In Continuum.

Somewhere In Elsewhere



Every path leads to a road, and every road leads back home. The only thought that drives me in the thicks of any obstacles. But that thought usually doesn't work when the obstacle involves a three-inch thick mirror, reflecting only yourself and no other. Those are the hardest obstacles to cross for me, and in those times the only thought in my head is to turn back and run away. Because elsewhere but here, I feel better about myself. Such an act of cowardice, such a self-delusional thought. I swear, if I am more sane than I am right now, I might drive a broken bottle of whiskey into my head. If only I can hate myself right now, it might make the whole process of escapism less repugnant.

This road outside my house leads down and down, like the vein in a human body, leading from a brain to a heart. The yellow street lamps like the dots in a join-the-dots book, begging me to draw a ventriloquistic line all along the road, all the way down to your home to form a giant diagram, a picture of a heart or a broken one, that I am uncertain. But the distance to be covered now, is growing further by the day, and I wonder sometimes if drawing imaginary lines is sufficient to find my way back into your heart.

So I am looking elsewhere to seek comfort now, no longer relying on the motto that I ceaselessly repeated like a broken gramophone to myself, out in the fields or deep in myself. Because out of the window, there are other bigger, better places for now that I have visited, and neglected for so long. With you gone for an indefinite period of time, the only way out seems to be any other way available. Seeking different roads under my feet, I am finding my way finally, to comfort elsewhere.

The rainy days have passed, seven days of continuous afternoon rain has seized. Leaving the skies with threatening thunders but no rain. That is one more comfort I seek, gone from the skies and from the view out of my window. However melancholic it may be, I still like the sound of the rain splattering on my window sill at night, or the way tiny fractions of the rain would come into the gap I leave in my window everything it does, and tickle the hair on my arm when coming in contact. The familiar sensation, only not accompanied the screaming and the twitching, the laughter and the comfort. Replacing those, my own arms around my legs, hugging them as I sit on the table alone in my room, seeing myself ever so clearly in the reflection, and hating it a lot more than before.

Singing is no longer accompanied by the sound of the guitar in my room. I no longer have the mood to talk a lot, or sing for that matter. But the lyrics to Ode To is suddenly very appealing, and since I just learned it with my own ears, I cannot stop playing it in the dining room in the middle of the night. My sister says that it scares her when she is sleeping in the middle of the night, and from the darkened dining room she hears the sound of strings being plucked. But I like the echoes in the dining room when I play there alone, I like the way I play slightly out of rhythm. It has a contorted element of beauty in the breakdown, how the notes go out of pace and at the same time, translates the desperation in the song. Yeah, I see what you mean. I see what you mean.

Like I mentioned before, comfort can be found other than the bed and you now. Even in strangers, I see them in puffy fur and buttoned eyes like that of a teddy bear. There is a sudden temptation to rush up to these strangers on one of my lonely walks in the middle of the night, and tell them how much they mean to me because to them, I am anonymous. Because that seems to be the only way now to have no reason to dislike me. Knowing me only gives you more reasons to, and my anonymity is the only shield against that. Even if it isn't love that I see in their eyes, at least I don't see an inkling of dislike or hate. I'm sick of love, like a plague running through your veins after being overdosed with too many boxes of chocolates. Because chemically, they aren't very much different. I believed in that, laughed at myself for believing it, then laughed at myself for laughing in the first place. I am a believer once more, and it seems to be more comfortable this way.

Once in a while, I come to the house of elevators in my head. I drop by the place with the cartoon tree and the empty swing once in a while, and all about the air fluttered hearts and lover birds. In the familiar grounds where my feet and heart used to thread, talking to her has a certain amount of guilt blended with nostalgia all at the same time. It seems like it is the wrong time to want, to desire, to crave for such attention and such a conversation. It all seems like the wrong kind of place to be doing such a thing, the place being the corner of my mind. Sunny side or not, I liked you. I truly did, and picking at the old moldy pieces of heart on the floor of mine, I find pieces of them worth keeping and remembering. Because they are reminders of the times when you reflected the best side of me, and like the comfort of my bed, you comforted me.

Guilt is eating me up, ripping at my skin and flesh with a pair of imaginary knife and fork. All I want to uphold now is the thought, and I wonder if the guilt is going to take that as food too. Sooner or later perhaps. Sooner or later, even that last bit of comfort is going to be taken away, the beauty of loss and remembering something as a mere thought. Someday, guilt is going to get to it and remove all sense of emotions and feelings, leaving an empty shell of a man, walking the earth like all else, ordinary and appalling.

But that is the cost of craving the dark, the price you pay to go to elsewhere instead of being here. Even if it kills your comfort zone elsewhere, anywhere and somewhere is better than this place right now. Guilt might kill me elsewhere, but loss is slaughtering me here. Either place, death surrounds me like a lonely shadow, looking for some lonesome and pitiful company.

So what if I am seeking comfort elsewhere? I have lost control over my life in where I am, and since it is death whichever way I face, allow me to have control over the way that I die at least. Save the last dignity for me, because even if it is the comfort of death I choose, at least it is the least amount of freedom that you can give to me.