You listen to songs a lot, sometimes when you're on the road busy looking this way and that so you don't accidentally step on someone's feet, or get in someone's way. You do that a lot, because you get lost within the space you hold by yourself, so lost that you forget anyone else exists in the world besides you. You don't always mean to seem so selfish, so detached, so...not present, so someone they don't want to be around anymore because you make them feel unloved.
You don't mean to be any of that, but you can't help how you feel too big for your own body sometimes even though you're like not even that tall. Sometimes you feel like you're so big you'd surpass the Eiffel tower twice over, and sometimes so insignificant that even an ant wouldn't look twice at you.
There's something about listening to songs when you're not fully present in the moment, when you're staring out the window of a moving vehicle and wondering when your stop will come but at the same time not really paying attention to your surroundings. (Your stop might've been long gone, but in the present moment, you don't seem to care.)
The song travels through your ears inside your brain, and if you close your eyes you can almost see it swirl around in lavender within the dark corners of your mind: a momentary spark before the void sets in yet again. You think, if I were to take off my earphones, lavender would probably gush out my ears, and perhaps if I shake myself hard enough, they'd travel down my brain beneath my skin in waves lighting up the hair on my skin as they go.
There's something to be said about how everyone looks at you with concern set deep in their features. As if they're just waiting for the pen to drop, for the inevitable glass to shatter, for you to drop down on the floor and never find a way to get up again. There's something in the air that heaves a sigh everytime you laugh around people as if before that everyone was holding their breath, still in fear of setting you off again.
When the same song starts up again, because that's how you consume music, one song at a time, until there's nothing left of the song but static noises in your head that you'll remember once again a decade later and feel an epiphany, the kind you'll never get used to no matter how many times it has happened before.
When the song starts up again, you take a deep breath and you step into the room without looking up at anyone, trying to be discreet as you move, so they wouldn't look at you, so they wouldn't know you're here again, so they wouldn't know how much you need the help.
You find a seat at the very back as usual, you're trying to blend into the wall, but the walls are a bright blue (the kind you really like) and your clothes are black, a stark contrast that makes you uncomfortable, because you stand out. You think, anyone can look here and see me sitting. The thought disturbs you, so you turn up the volume high, so that the music blasts in your ears so loud that they drown any other voices in your head from speaking.
Don't speak tomorrow in the room, you had mumbled into the dark, face smushed in the pillow. Don't come out, I don't want you there. One of them let out a loud scream, so loud it hurt your ears, another laughed in their shirll voice and said, you think you're the boss of us don't you? It seemed like they didn't expect an answer, so you didn't give any, just sinked in deeper into the bed. Just don't talk tomorrow, you heard yourself beg. Let me talk, I promise I'll handle it.
But you always need help, you can never handle anything on your own. If we weren't here, you'd be nothing at all. Not even the things that you pretend to be. (That was the most vicious one of them, who hissed into your ears.)
None of them talked today, none of them came out, just like you told them to, and yet you couldn't talk, couldn't say what you had to say, couldn't utter anything even when you were pinned with the weight of thousand different stares. You stood there like a fool, and sat back down like a loser, because they were right, that's what you are, and that's what you'll always be.
You hear each of them laugh loudly. You can hear them celebrate your failure, a big feast with your head right in the middle so they can eat pieces of it and make you scream in their mouths.
You'd go to bed, just like you do every night, all the while they continue feasting on you, with you, for you but always, always against you.
80 notes
·
View notes