Bookmark #491

I stared at the book in the dim light of the only lamp lit in my bedroom, a cup of tea beside me, trying to read, but the words were all jumbled. The sentences were in front of me, but a part of my mind did not want to read them, so I kept the book aside, apologised to Hemingway in my head, and closed my eyes. Everything I did not say weighed on me and pushed me into the bed. It was almost suffocating. Almost, which is worse than the whole. Most life is eventually incomprehension. No understanding takes place. Just how, in this torpor, the book did not make sense to me, our lives become unintelligible to other people. They see our days unfold; they hear us talk about them, but the words are all jumbled up, and nothing sticks. This, too, feels like loneliness, and therefore, privy to the feeling, I apologised to Hemingway when I had set the book down.

It was a lonely feeling, but I could ignore it no longer. My life was slowly becoming an esoteric puzzle I could no longer share with others. I have always shared it in parts, and the pieces were grew fewer by the day. On most days, it was not worth the trouble to share my troubles. Sharing my joy was, of course, futile from the beginning. Most people, lost in the pursuit of any or all happiness, never learn how to respond to it when they receive it. Their confusion only grows when the happiness belongs to someone else. Even the friendliest of faces feel envy, and if you’re observant enough, you can see where it leaks from. In my privacy lies all my joy, and in it lies all my hurt. Most people are only good to laugh with over some joke that does not matter; most camaraderie is shallow, transactional or ephemeral.

To share things with others is to lessen them. Most life unfolds when no one is looking. This is not by choice or even circumstance; it is how it has always been by design. Lost in my thoughts with my eyes closed, I fell asleep with the book beside me. When I woke up, I made some coffee and tried reading it again. I read through fifty pages before it occurred to me that I had to start the day.

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