Sadness

You see me laughing and dancing, you hear me singing or telling jokes. But you don’t see me smiling, do you? Nor do you feel my eyes glitter with hope. Sadness has many faces and I might just have met the joyful one – filthy, despicable, and bitter. I laugh and I hurt, I dance and I mourn, I sing and I cry, I joke and I grieve. You don’t get me, but the forged mask I couldn’t fence off. I wear it while eating, and running, and working, and talking, I even leave it on when I fall asleep; it’s only the dreams that tear it apart, for so little time that you can barely catch a glimpse beneath.

There are hints that give me away, if only you could read them – the piled up cigarettes, the late runs, the morning nightmares, the reckless decisions, the indifferent attachments, the interest in futile things that would never touch my existence otherwise. They are all there, silently screaming as I yield to them, hurting like bloody hell.

You should know that I’m lying when I say I’m fine. Pieces, small fragments of self shattered around, waiting to be diluted into the ultimate sadness. It’s dark within, such a thick sorrow that you could touch it with bare hands. Hanged in so many question marks, all asking over and over again: why not me? How am I any better, because I know I’m not. When did all this world gone so wrong that I still get the chance to cover up the way I feel?

I try to breathe through those around me, sharing their hopes and almost abducting their dreams – lest I scatter into thin air. Dying is easy, really letting go isn’t; I finally accepted that, in all its bittersweet shades. I am no more, just the faint trace of a tobacco scent and some scratches on the evening dew. Drained, burnt out, drowned into the inner unknown, dissipated, lost. If you touched me now, you’d run your fingers through sand. Your words would be quaffed by the void superseding me.

…And you’ll no longer see me laughing and dancing, the time for songs and jokes will soon be over. Ask me what this is, and I answer: me failing. I failed. Sadness fulfilled, existence concluded. Closure.

(31 dec 2015)