The Waiting Room

Feet treading on sticky floors. Numbers called, yet never mine. People passing through the corridor. Seeping into rooms, of which, it feels I am never asked to enter. Time stands still. An eternal pause. It seems, I am stuck in a moment that has lingered on far longer than is comfortable. Trapped in the waiting room that I have come to call my home. A life left to whither in the limbo between birth and death.

Rain pelts against the window panes, rendering me lifeless. The pointed pointlessness in emerging from the duvet which acts as my raft. Carrying me across the seas between consciousness and dreams. In any case, the world has long forgotten me, in its rapturous celebration of success and activity. I have simply faded into the walls which surround me. I am paint. I am the stage prop. The pot plant. I am no longer capable of acting out the scene. So, I died in the first act.

When Spring emerges, I dip a toe into the lake and question if I was wrong to try to drown there. Would my limp body have floated across the water’s edge. Gotten tangled in the weeds. Become food for the crows. I would have happily let them feast upon my rotting corpse. It has failed to feed much else. An empty womb that only bred sorrow. A broken heart that failed to mend. A mind like a scratched record, endlessly repeating past mistakes. Dreams, crumbled to dust and like my ashes, blown away.

The smell of bleach. White walls. Doctor’s calls. Eternal waiting. I need to pee, but they’re thirty minutes late. Best to wait. In the waiting room. With the sticky floors and the old magazines. The endless wait to be told nothing new. Nothing anyone can do. You ask too many questions, they say. You’ll always be suffering, they say. I slope off to my plants. To my walks, which turn into marathons, which turn into plane rides to anywhere but here. Yet, still I am there, wherever I go. Stuck in the internal waiting room. Waiting to do something. Anything.

Clingy. That’s what they’ll think. When the shine wares off. When they’ve gotten close enough to see behind the veil. Behind the smile. Close enough to get that the sparkle only lasts ten days out of thirty. Best to get the free trial. Not exactly worth the signup fee, which has a watertight contract. Cancellation comes with two years of additional payments. Mostly me crying. Falling apart. Late night stalking. Late night calling. Desperation on my tongue. Probably don’t even want them. But I might. Maybe I just want them to want me. But they only want me on my good days and they’re much rarer than they think.

I blame social media. I’ll eventually come to blame myself. But I’ll try to blame everyone else first. Maybe I’m just insane. Maybe I have a rotten brain. Maybe I’ll never be happy like those people I see online. The ones with the engagement rings and the big straight white smiles. And maybe I’ll never write that book. I can barely leave the house. Endlessly stuck down a YouTube wormhole, wondering how thirty days have passed. Maybe I’ll never find love, because who could ever love me. Maybe I’ll always be waiting. Maybe, I guess we’ll see…

Blurred

The silence deafens and it’s the silence that kills. You don’t want to speak and maybe I’m afraid of what you’d have to say. It falls apart in any case. Even after all these years. Every time I think we’ve grown a little closer, I see all we’ve grown is a tumour. Taking over. Pushing us apart. I suppose I saw it coming from the beginning. But I feel loathsome to admit it. To accept it. To call it what it is.

Impossible.

I feel a kinship. You feel nothing but a desire to get what you want, without ever having to give much in return. I say it feels like a comfort, then I begin to realise it’s a slow suffocation. I give you my body, just to keep you warm. Just to keep you going. You give me the run around and then complain when I speak up. Can’t understand why it is that I’m saying I’m cold, begging for a corner of the cloth. A scrap of your affection. The kind you only give to me when there’s no one better to give it to.

I have become a blurred image, where once I was clear.

I start to wonder if I’m asking too much. Am I not worthy of your loyalty. Of your honesty. Of a postcard from a spot beside the sea. You laugh when I ask, as if I am ridiculous to even imagine that I, foolish little me, should think myself of any real importance to you. You have other lovers for that. Other friends you touch and fuck. Others who you lavish your gifts upon. Whose words and talents you applaud.

