There was nothing special about today. I woke up, reaching blindly for the alarm on my nightstand, opened only my right eye just enough to see the time. It was still early, I had at least twenty more minutes until the time to get up and get ready. I turned off the alarm and rolled on my back. Fixated my gaze on the ceiling as if I was expecting to see something new on there, something that slipped my attention for so many years I had been doing the same dumb thing every morning. All the little cracks were still there, nothing had changed, nothing had moved. The twenty more minutes were almost over thus I decided to leave the warm comfort of my bed and get ready to leave. A long, and expected to be productive day awaited. Did not put too much effort into my outfit, it was not something that had mattered to me in a very long time. Things were as they were, nothing was expected to change so why put in the extra effort? I made my morning coffee and drank it sitting on the couch looking out the window. The sun was shining and the world was bathed in white warm light, spring was officially here no doubt about it. The warm liquid that was supposed to wake me up and keep me going for at least a couple of hours was slowly making its way to my stomach, while my gaze stood fixated on the world outside my window. The lake had a shining glimmer and it looked as if it was glowing, the whole city seemed as if it was glowing, I hated that so much. I loved gray rainy days; the world seemed much more alive when it was raining. To me, it felt and looked as if life itself was pouring down from the sky reviving everything that would find dying on the ground. It never made much sense to anyone else why I hated sunny days, but it made sense to me, and I learned how to be happy with it, how to live without being understood by people around me. It took me some time but I was able to accomplish it. When I was finally done with my coffee, I took my light spring jacket and got into the elevator. Just one floor below the elevator stopped, one of my neighbors got in. She was an attractive woman but I had already lost interest in all sorts of human interaction. She smiled and I tried my best to return it, I am not sure about the results but I can say that I tried. We got off the elevator bidding goodbye to one another and then started walking in the same direction. That was awkward! Finally, after a few steps, she crossed the road and I was finally free of her presence. It was not bothering me, but I felt as if I was being observed somehow. I could not understand people and they could not care less about understanding me, so why bother and make both our lives difficult when we can just go our separate ways and be miserable on our own? I was lost in this endless train of thought, and without realizing it I had already reached my destination. I still had a couple of minutes to spare so I decided to light and smoke a cigarette before getting inside the building and start the normal working day ordeal. While I was there smoking all alone, I could not help myself but stare at people coming and going on the street. I could not help myself, I would always try to imagine their inner world. I knew I had thoughts, I knew I had feelings, but all these people that were just walking there in front of me, I had no idea if they did. We only have interactions and conversations with a limited number of people at a time, at that specific moment when we are talking to someone, we realize that this person exists, that this person is as alive as you are and has a complex mind. As soon as that person is out of sight and we cannot hear them anymore expressing their thoughts, they cease to exist. As I was standing there inhaling the cancerous fumes from my cigarette, I could not stop thinking about it. I could not stop imagining and considering the possibility that all that around me was just some kind of misguided and sloppy imagination that I had. That all I had lived or felt, was nothing more than just a figment of my imagination. I caught myself mid-way going down that rabbit hole, I knew that if I would have another episode like the one years ago, I did not think I would be strong enough to overcome it and get out of my head. I tried to stop but it was a little bit late. The day was doomed from the very first second that I opened my eye. The exact reason for this I do not know, maybe it was the sun, maybe it was because it was the exact day that it got one too many, so many maybes and what if-s. I got lost and started rumbling and tumbling down the spiral, I had been told not to try too hard to control it, to let my mind roam freely wherever it wanted to go so I decided to do just that. Lose control for once, let it go, and see where it leads. I took the stairs up, there were too many people waiting for the elevator, more than what I would like to be in a cramped space for a few seconds. The stairwell seemed a little bit narrower than it did yesterday. I blamed that on the bright sunlight outside and my eyesight. Took my time going slowly up the stairs while my mind was going wild and could not be contained anymore even if I wanted to. It found a blind spot and kept digging at it expanding the panic that was quietly affecting my whole body. I just could not stop thinking that all of what it had been till now was just my creation and none of it was real. Even though I tried hard to provide some hard evidence that the idea was wrong, the question kept popping up in my head. If it is real, then how come you have spent days and years with those people but they are all still strangers? How come that even after so many words we have exchanged, so many ideas and feelings, it all evaporated so quickly? If it is all real, then how come no one of those people out there feels as if it was something more than just a short story in my life, just a passer-by who was designated that way, as something that it had an expiration date and after that, it became just a distant memory that someday will even lose the power to bring a smile to my face when recalling it?
