people like that?”
“No, they’d think I’m annoying or that I couldn’t or just begging for attention.”
The thought persists. I panic internally, face never changing. I ridicule my own body for things I can not change. My throat strains. I feel like crying, but I reach for a drink in it’s stead. I drink and the pain leaves for a second as the muscles tense. I’m fine now.
“What if your friends have always ‘tolerated’ you?”
No... I’m not, I’m not sure I’ve ever been fine.
I hear a child’s laugh, I can still hear everyone. I smile a bit. It’s a sad smile, something about the happiness of an ignorant past.
“No one wants to be in your company, you just impose yourself!”
The smile is gone. I feel tired.
I nod quickly with a curt “Mmhm.” The voice leaves, accepting the reply as normal.
“The mask didn’t slip. Your eyes are dry and your hands are steady. You’ve become good at hiding it.”
It’d be so much easier if I just let it slip. Let them see me as I am!
“Then you would be an inconvenience and they’d push you away!”
That’s it. That’s the fear that stalls me. The very thing that terrifies me into inaction.
I’ve become quiet. Staring at the voices is all I want to focus my attention on. Inconsequential details of a stranger’s life are all that I hear. My eyes whisper of pain, and I realize they haven’t closed in the last minute or so.
“I’m tired, ”I mutter out loud.
“You’re tired of living, aren’t you?”
I walk for the door, pausing to tell the doorman I was heading home. The walk is about 2 hours. I need it.
I scream out lyrics to songs no one can hear, justifying it by telling myself that ‘no one cares enough to get angry.
I’m over a river now. The bridge, old and rusted, watches over it and the number of boats below.
“Do you think that drowning would hurt less than a car?”
I keep walking forward. I’m home soon enough. I say goodnight to my parents and lie in bed a minute later. The edges of my vision turn grey, but sleep eludes me.
“I’m going to die like this, one day... , ” I say to myself.
“Were you really alive in the first place?”
