Woke up completely out of sorts with myself and walked about the apartment like a man out of time, not knowing if it was the year on the calendar or the one I suddenly remembered. Stood on the balcony and tried to find parts of myself, personal effects of my soul, knick-knacks lost along the way. Walked back in empty-handed and kept waltzing into the same turmoil, running into the same wall over and over. It was not going to be an easy day but made it through. Won once again at the balancing act of being a person.
There is so much I do not share. I tell people the comings-and-goings of the day, the fluff and piffle, but the things that get me out of bed and going are reserved for myself and these words. That is what talking has devolved into. In many ways, one would call me a recluse, not because I live on a mountain like a hermit, but because of this public privacy I have in my life, this veil no one can lift from all of it, this invisible tarp that hides what is underneath it. And there is nothing nefarious, of course, but one does not need maleficence to be private, unlike what popular films have people believe. Sometimes, we are just tired, but often, habitual.
I could swear it is not for the lack of trying either. I begin conversation, and then, I find all my faculties sink into the background. If a thought arises, it is too far from my mouth for me to vocalise it. There was a time when I would talk about my greatest dreams and fears. Now, I tell people I do not have them. But I do. They keep me company in simple moments. Today, my fears woke me up—well, fears and failures. They told me things I do not wish to hear anymore. And then, they coloured my day as they preferred. There are days like this in all lives, I reckon. To be a person is to sign right above the line under a long agreement without reading the fine print, which often says there will be days like this, too.
“It’s nothing,” I have said so many times I do not need to think of it to verbalise it anymore. It camps at the tip of my tongue through days and nights, waiting to flood the conversation, inundate it completely with banal balderdash, in case I dare to open my mouth.