Maybe This World Is Another Planet’s Hell

For the longest time, I stayed in my bed, with the drapes shut so tight that not a single ray of daylight could creep into my room, and so that I couldn’t see the stars out at night, those damned stars. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t crying or screaming, I wasn’t doing much of anything actually. The bed was my coffin, and I stayed there, getting more and more comfortable with the carcass I was slowly turning into.

Pain had become a permanent resident in my life. I used to wake up to it every morning, dragging us both out of bed so that I could get to work and face a world that had no meaning anymore, populated with empty people, who were all the same, they were all strangers to me – for they would never understand the hell I felt inside my head or see the demons that danced within me. What was the point of discussing the weather with my neighbor in the elevator? Or arguing with my colleagues about the new marketing strategy during lunch?

This world exhausted me endlessly. I was tired of meeting the same people behind different faces. I neither had the time or the energy to unmask them anymore, why should I even bother? Instead, I just waved at them as they passed by, for they were all but trivial characters in my story. I was tired of the mindless chatter that floated around me, this semblance of a conversation that I was forced to be a part of. And it neither nurtured nor fascinated me, it just fell on my ears like it had nothing better to do or no place else to go.

I was tired of living in a world that was more interested in right swipes and vodka shots than sunsets and the sound of the sea. The things that were fascinating to most people around here bored me, and the questions that I seek answers to meant nothing to everyone else. Is there life after death? Where does love go when it’s gone? None of it made sense anymore.

I was just a pile of bones, inhaling air and exhaling desolation, my heart rotting comfortably in my chest, caged like the monster it once was. Time moved like cement, slowly and grudgingly, like it was too tired to move at all, like all it wanted to do was to tuck itself into my bed and take a nap. Wine didn’t seem to help, I had given up on trying to solve a problem even alcohol couldn’t fix. No, it was a lot easier to let my pain inundate me, and to just stay in bed.

And now, I’m beginning to think I’m just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe in another world and in another time, I would have been happy – perhaps even at peace.

But not here, not now.