Observer of My Life
It’s Friday night and I’m alone in my room having conversations with myself. It’s not the loneliness that will kill me, but rather the waiting for release. Like the part of myself that ties me to the world has been ripped unconsciously from my being and put away on the top shelf just out of my bodies reach. Sentenced to an eternity as an observer of my own life. Watching as things happen, but not being able to live them. Sitting back as I lose myself to the moments that pass me by. It comes easy, this yearning for something new. Discontent stirs like a monster under a childhood bed. But it’s the excitement, the passion, the willfulness that I am seeking and just can’t find. In my willingness to have time of my own, I’ve eclipsed into a space no longer attached to the greater sum. My knack for slipping into the tight corners of the world has led me to believe I no longer imposed a position among it. Loneliness has become a good friend of mine, and I’ve learned how to hold onto it like a hand. But when does this silence become too loud?
I spoke of my fear of being alone with a good friend of mine the other night. This period of my life that feels like I’m stuck sitting alone in a waiting room. Something great and fulfilling creeps around behind closed doors and spaces I’m unauthorized to enter. The TV screens replaying moments where the people in my life are finding success and happiness and creating relationships with one another, while I am forced to watch and feel guilty for my pent up envy. The chair I occupy is stiff and curves unnaturally. There’s an ache in my back that I can’t seem to shake, no matter how I twist and stretch.
This twisting and stretching is futile in my search for something to grasp. It leaves me empty handed, and even more so alone. Alone, in this big world of mine that continues to expand without my warrant. Every slight shift, every pull around the corners, it feels monumental and without anything to fill it with, the emptiness grows deeper and deeper. My self-imposed isolation has begun to feel more like punishment than righteousness. The control I felt over it has slipped out from under me. I am left to stumble around in the darkness trying to escape this fate. And what I found was not an open door, but small cracks to pick and scratch at like a blemish on a soft cheek. Pinholes of light from small things I’ve been able to reconquer. Dads on the bus, old letters from friends back home, texts from my mom, easy dinners with good company. Laughing on the train, 60 degree weather, a good outfit. Smoking out the window of my bedroom, making plans with friends and following through with them. Being told something reminded them of me. Small progress on a small canvas. Chipping away through the darkness with things that seem inconsequential, but are really the only things that can keep me full.
I’m still in the dark, and it is all still overwhelming, and the yearning has not gone away. But little by little I am back in control. I am choosing everyday to keep chipping away at these walls. With enough patience, I will be able to give way to a window. With enough care, I will be able to feel the light. With enough forgiveness, I will be able to conquer this silence. Those little moments where I feel like myself again are what allows me to bear it all. The weight of it still burdens me, and it hurts and it is hard. But I have verbalized it here and now. I say it with everything I am. This lonely game of waiting is hard and I hate it. I’ve said it with conviction, unwaveringly so, and so when the silence descends once more, it feels comfortable. And I continue to sit in bed and speak to myself.
