Connection is all I crave. I go out of my way to understand everyone else; why, then, am I denied the same privilege? I do not know. I am too tired to ask. All my days end the same way—the bitterness of never being understood, its sick aftertaste causes a lump in my throat, and I am unable to form a question, or a sentence, or even a word. There goes my heart along the pitter-patter of the rain. I do not know what else is there—to do everything right and still fail to be read without bias. I’m listened to like a song whose lyrics are never paid attention to. Often, when I notice someone has not grasped what I meant to say in the least, when I see they are entirely off the mark, I get this impossible wish never to speak to anyone again. There is so much love and admiration I hold for this world; why, then, do I not get this in return, not once, not enough?
I am exhausted, but not in body or mind. There’s a third way. I do not know what to call it. So many people around. All of them look at me. Why, then, do I not feel seen? I see where everyone comes from. Why then do they not bother to take a step back, out of their own heads, out of their own stories, out of their own little world to see there can be one more, another world which is as much about them as theirs is about mine, which is to say it is not about them at all? If I can do this—look past myself in conversations, in places where I am asked for advice, over and over, day after day. Why, then, has my life begun to feel like a solo performance, an orchestra of one, where the conductor is absent, and I am left to fend for myself in front of an audience I can never please? So many questions, barely any answers. And now, I see the day is already over. What to do? Go to sleep and hope for another day, and if nothing else, for the tenacity to be solid enough to bolster through all that and, since the world is ever-so-relentlessly blind and dense, through a little bit more.