Isolation

Are you me?

You're trying to escape it all. Alone, in a crowded library in a college you have no idea why you're still attending. Everyone is sitting with their friends, or studying. You sit alone and type away, wondering why you are like this. You regress. You start to wear a mask and hide half your face. You wear headphones so that you can always hide behind music. There's no talk. No conversation. You fill the silence with songs, the same ones. Over and over and over. Its been going on for longer than you can even recall. You can no longer recall the last time you were truly happy. 

You wonder what you are doing here. Who these people are. What they are doing. You slip into dreams and fantasies. You wish for something to happen, to take hold of you and fix your problems. You dream of having hope again, wishing for a time when everything was ok. You think of time travel. You think of going back, fixing it all. Not just better grades, not just making things better, but to feel them again. You are only truly alive when you're dreaming. You wish you were asleep all the time.

Faintly, you hear people whispering. Friends having their conversations, their inside jokes. You wish for someone to sit with. You wish you were doing anything other than this. But you are also grateful for this. Without this, you'd be too alone, too idle. Too pathetic. Now you have a defense. You keep looking at the clock, but time moves at its own pace. You're sure its been longer. You've been sitting here for a really long time. You are tired. Your eyes are burning. For all your love of sleep, it remains elusive. You keep pushing it back. Doing whatever. You remember a time when you used to sleep at 10. Before all of this happened. Before you had the void in place for a soul.

Everything seems too crowded. Cafeterias, halls, even the footpaths. Too many people with too many people. You don't want to wait in lines. You sacrifice a healthy lunch because you don't want to wait in line. You buy yourself cheap maggi. You'll buy whatever. Long as you don't have to wait and eat lunch alone, surrounded by all these people. I used to think that the couples were the worst. Holding hands, ever so slightly away from each others faces. A tiny movement away from a kiss. Their smiles, only for each other. You used to look at your hands and hate how they didn't hold anything. They felt so light, so pointless. You felt truly, painfully alone. But now you feel that looking at everyone. You hate that everyone walks with their friends. You long for the things you used to have. You long for what you truly miss.

Things were easy back then. You had your best friends. You would die for them, and they would too. School to tuition, tuition to home. But you had fun all the way. You stole moments. In between classes, in between the movement. You didn't cave into the pressure, it didn't consume you because of the people around you. You understood the things that happened to you. You're sad now. You're never going to be that person again. You are not going to wishfully look at the rain and wonder if the schools will be declared off. You're not going to be unburdened. Its already too late to fix everything. You just need an escape, a miracle.

 These people aren't the same. They aren't the same as the friends you had. Something is wrong. Something is missing. With you . Everyone else seems happy. You deny yourself that. You pretend to know better, to be more aware. But it only makes you more unsure. You wonder when you will break away from this cycle. 

You feel it don't you? The air has no life anymore. The sun keeps beating down. You remember seeing more colour in the world. You recall having energy, enthusiasm. Now all you do is look forward to sleeping. The whispers in the class almost fade away. Its okay. Close your eyes.