Fiction always helps. I need it now more than ever. Most people I know make small of it but we create fictions of our own lives to make it more digestible. Storytelling is a huge part of everyday conversation. 

The water cooler is humming beside me. Gurlging a slow watery song. Crying and peeing. The excitement of the day has abated. Daadi is snoring too. Papa, the lion, has retreated to his cave and my mother's slippers will softly slap the floor only one or two times more now. Last checks of the day. "Is the main door shut?" "Do you want anything?" I am sitting on my chair with my laptop looking very busy shaking my head to her. Time for my own self. Time to make sense of the day. Time to think for myself. It is as though I cannot hear my own voice in the day, when I am trying to accomodating voices of those around me. Trying to reason them. Make them sensible to me. But now is the time to listen to my own voice, however small.

"I feel this with you. I feel that for you."
"You feel what you feel and I understand. But I am not part of this, whatever it is that you are feeling."
"Who else but you are responsible for making me feel the way I feel!"
"No Babe. You merely use me as a prop to feel what you are feeling."

I don't want to get too used to you not being here. Sit by myself with a chair facing me and look at it now and then and think of what it would be like if you were here. I conjure a shadow. There is effort in making sure it never becomes bigger than you are, but I'm sorry because I fail often. I didn't intend for this to be your burden. I think you know and you think that's the boy I am in love with. Maybe the girl you wanted to kiss was never me in the first place either. Maybe it is the person you see in my words. I am fooling you too because I am not half as beautiful as I make her to be. 

No thought. No movement. No sound. Just being. Breathing. Now. This. Just as it is. 

Letting go of all that could not be. Letting in all that remains. All that stays. All that does not egg you on with bait. All that comes to settle in the palm of your hand tonight. All that is your due.  

 The weight of adulthood is upon everyone. Most of my friends get bogged down by it on a daily basis. I do too. I don't suffer in the same way because I have pulled myself out of the work rut and general comfort of material life. 
This fear of not doing enough, not being enough comes in inheritance. My father may not say it in so many words but I sense he sees himself as incomplete no matter where he stands. The disappointment trickles down to the both of us kids.  My parents seem to have given themselves up to a certain boredom where the mundane, everyday activities are the only way they can view time in motion.  In this lull of the mundane, all of us are not nearly enough. We shake things up a bit every now and then to make sure we are not machines yet but get back to the drone because we are so used to it. I have an aversion to this system, but also know that if I were not subject to this system I would have found aversion to some other system instead. 

I don’t want to write mindlessly because I know I will end up spilling truths. And truths scare me. We all live in our own worlds and mine is particularly beautiful. In my world, lovers meet to no end. The grass is always green. The wind is always blowing. All things are said and understood and reciprocated and nothing is lost on the way. People help people. No one is hungry for food or love. Words come out without hesitation and are always used to heal.

That’s why I live here. Most people recognise me as an artist but I am only doing my job in putting a picture of my internal landscape on paper. I have now been told that some people will also be ready to pay me good money for it. I never for the money. I’ve just always wanted to be able to get it out of me, if I keep it in too long I get sick. So in a sense I am being paid to turn my insides out. But when I think about it that goes for everyone.

I enjoy sex. On my way to the orgasm I enter the world that I just described above. I have always hoped that the partner with whom I share the bed for this communion is able to see the world in my head but usually they are far too deep in their own. So I don’t try. I close my eyes and swim in it until some of the water escapes me. Once we are done, we head our own way. I deem a certain honesty in it because there is a mutual recognition that communication has been exhausted. I am light headed after the act and head back home to deep rest. Sometimes I cry too. Because I am back in the real world.

I guess everyone is trying to escape in their own way. Very few people see the world for what it actually is. Everyone sees it as how they are. I think those who see the world for what it really is are the ones who go mad. I don’t think I would ever want to go mad. The real world is not kind to mad people. They put them in institutions and lock them up with their own selves. Can you imagine the horror of it?  It might seem like there are no voices around but in their heads they are probably screaming. Sometimes my mind screams too but I shush it because I don’t want to be sent to one of these institutions.

With words I am able to let the madness loose. Open my Pandora’s box. I enjoy the blanket of fiction because I can get away with being anything. I can put blame on those I would never cast a finger upon in real life. I would say I am more forgiving in real life. But the paper helps me unveil my many selves, most of which aren’t very friendly.