You’re somewhere east with amiable acquaintances.

They’re talking about other people and vacation plans and rent and music festivals. They’re just narrating the course of a life. You contribute but do not engage, saying things you’ve said before and you’ll probably say again on a similar Saturday night in the near future. It feels like watching your favorite sitcom on repeat where you can quote facial expressions and you can see the jokes coming from a mile away. At least the sitcom is entertaining every time. This dinner is not. 

On the way home you walk by a beggar on the street. You feel bad for not feeling bad so you spare some change to compensate. There is something about the air that makes your insides shiver. It’s not the temperature; no it’s not that. It has to do with the weight of the breeze – it’s lighter, fresher than usual. It surrounds you like a threat, urging you to make something of it whilst you can. It reminds you of all those afternoons back home when you didn’t have to worry about making something of the moment because you couldn’t make sense of it to begin with. Back then life would just happen and you were just in the middle of things – the star, the protagonist. Now the timing feels a bit off. Moments pass by like waves and you’re either too eager or too late to ride them. You look from the outside in like in those weird dreams where you can see yourself from outside your body. You never had a dream like that but it seems like it’s one of the most common amongst the dreaming community. 

You close the door leaving the breeze and the moment behind you. The kitchen smells like a public toilet but you have no interest in finding out why. You’ve grown to be ok with it. You sit on the couch without switching on the lights to create the illusion you didn’t really come home. You didn’t want to come home but you did because you didn’t know where you wanted to go instead. Being you has become as hard as being with you. Breathing feels like weight lifting and Sundays like the end of yet another chance to be creative. 

You check your phone out of reflex. That’s a lie. You check your phone out of need – the need to be liked and get some sort of validation. You say you don’t care what other people say but you measure your life against smiley faces and comments. It’s a race with no winner. If you run at the same pace as them you feel exposed, if you don’t run at all you feel alone. 

You think about calling your parents but decide against it almost immediately. You’re not in the right place to lie this time. The thought of them dying doesn’t scare you because you’ll miss them, but because they might be able to see what your life is really like from the other side. Till now you’ve done a good job pretending to be a person you would like to be and the pride in their eyes is one of the few things that make you feel alive. 

With your face buried in the couch, the world feels overused. As if all the feelings have been felt.

There’s a bank, a depository of experiences by those before us that make it hard to be original. You’re just a cocktail of past lives put together one meaningless day at a time. Not a painting, a collage. Words sound like instructions. Actions seem rehearsed. Settling has become the norm, the normal, and you’re ok with it. Since when is being ok, ok? 

 Waking up and falling asleep, beginnings and endings, sunrise and sunset – you can’t really tell which is which. The colors are the same, and so is the silence that comes with them. You wish you could stay on the couch. You feel drained. Maybe you should watch some TV. You do.

You’re taking a walk after work, maybe that would help. There’s something soothing about getting lost in crowds, a sense of safety. You love the noise and the chaos and the smell of spring in the air. This is the place you ran to all those years ago, a place where nobody would point a finger at you. You came to a city that celebrated your shortcomings without asking any questions, surrounded by people who know what is like to be alone. 

There’s so much around you to engage the senses and disengage the mind. People power-walking with purpose, cars driving themselves to destinations unknown and buildings standing like mountains, withstanding the passage of time, adapting to the quirks of their conquerors. Can you just imagine the untold stories held at this unassuming corner? All the first kisses and the last pints, the late night laughter and the early morning walk to work. You always had a knack for understanding life, consuming moments, visualizing experiences – the problem always came about when trying to live it. 

You see that little place you always wanted to try. Reading the paper the other week you came across a list of must-have experience before you die and dining alone was quite high up the list, so you sit down and ask for the menu. The waiter comes out holding a blackboard with chalk scribbling on it, explaining that the menu changes daily according to the fresh produce available to the chef. Amidst salads with fig and pork chops bathed in rosemary, you go for the earthiness of the mushroom gnocchi. 

People pace up and down the street, dancing to the soundtrack of rush hour. You wish there was a bubble over their heads letting you in on their thoughts. What’s the smartly suited gentleman talking about on his phone? What about the young lady in the striped skirt? She’s smiling, thinking about something. 

“Are you waiting for someone else?” another waiter asks. You move your head upwards, feeling embarrassed rather than liberated. 

Your food arrives and you dive right into it. Hungry and horny are your two moments of clarity – when body and mind are in sync and you know exactly what you need. It’s the time before and after dinner and sex you are confused about.

Who are you then? What defines you? What drives you? 

Like every form of happiness in life, it didn’t take long before your gnocchi stopped being enjoyable. Three mouthfuls in the span of hundred and eighty seconds turned your sumptuous dinner into lumps of carbs you’d happily feed your dog to. But that’s what happiness is. Fleeting moments, snapshots of life where needs and wants cross paths and stop to shake hands. An orgasm lasts a handful of seconds, sends you straight to sleep and immediately makes the idea of sex revolting. A joke’s effect dies in under a minute, your smile evaporates faster than water in the desert and that same joke isn’t funny ever again. 

You get up and leave.