Life just keeps rolling. But it’s not a roller coaster. That wouldn’t be utterly true. I know, for a fact, that most people compare life to a rollercoaster. You know– wild, unpredictable and alternating between highs and lows. But I do not wholly accept it because it can be utterly predictable. So predictable that the banality no longer amuses you. It now disgusts you.
You’re supposed to pretend that you’re not a crybaby, that deep down even when you take goofy selfies and send them as streaks on Snapchat, you don’t want to scream out your lungs 24 hours a day. Oh, and one day, when you mistakenly blurt out that you feel like screaming out loud, your friend looks at you like you just denounced Christianity. So you recoil to the sanitized language that people would rather hear, rather use, rather believe. Words that you do not feel. Words that seem empty, like your heart on most days.
You’re supposed to pretend you enjoy watching global news and you understand words like ‘oligarchs’, ‘subsidiaries’ and maybe ‘collateral damage’. You’re going to pretend you need to use words like ‘diplomacy’ in your statements so you can convince yourself you’re communicating properly, and maybe for a tinge of external validation.
You’re going to pretend that you miss people so that when they tell you they miss you, you only think it’s right to reply that you miss them too. And for people that ask you if you miss them, you wonder why they want to know. You’ve never asked anyone such a question before because it has never occurred to you to be missed, but you nod your head and say ‘yes’ to them. You are going to pretend that maybe if you tell people you miss them, you’ll actually miss them. You wonder what will happen if you tell them that their presence in your life is more of an add-on than a necessity, that you truly are comfortable with your silence, your aloneness, even when it’s dark. Maybe that’s a narrow way to view life, but life doesn’t care since life just keeps rolling.
Life just keeps rolling and there’s hardly anything anyone can do, especially you. You’re going to pretend like your anxiety is under control, that your meditation lessons are paying off, that you are getting better when you know you’re not. If you were, why do you keep cancelling meetups at the last minute? Also, why did you tell an ‘online friend’ to come and see you only for you to scream and run away? Why did it feel like you were choking on your breath? Also, why did your hands refuse to stop trembling? Then, why did you narrate the experience to another friend and from the expression on her face figure that she thought you were crazy? Why did the thought linger on your mind for hours even after forcing yourself to sleep? Maybe she’s right. Maybe you’re crazy but at least you have to pretend not to be, so you laugh it off and make a witty comment on other insignificant issues.
Life keeps rolling but you like to think you’re a fighter. You know, like life is the dough, and you, a rolling pin. So you can shape it, do something because you think you can. It’s usually during dark moments, like when you’re sad and close to tears. Like the time you lost a relative and death instantly became more real rather than distant. During moments like this is when you stare blankly, your eyes open but unable to see. Then, you imagine seeing something that reveals itself to you slowly, like a striptease. You imagine it to be anything–a word, a book, an object, a thought, anything. It reminds you of those movies where the main actor stares at maybe a bookshelf for so long and realises there’s an odd placement of a book that later leads to a hidden room. Maybe that doesn’t define a fighter in the appropriate terms, but that’s what you think you are. So, during moments where there’s a truckload of negative emotions –which gets so frequent that you have to hide behind words– you still hope to find something that can keep you going.
You have heard that feigning confidence works so you try it and act like you have things under control when in fact you don’t. You don’t because you’re losing your mind and imagining why it is a greater insult when someone says ‘Do you even have the skills enough to feel the ‘impostor syndrome’?’
Life keeps rolling so you jump in on the hype, and drown in the digital heroin that lay before you. You secretly remember that you’re repeatedly going against all the instructions by flouting all the rules for attention and concentration in ‘Deep Work’ by Cal Newport. But you pretend you have it under control so you go ahead and write a 1200-word-long article on how to find focus in a chaotic world. A beautiful irony. You bask in it at first, then pretend not to.
You don’t know why you think you can solve other people’s problems. Maybe because you think it will give you a sense of greater purpose and hide the fact that you’re losing your senses. All of it. Starting from your sense of touch so that you pretend that you’re indifferent when people hold your hands, when in fact you detest it. Sometimes you endure, absorbing the epiphany that life is fleeting so maybe holding hands is not the worst thing to endure.
Your sense of hearing is next because these days, all you do is hear, not listen. But you make sure people who talk to you don’t know. Therefore, you assuage their worries by adding befitting remarks like ‘it’s going to be fine, really’. You hope that by adding ‘really’ to the statement, it feels true, and personal and conceals it from sounding cliche. That way, no one would know you weren’t listening, that it wasn’t obvious you were subsumed by your worries and you were hanging by a thread in a dark place. Darker than the skies on Friday nights, when you step out of the bubbly club, to clear your head. Maybe life keeps rolling because it doesn’t have a choice but it is not a rollercoaster. Well, not completely.