Who am I but a phone call when you’re anxious. When you’re bored. When you need something.

I am the giver not the receiver. I come when you call. Run when you are in need. Sit in silence and soak in your sadness. Your stress. Offer my support. My kindness. My insight. My rocks. My magic. My patience. My endless forgiveness. And you offer me…Very little of substance. Empty words. Empty promises. Tall tales. Your time on your terms. But never a move out of your comfort zone. Never a crossing of the street. Never anything substantial. Never anything really real.

Yet, when I point this out, you become indignant.

How dare I become angry at the inequality. How dare I become angry at all. You promised me nothing. Spoke only of love and our future when you weren’t in your body. In your mind. Laugh it off. Don’t I know you better by now. Know better than to take you seriously. Than to think that you would take me seriously at all. Who am I but a blurred line. One which you like to poke and prod when you get lazy of the work it takes to pick a side.

You want to keep things light. To keep things simple.

You make your art. A poor reflection of your own emptiness. You wrap your sheets around the naked forms of those who’ll fill the void. Photograph them for posterity. Lest you forget, that someone once cared enough to lay beside you. To desire you. To think you worthy of their time. Knowing full well you will never have enough film to convince yourself of that.

And we all know that my demands for something more, require too much from you. Because this weight. This heaviness which hangs around my neck. That pulls at all the pieces. Is too much for you to bear. The darkness causing nightmares from which you can’t awake. So you ignore it altogether. Playing house. Playing pretend. Playing happy. With those whom you know are pretending too.

Now I choose to lay beside myself. In the emptiness of a room that somehow feels fuller than when you were ever in it. With your avoidance. Of anything that sits remotely below the surface. Your great fear of wading out of your depth. Not realising you’re already drowning in the shallow end.

The Man in The Hat

I reach out to you on your day of birth and you respond by reinforcing the wall that stands between us. Built of heaviness and silence. I have hurt you, yet, I cannot understand entirely how, when it has always been you who wielded the knife. Severing the bond between us, whenever it seemed as though we were edging too close to one another’s hearts.

Now, you possess the affection of youth. The kind which is still naive to the ambivalence you are more than able to cast upon her, should you wish. She looks at you as though you are magic. The man in the hat, casting spells on hopeless romantics, yet again. I wonder lately though: are you a man, or a myth?

The years have come to pass. The seasons ever changing. My limbs have held others in deep, somewhat desperate longing and my heart has lurched in hapless directions. Searching. Always searching. For you. I have left wreckage in my path. Shed tears as though they were exhales. Been sorrowful and then calm. Grief ridden, then accepting. It’s a process, to unwed, from you.

Yet, I feel no hate. No animosity. No remorse. Occasional sadness, yes, but mostly because I miss your presence in my life. Your nature. Our wordless conversations. The way you look me in the eye, hold my gaze, speak to my soul. And I know that you have felt mine speak with yours. I know it was a pleasure and a pain. A fragile desire, wrapped in a lifetime of fear.

It hurts us both that I will never be the girl in the pictures. Never paint you with the likeness you deserve. Read Faust to you in German, by the light of many candles. Or gallivant merrily about town with you, arms linked, discussing the works of Caravaggio. We know I’m far too heavy for that. Too stubborn. Too real. I always wanted stillness. I wanted your presence. Your heart in my hands and your wounds on my tongue. I wanted you to take your makeup off for me. I wanted to see you naked and that was ultimately, something you were too afraid to do.

So, maybe now it’s finally time to bury you. Lay you to rest. Let your love bloom in another person’s garden. Give myself room to breathe, so that I can make space for another to show me their magic. Show me what it is to have my courage reciprocated. Show me themselves. I wish those things for you too. I can only ever wish you loving kindness. Because I know your soul - it speaks to me in dreams. Reminding me, that despite everything, we will always be connected. If not by flesh, then in essence.

Perhaps it is no longer à bientôt, but finally, au revoir.