Dim Light

I eat until it doesn’t feel right anymore and let the feeling linger for a while. I read your messages over and over again. I try to imagine how it would be to live your life, no matter how much I understand that my experiences are crucial to who I am. I envy you in a weird, not distorting way. Happiness is a maze to me: you never actually realize you are trapped in a never ending quest for something that doesn’t actually exists. I lie on the floor and look up at a starless ceiling and try not to think of anything important, and just waste away time. Waiting for myself to come back around. Most of the time I’m lonely, and the rest, I’m alone. I find it ironic that I didn’t think of you as a friend up until the very end. It was as surprising as finding out that peanuts aren’t nuts but legumes. It didn’t really change anything, but it felt good to know it was and had been like that all along. It made so many things more reasonable.

You know, this isn’t quite as it was supposed to be. It doesn’t feel right. I try to get out of this hole but every attempt just drags me deeper and deeper, darker each time. It doesn’t make any sense at all. There is no reason why I should be depressed. Silently and secretly, I admire you both as a person and as a man, but I won’t let you take part of either of them. My room grows around myself and I wonder at its magnificence from this new point of view. I pull myself under the bed. I feel calm and protected, and close my eyes. I breathe in the still air from the many weeks of hidden untidiness, enjoying the feeling of the dust clogging up my nostrils. It is a particular smell. I sneeze several times and concentrate on the pain and the irritation in my nose. I try to fall asleep, but you wander again into my thoughts and all hope is lost. I turn around to lie on my stomach, as I hit the pie I had left half-eaten; the filling causing a mess all over the carpet and covering all of my left scalp. I moan a low and soft moan. Negative thoughts infest my head, and just as swiftly go away.

I am weary and heavy. Every movement takes an excessive amount of effort and drains away any willingness to act or react. I do not as much blame you as I reproach you for leaving us, but you had to go. I wonder if this has anything to do with you. I wonder if you think about me. You said you were my friend, yet, you are not here for me. I can hear my mother going up the stairs, maybe to check up on me since she’s been out all afternoon. In my head, I make up an excuse for the pie, and run the scene in my head to test its credibility. It does. I slowly, but decidedly drag myself to the chair and am seated, ready to put on my best smile. My mother stops at the door and sighs a deep, quiet sigh. She, is also trying hard.