Withdrawal
On days like this, she learns the true meaning of withdrawal.
Morning comes early and evenings end late.
When she opens her eyes to a Tuesday-lit window, the sound of the clock's steady tick-tick-tick reminds her of the precious time she has wasted lying in bed, not living but dying. The hum of its presence wanes with the sighs of resignation, the formal "Good morning"'s uttered with indifference, and the slow tap-tap of feigned impatience for another day's hope of deliverance. Her life is determined by the numbers fading away each second she blinks; the monotony of routine drowns every digit in a sea of muffled screams and indignation.
When she walks out the door, to the bus standing outside waiting for her like an old, reproachful uncle, there is nothing on her mind but the thought of her future. Like the people surrounding her, she worries not about this here, but this there; worries not about what will happen now but, instead, about what will happen next. She wonders what she has to do afterwards, where she has to go later, and how she will get there in the end; thinks with the memories inscribed upon her from birth and practiced conditioning, the shadow of some monster standing over her bed and whispering stories of lost lives and lost loves and lost chances—the words of nevermore.
The taste of its bitterness leaves her yearning for something, anything, to soothe the sting of Such a Blatant Reality; and a sad frown of confusion transmogrifies her face, outlining it with the fear and uncertainty of that innate emotion in her heart, leaving her body paralyzed from the shock of invisible iron castings shackling her to the surface of the mortal world. She is the same as all the others—this she knows—and the hidden desire for something new and different and beautiful to appear, to appear and erase all the fake emptiness in her life, in her self, is the same as all of those other poor, wanting souls...
But with one difference—she is aware of the hollowness of her desires.
She suffers not because of something predetermined, but because of something self-determined. She suffers not because of something innate, but because of something learned, something experienced and pried apart with intense scrutiny and thought, from her last sixteen and seventeen years of living.
As she makes her way towards the bus, the steady slap-slap of her flipflops echo in a silent, mocking taunt, reminding her of the precious time she has wasted taking in lungfuls of air each day, living instead of dying. Her rudimentary words of denial play like a melody to a tuneless, nonexistent song. The hue of sunlight streaming through the windows of bland houses and bland cars is one of faded, map-like texture. She tastes the polluted grease of the breeze and smells the stream of water flowing from sprinklers.
They all feel dead to her. As dead as her expression—and her self.
Morning comes too early some times, and evenings end too late other times.
And on days like this, she learns the true meaning of withdrawal—the loss of carefree ignorance, replaced by the world-weary recognition of her short, monotonous life.
Fin.
a/n: Small drabblet about the hollowness we feel inside at some point in our lives. During those times, when we realize how empty some of our actions are, I feel like we lose a bit of something inside, that we suffer from a withdrawal of our mind, a withdrawal of our true self. (But, of course, that's only on certain days.)
11/8/11