Some days I want to run away completely from everything and everyone. Move to a different country, cut my hair and change my name. Other times I want to scream at the top of my voice and tell everyone I run into everything that happened. From the clerk at the supermarket who asks me ‘how’s it going’ not really expecting a reply, to the stranger keeping a 6 foot distance from me on the sidewalk. I want them to know what really took place and the hell that life has become.
I want to remember every single detail and I also wish I could wipe it all away.
I understand certain expressions that before I’ve used lightly. If I say I am beside myself with despair I mean it in a literal sense. I observe myself as a completely detached being. I see myself in bed every morning, I will myself to let my feet touch the floor. I see a spoon in my hand and I watch as it pierces the surface of a cup of tea, a small amount of sugar crystals dissolving into the maple colored liquid. I hear your voice and I hear my own. Our conversations replaying at high volume. I want to remember everything and at the same time the memories with their unspeakable pain make me wish to forget.
I haven’t talked to most of my friends for 11 months. They ask me ‘how are you doing?’ They say ‘I was thinking about you’ they say ‘I just wanted to send you my love’, but it’s too painful, I can’t. So the message are all unopened and not only do I already have my sadness but now I am upset with myself because a simple thing of replying to a message from a friend I cannot do.
Most days I only want to be around all the people I know and who already know me. I wish I will never meet a new person again. Other days I want to cut ties with everyone I know and reinvent myself completely. Maybe I will say I am an only child, an orphan. Maybe I’ll finally perfect the American accent so the first questions isn’t still ‘where are you from?’ Maybe I will create myself in such a way that nobody ever asks me another question again as long as I live. Then I won’t have to remember the questions I have for myself and for God - Why? How come? What now?
Sometimes I tell myself to be patient and ‘just wait’. But what am I waiting for? I’m waiting to receive a WhatsApp message, a phone call, a dm on instagram but I never will. Still, I wait.
I went to sleep one night and when I woke up the next morning everything was destroyed. And since then I’ve been waiting. Waiting for you to come back so I can tell you what happened and ask if you ‘you can imagine’. I would tell you ‘you are not going to believe….’ We will sent messages littered with emojis and voice notes when the story was too sweet for just text. When it would be urgent we would preface with ‘SOS’ and when either of us would not reply quickly enough there would be a joke about ‘I know you are leaving me on read but,…’
But all I have are my thoughts and our voices echoing in my head.
When you don’t know what to do, do nothing. I keep waiting. Waiting for a sign, waiting for some instruction. That’s all I do now, wait and wait some more.