Sometimes.

Mind-reading.

I study Psychology.
I can't read minds
as much as I wish I could

There isn't much sense in worrying about what the old man in the park thinks about me considering I don't actually know him. But it feels like he has a critical eye on me and I'm scared.

I join the crowd of grocery shoppers in Tesco and it doesn't feel like I am as submerged as the others. I walk quietly through the aisles, not saying  word. I am listening to Keane's 'Bedshaped' on my iPod and hoping the people around me aren't paying any attention to the girl in a checkered shirt and shorts. I am too self-conscious. What are they thinking of me? Why is she looking at the tin of beans I am holding? Why is he looking at my legs?

I walk off to pay for my items and a small child runs into me. There is a look of shock in his eyes and suddenly he cries. I feel guilty for being the one he ran into and I feel terrified his mother might think I've done something to him.

I drop my basket of items and leave the store empty-handed.

I am in the park. It's dark and everything seems to be going to sleep. Still listening to 'Bedshaped', I thought about the old man in the park, the random shoppers in Tesco and the small boy I inevitably scarred with my presence. I rip out some grass and examine it with what little light I have and notice how not one blade looked different from the other - I want to be like grass - to fit in and not stand out. I want to be deindividuated and be engulfed by the crowd so that my being is the crowd.

I hear someone clearing his throat behind me. It's the old man. I get up and walk off as quickly as I can.

I lose sight of the old man behind the trees and I feel safe.

Paradise

"When she was just a girl
she expected the world
but it flew away from her reach
so she ran away in her sleep"

"Life goes on and it gets so heavy..."

"In the night
the stormy night
she closed her eyes"

Time Games

There wasn't much to look forward to at some point. Frail, weak and dying, the self was focused on inner destruction and outer torture.

The sandwich packet sits unopened in the fridge and days later ends up in the bin with patches of mould already on the bread. I frown at the thought of food wastage but I knew that that's what I had to do to get things my way. I put my hand to my face and felt the dry skin and the wrinkles which should not be there in youth.

There's a clutter of plates behind me.

It's my flatmate, preparing a plate of toast and baked beans (Heinz brand). I briskly walk out of the kitchen without a word to her and sigh at the thought of a conversation lost to my irrational fear of her toast and baked beans.

Time passes.






There isn't much time left. A friend calls me into a coffee shop. It is urgent. She tells me what she has to say. I break down.

Time stands still.

IVs and ECGs and "Ill...need help...ward in Farnham". This whole time, my friend holds my hand and tells me it will be alright. I don't believe her and I say "I hate you for doing this to me".

Time becomes irrelevant.

As I look out through the barred windows onto the hospital grounds, I think about how I never thought I'd be in this position - tagged and observed for 6 hours a day. I can smell roast potatos coming from the room next door. I want to cry. "They're undoing everything..." I look at the ward staff and see them gesturing me to come into the dining room. I sigh. "Their job is to undo everything."

Time is in sync with reality.

My coursework is beginning to pile up and it all feels too much. After weighing out my lunch of hummus and cucumber sticks (in grams) and counting the cherry tomatoes, I sit down in front of my laptop and begin to type away at my assignment:

The motivation of eating and hunger is supported by studies based on the set-point theory and settling-point theory. However, sufferers of certain disorders such as...

Time rewinds itself suddenly.

I slam the laptop shut and abandon my hummus, cucumber sticks and cherry tomatoes and punch the wall. I pick up my bag and decide I am going for a walk. As I leave the room, I feel my fist throbbing and my eyes tearing up.


Fuck memories.

Can you Hear It?

They whisper...

...whisper....

...whisper...

I can't talk back to them.

They want me to die.

You don't deserve existence

Carry away the voices.  

They scare me so much.

It's almost like 

it is me.

I am you.

Dark Scenes

The day fades into night quite unnoticably.

You forgot they turned the clocks back an hour didn't you?

I looked up into the night and realised how much the darkness had changed the scene. I could no longer see the clouds; darkness and all had enveloped the sky.

I heard a plane fly above me but I could not see it. But the ethereal sounds of its colossal engines echoed across the sky, leaving me somewhat in awe at the fact that something so hidden could produce such a thunderous roar.

It was only six o'clock but it felt like the world was already sleeping. It's the illusion the early-setting sun created - it shut the busy society indoors and lulled them to sleep but I stayed outside to look at the changing skies.

It was beautiful - but oh, so lonely.

Legacy

Arnie drew his last breath. And of course, he died.

I kind of expected it. Fifty years of smoking clearly would do him in at some point. Unfortunately, it had to happen after I got to know him - after he became my friend. Had I not known him, it would have saved me a trip to the cemetery.

They buried Arnie on a Saturday morning and engraved on the headstone was:

Arnold Joseph Miller

25th June 1930- 3rd August 1995

May he rest in peace

Jesus, Arnie. No wonder you're dead. Smoking since you were fifteen!

The crowd of mourners soon left, gliding silently between the headstones of the long dead. They left their last words and took their tears with them. Soon, they would change out of their black attire and change into their summer dresses (it is August after all) and sit in their gardens sipping wine.

"To Arnie," they would say as the scorching sun beats down on their pale skin. When the sun set and the people intoxicated, they would retreat to their homes and shut the door on another day without Arnie.

And so summers and autumns and winters and springs pass and good old Arnie lies a good few feet under the cemetery grounds, silent. No one visits him, no one speaks of him and (unsurprisingly), no one remembers him. It is another life wasted - his stories, his experiences, his values gone. But what can we do? Poor Arnie's dead and gone. Perhaps if he'd left a legacy...

Smoking for fifty years - foolish Arnie..