Sometimes, I feel everything at once.
Sometimes, I feel nothing at all.
There are days when I can hold every emotion with my flimsy hands, and days when I know nothing of sadness or joy.
There are moments when everything feels elusive, lingering in the air but too brittle to grasp.
On Monday, I think it might be better to feel nothing at all, but the numbness of Friday reminds me of the importance of feeling—anything, something. There is a balance between grief and joy, between the sickness of being consumed by one’s feelings and the strangeness of not feeling anything at all. Sometimes, it comes on Tuesday as my legs dangle from the rooftop, looking down at how tiny humans are from afar. The passers-by seem inconsequential in the plot of my life, yet they appear too significant in the plot of life itself. On Tuesday, I think that I am one of them, that feelings are just like them—they come and go. If by chance they linger, they stay only long enough until they're willing to leave.
But by the balcony, on Wednesday, I think that feeling is weakness. I think of all the emotions wasted on things and people that didn’t matter. On such days, I scoff at my naivety. Vulnerability wraps itself around feeling, giving people power, giving the world power, and stripping me of it. On such days, I think that maybe I can stop feeling to avoid getting hurt. It feels like a way to cure myself from the malady of being human.
On Thursday, I choke on my sadness. It seems that the longer I stop myself from feeling, the more the emotions bottle up. They creep inside my veins like a plague, eating away at the life left inside me. I skulk by the walls, thinking these feelings will never end, and laugh at my silly reflection in the mirror. My throat feels tight, wanting to cry but laughing instead, wishing to laugh but crying instead. The emotions battle each other, wearing out my soul; it ages more than my skin. I suffocate from the voices in my head—happiness scoffing at sadness, grief swallowing joy.
On Friday, my soul is laid bare, unable to feel again. The emotions are foreign, like watching them through someone else's eyes. I panic on such days because it is a respite, but what if I never feel anything again? I watch the world around me wake up and go to bed, and I watch my body step back and forward. I see my arms weakly reach out and then fall to my sides. It seems that deep inside, something is dead, and I fear there might be no way to reawaken it. I fear that this might be it…this might be the end.
I fear that there might be no Mondays left, and that terrifies me.
Comments