"Keep it hidden... Keep it safe!"
Lotr, Gandalf
The best way to stay out of trouble is to be quiet, right? To keep the mouth shut, Keep your fingers at bay, just stay in your bed and keep those eyes closed so that you won't hear, won't feel won't have to deal with anything at all that can potentially hurt you. Like a mole, digging down to the deeper levels of the earth, far away from both sunlight and predators, where all it has to do is keep digging for worms. Those tasty little buggers. That's not so bad of an existence, is it? Just the same old cozy darkness, where you can hole up and savor the taste of juicy slippery worms, feel the pressure of the earth and where your only worries will be of finding the next lovely snack and getting it into your waiting maws. Gods, I wish I was a mole.
Except, it doesn't work that way, now does it. Even for a mole, there has to be things to worry about. Like cave-ins, flooding, accidentally digging its way out into a fox nest, or maybe a bears. In fact, there's a whole lot of work going on before he can have those little tasty treats, of digging and tracking and sniffing, sensing the movements of the worms and making sure that the cave won't fall in just as he tries to take that final lunge towards the worm.
I suppose there's nothing like an effortless existence. It's not like we can stop breathing, and for every breath we take our bodies struggle, fighting a loosing battle against the deadly oxygen. It's a staggering thought, don't you think? That for every life-giving breath we take, we die a little. We're dying. The clock is ticking, there's no such thing as a second chance, we don't live forever. I can see the end of this existence already, and what do I do about it?
I hide under my covers. I close my eyes and sleep, and try to pretend it doesn't happen to me. Not the dying part, no, not at all. The whole living thing. The fact that I'm competing in a race against time with no clear instructions as to what I'm supposed to be doing, with no idea what the price will be at the end and against opponents that doesn't seem to mind the struggle... makes me so tired.
I always hesitate whenever people ask me what I want to do with my life. It just takes me back, makes me loose my breath for a moment. I have to pause, take a second to breathe and remember what they want to hear... Because the answer to that question is sure to make them look disappointed, exchange worried glances and then cough up some half-hearted words of encouragement.
Truth is, I don't know what I want. I mean, I have this vague idea of a house with a pretty garden, a person next to me that I love. But it's not something I can actually see happening. I can't picture myself in the future at all, barely even six months from now.
My idea of what I'm going to do when I finish my time at this school is to go to university, study another slightly useless course that may or may not open some doors for me out to the working world of adults. But it's not like I'm jumping up and down and can't wait to start the course, it's not like I'll cry my heart out if I don't get in or won't be able to find a job or an apartment on this island. I'll just.. go back home, reconquer my room, sit around for a bit, until I can't stand being there enough to go and ask for a job at the nearest grocery store. perhaps it'll give me enough money to rent an apartment...
Maybe I can just stay in bed. Both options are equally interesting, and it would take way less effort to just keep sleeping.
I don't have any hopes for the future. I don't have any goals that I want to work towards, I don't have any dreams that I would want to fulfill. Sure I can count up some things that might be interesting to do or see or experience, but it's not like the world will end if they never end up happening.
People tell me to keep believing, to have hope.
Believe in what? Hope for what? I am the only one that can create my happiness, and I don't feel it. Sure I'd like to be happy, but that's just one of those little interesting things that I can't see actually happening. Happiness don't last. Hope doesn't keep burning unless you feed it with something. Belief need goals to have meaning.
I'm not afraid of people. I'm afraid of getting close to them, only to see them walk away and leave me alone again.
Better then to stay like this. In this dark place somewhere between dusk and dawn, where words on a screen keep me company and create illusions of life. Hey, are you real? I can't tell, because this is the internet. Anything is apparently possible here, and for all I know these words that flow over my screen and make me feel could very well just be a trick by some program... Not likely, I know, but the possibility is there. It's not like I can see you, touch you, hear you laugh or feel the draft of air as you walk by. These things that I'm feeling when I talk to you, write with you and pour out the contents of my soul for you to read and judge as you want, is it just a trick of the mind?
I think it's wrong to separate computer life and real life. Because, I'm not less alive when I sit in front of the computer than when I'm standing on a road halfway to some other place. I don't feel more, I don't exist any more when I talk to someone face to face than when I write with someone that sits on the other side of the world. I love as much in front of the screen as I do when cooking dinner, I'm as sad when I sit in school as when I type away like this. It's still me, and the computer in front of me is just as real as yours is, and our meeting and talking, and laughing and feeling is just as real as if we were face to face. Just because our bodies can't feel it, doesn't mean that it isn't real.
It's real, isn't it. You are real, and I'm real, and this is all a part of reality.
In this reality that we are sharing right now, I'm messing up. I'm screwing up, causing trouble for myself, and it seems that all the warm and kind and encouraging words I get from people are running off like water on a goose. It's not because I'm not listening, or because I don't want your help. I am and I do. I'm grateful for all of you that takes time from your own lives and your own inner worlds to try and help a lump of coal like me. You are gleaming, shimmering lights on my pitch black sky, as real and beautiful as stars and just as inspiring. And just as distant too.
*hugs*
Did you feel that? In some way I suppose I did. It was a little fluttering feeling of the soul, a tender sense of happiness that brushed past. But it disappeared too quickly. It didn't leave a memory on the skin, I don't have the scent of your hair lingering in my nose, I can't recall the feeling of your body against mine. It felt good for a moment, and then it left me empty with a longing for something that could have been there, if you just were a little closer.
See, this is the biggest flaw with the internet, and chatting and writing. You are real, and I am real. But our reality is that while you sit on one side of the world I sit on the other. We might never actually meet. We will probably never get closer than this simple *hug*.
In a way I feel that we are being cruel towards ourselves by using this Internet thing. Because now our feelings and realities doesn't only concern the people and the situations that we can reach and touch, we stretch ourselves thin to be there for someone we have never met, but that we love and cherish all the same. I wonder, how many *hugs* do we need before it has the same effect as a physical, close hug? It's like a star next the sun.
Then again, all stars are suns in the end, aren't they? It wouldn't be impossible to reach out and get close enough to actually feel your warmth instead of imagining it.
Maybe that's a goal in and of itself. It's not solid, not tangible. It won't put dinner on my table or give me roof over the head but.. Still. Maybe next time someone asks what I want to do with my life, I will tell them a truer truth than the one I normally give.
"Sometime, somehow, I'd like to go and turn the stars on my sky into suns."
by Rista on October 21st, 2011, 8:12 pm 
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