The Switch

 

And after all these years, today I allowed myself to feel all the pain, happiness, exhaustion and hopelessness. I’ve been numb for more than two years. I have mastered the art of looking cheerful and hopeful, masking the indifference with female rage, looking angry when something looks unfair. What scares me the most is that I mastered the art of using the “right” emotion when everything in me is barren. The flatness of my voice is only heard by me when I stare in the mirror every morning, trying to convince the reflection to choose to be human just for a day. Needless to say that all my efforts were in vain.

Today is different - I thought how dull everything around me is; the grayness of snowless winter usually plays cruel tricks on me and I occasionally fall victim to my consciousness and give up on my robotic life for an hour or two.

I decided to give myself an hour, barely made it for a whole 30 minutes. All the feelings flooded me at once; my senses were in overload as if I were an old machine trying to install new software – totally incompatible. My head spun, overwhelmed by moments I carefully locked in my mental metal box, stored away like an emergency kit when I am badly hurt. And honestly, I didn’t like it. Everything I had carefully “forgotten” and ignored came back slapping me hard in the face. I even felt how my heart ached from every choice I had made and deemed wrong. I felt the same weakness which scared me 7 years ago. This was the same sensation that pushed me to seal off my humanity and start the game of pretending.

In the beginning I was bad at it, really bad. It felt impossible but then it clicked. I was looking in the mirror – eyes empty, no will to live but my face moved differently. My mouth pronounced the right words effortlessly, at the right time, with the correct intonation and even my eyes started sparkling with the proper amount of joy. On that day my career of perfecting the art of being heartless began. Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t a choice I made just to try. I made up my mind after another disappointment and all the pain it brought to my already damaged soul. This was never my first choice but my last chance to survive. And I did it. I survived… barely.

Now my safety mechanism has become my curse. It takes more and more to go back to how I used to be, not to feel foreign to myself. And when it becomes too heavy for me to handle, the switch turns on. Nothing – this is my favourite setting. I admit it’s not the most brilliant plan but at least I am still here – numb but here.

30 minutes – the only time in more than two years I felt the grief and love I can give to anyone and to myself. And when the pain is intolerable - game on. I turned off, again. Enough tears, enough ache, enough frustration, enough anger. I am letting the protective shell to consume me until I find another way to heal. In the meantime, I will keep performing as if I am living normally, day by day.

Verbless

 

Days spent in an environment fast-paced,

Nights drowned in a daze – slow motion.

Lives lived in parallel realities, in complete collusion

Of who I am and who I pretend to be.

A rack of masks, a collection of emotions

None of them is meant to last.

…

Constant conflicts, constant fights,

A race for dominance over no one’s life.

Years of living under the familiar pretenses,

Stage of elaborate acts, theater of pain.

…

My life lacks the verbs, I use only nouns,

An occasional adjective, thrown in the mix,

Adverbs replace the full sentences,

I avoid the clearness of my thoughts.

One-word answers, this is what I use

Too tired to explain what I really mean.

This world feels like one-pager;

A document for fast consumption.

The poetry is too emotionally charged,

Too sensitive, some days even complex for the exhausted brain.

The novel is too long, too many connections, several plots –

A composition that requires effort in the era of the quick story, three minutes long.

…

I hold my breath between the endless tries and failures,

Every exhale attempts apologies I never wanted to convey.

Every tomorrow feels like debt I refuse to pay,

My hopes are stacked, hidden where my drafts are laid to rest.

Every minute I unwind feels like another task on the to-do list I fill out each morning;

Another thing I am too tired to do right.

More and more often these days I am the scent I leave behind,

A faint fragrance on the note that no one reads.

 

Urban Shadow

 

The Dawn is running away from me as if I am cursed

Leaving me restless, unsure if I can survive the day.

How I am supposed to know what is best for me,

What will silence the noises of the mindless routine?

How am I meant to handle the burdens alone

When the sadness is my second skin?

So lost I don’t know where to start from.

I am circling in confusion – how should I behave?

I refuse to continue this pointless day.

In the daze I remain motionless – I don’t remember what I have accomplished,

What I have built is unstable – the architect in me is dead.

…

I taste the borrow guilts instilled in me,

I feel the passion sleeping underneath those accusations.

How could I tell what is best for me

When the night keeps occupying every cell,

When my pride is gone for so long.

I crave my runs under the morning sky

When the air feels crisp and untainted,

To feel the lushness of the grass under my bare feet,

To scream the fears out the way I used to,

To shout and then to stop on the edge of the cliff.

…

And yet here we are – on the crossroad of the days passed

The reflection of the lessons learnt and what should be improved,

The place where I should make the choice – to avoid the wrong turn.

But the perception is through someone else’s eyes…

And yet I cannot go back to what I was – a forgotten wasteland now,

The loneliness floods back in full force – I cannot be different.

…

Despite my wrong doings, I cannot betray what is in me  

Even though I am the one who destroys what doesn’t serve me anymore

And leaves it behind, no turning back.

I blend with the new scenery – a different place, a different version of me.

…

There is no point for reaching out, this is how I am built.

Like the monuments I leave behind, I am one with the city – once on the spotlight

Then part of the charm of that abandoned street.

Now transparent, a shadow, a ghost of eternity.