I sat on my desk and grabbed my head between my hands, it felt as if it was about to burst into flames. The idea terrified me, what if that was possible? What if my brain would just stop for a second and realize that it had already done too much and was not about to take it any longer from me? What if at a split second it would decide to give up and take me with it? After a few minutes that I was pressing hard on my temples, the headache seemed less painful, but it was still there as a small and faint echo of its existence. I brought myself up because I did not want any attention from my coworkers, I hated the fake interest they would never fail to show when seeing another one in distress. Once I turned on my computer, I realized that the headache was a lot more severe than I had previously thought. I had partially lost my sight and even with my glasses on I could not read anything right in front of me. I got up and without even realizing it walked to my superior's office. After I informed him about my health situation, he asked me to sit down for a moment. He started talking to me about how many of my coworkers had been worried bout me lately. They had seen me getting further and further from them, not attending their boring full of gossip dinner parties and whatnot. He asked me if I was doing okay and needed anything. While he was talking, I could not stop wondering how come his eyes looked so much like glass. He was trying to form a compassionate smile here and there and trying his best to reassure me that he and everyone else was there for me if I needed them, but his eyes expressed nothing of the sort. He was completely void of emotions as if he was a soulless puppet who was only following the script it was handed. My rumbled thoughts got disturbed when he asked me for a third or a fourth time if I was listening to him. I briefly reassured him that I appreciated every word he said and that I was doing fine, I only needed to take that day off and recuperate my health. He gave me the day off and advised me to take a long walk home today, the one by the lake since it would cheer me up. I thought of saying that I already live there, right by the lake but it did nothing near to cheering me up this morning, even if it looked as if it was glowing. I decided it would be useless, even worse it could spark up a new chain of words from him, words that I could not hear nor understand, so I just thanked him for the outstanding advice and I reassured him that I would follow it. In the end, I was not lying, I had to take that path to go home. Why was I going home though? There was nothing except cold objects in there, stuff that I bought thinking they would make me happier; they would make my life just a little bit more colorful. They were able to fill the void for only a couple of days, and then they just became a stable part of my surroundings that made no difference anymore. It's simple to understand why though. I had this revelation a couple of nights ago when I could say all of this sparked for the first time but I did not pay any attention to it, it all started with a silly cheesecake. On my way back home that night, I stopped by my favorite bakery, they made the best cheesecake in the city and I loved cheesecake. Since I had not eaten the whole day and my stomach was badly growling, I decided to buy the whole cake and not just one piece as I usually did. I went home and the first thing I did was sit on the couch and start eating the cake. The first piece was so delicious and eating it felt amazing and fulfilling. Since I had the whole pie, I decided to go for the second one, but it brought a lot less satisfaction than the first one. That disappointed me, so I decided to go for the third one. I found it a lot less satisfying than the second piece, and a lot more disappointing. But the memory of the "high" that the first piece gave me was still fresh in my memory, and I was desperate to feel that again by all means, so I started digging in on the fourth piece, then on the fifth until the whole cake was gone and I was hating myself for eating so much that I had to vomit. This sparked the first tricky question for my small and untalented mind, the famous "Why are we like this"? No answer could satisfy my soul so every day that went by after the cake incident just got a little bit darker, a little bit emptier until this very day. I just kept walking on muscle memory only, the world around me was deafening but all I could hear was the echo of my steps that were taking me somewhere without my permission. I stopped at some point of the way just to take a look at the swans and ducks at the lake. From their open beaks, I could see they were communicating or fighting with each other, but the sound could not reach my ears. All those people, all that senseless chatter and all those words they were saying were blocking out the swans and duck's screams that I wanted to hear. I just stood there for a couple of minutes like a dummy trying my best to tell my brain to block the meaningless words and listen to the ducks but I had no success. I felt my chest become heavier and heavier and breathing was getting harder after every draw that I took in. I felt I wanted to scream as loud as I could but the air was only reaching my lungs and settle there in silence. Again, I felt my head was about to catch on fire and explode with such violence that it would be enough to open a black hole to swallow up the whole world. I started walking again, at least I wanted to be alone in my privacy when such a thing would happen. I wanted at least my end to make some sense, again, only to me. I reached home. As I opened the door a splash of cold air hit my face. The echo of the door closing behind me stayed with me for a couple of minutes since just like me it had nowhere to go and nowhere to be beyond those walls. I sat down on the couch overtaken by total apathy; I could not understand when did it all get so empty? When did it completely lose all meaning and sense that it used to make? I could no longer understand if it had always been like this but I did not know it, or it had changed lately? If it was always like this, then what kept me from seeing it? If it became such lately, what did change and what caused all this change? So many questions, so many unknowns, and so much uncertainty kept my head spinning. I could not grasp the meaning anymore; I could not see any objectivity or reason any longer. I had so many questions and at that split second, I came up with only one answer. It was a test that I decided to do, I needed to know if it was all a product of my mind, of my imagination, and everything that used to be, was never there after all. I needed to be certain, I needed to know and now I do. After waking up in a pool of my own blood I finally know. It cost me everything that I thought I had, but now it all went quiet, everything is at peace and I cannot hear any more chatter and useless words, no more people around. I can finally hear the swans and ducks. I finally know for certain that I was at the center of it all, eliminating the protagonist, the whole story ceased to exist. Finally, they all stopped talking and everything is quiet, as quiet as a rainy morning.