Kaleidoscope
Depression is a tricky thing. Happiness is trickier. Eight snapshots from life.
one
when he wakes up it is still dark and he breathes in the thick sweaty air heavily. the room is all immersed in dark greyness save thin clock numbers showing three a.m. two hours to sunrise. two hours of tossing around.
he lays on his back and tries to steady his racing heart and get all thoughts out of his head. the silence starts to ring is his ears as he mentally counts passing seconds. he's going to give up too soon.
blink. breathe. stare at the ceiling and the walls until they seem to stare back. rinse and repeat.
two
it's one of the days when people want things from him.
he spends half an hour with a concealer before leaving the refugee of bed sheets. his eyes look only half decent. the shirt, by some miracle, is ironed. he puts on sunglasses and flashes beautiful smiles and pretends he doesn't know he could use a haircut. people stare or take photos and he can see thoughts running through their little heads. he takes on their gazes like a proud predator he is (used to be.)
when the day is over he smears the pathetic makeup all over his pillow.
three
there are questions he never answers, sidestepping in such a graceful manner than no one seems to mind. examples: do i look good tonight? you feeling all right? tell me something about your father?
once, when he was out of university, too young for his own good, he run away to a forest for a few days. the whole state went crazy but they never found him. he loved the peace. years later, he hides in plain sight and they don't find him either. they are not even a step closer to the truth.
he's the master of this dance.
four
eyelids start to feel like sandpaper against his eyes on the fourth night of all-coffee and no sleep.
the city never sleeps. the house never sleeps. there is always someone up so his barriers are up.
he knows that they are good people, it's just that he is not. they can't know how much of a failure he is. how much of a liability (even, even with the genius mind.) he hears them laugh and talk through thick door that aren't not-thick-enough on purpose.
the city became their home. the house become their home. he is still a world away.
five
the room smells like flowers. of course. there are always flowers, just like it always has to be white.
the nurse seems half awed, half annoyed (he'd add half terrified if it fitted in somewhere.) having made it almost a habit of once-a-year stomach pumping he knows he should remember her name, because he remembers everything. his mind is heavy though, and clouded like never, throat thick with lingering sweet taste of vomit and saliva.
there are wires – tube in his nose, iv in his arm, catheter to his bladder – and yet, for a moment, the nothingness feels like freedom.
six
sometimes he wishes someone would notice. most of the time he does a good job at persuading himself he doesn't. it would complicate things and there are too many thought s in him mind as it is.
sometimes – scratch that, always – he wishes he could function like a normal person whose brain quietly shuts instead of processing endless data, picking up all available information and storing, analyzing, mixing it casually into life changing inventions. but everything remains angles dimensions efficiency-to-boost-up, everything is always an equation begging to be solved .
if he believed in god, he'd pray for tabula rasa.
seven
one morning, after staying in bed for four days because he was too fucking tired to move his limbs farther than the bathroom, he gets up, cleans up and dresses in sharp clothes.
outside everything seems to run normally and it's almost disquieting. he nonchalantly greets people and says goodbye within five seconds, goes to his workshop, puts on the armor and runs away to the seaside. he welcomes the deafening noise as an extension of an overwhelming silence.
the moment he lands on dry dunes and takes off the helmet – to a salty scent and strong wind – that's flying.
eight
autumn evening he sits on the floor and stares out of an enormous window, words tied in his throat and painfully sharp inside his mind. he wishes desperately, like a love-starved kid, that he could be part of the everything. then his friends that he has never called friends break into his room and – moist hands all over oversensitive skin – make him presentable and lead.
the most mundane things: watch movies. eat cheap food. walk between neons.
it's more like living and less like acting, and he welcomes it with an uneven smile.
breathe in. breathe out. it's being happy.