a discarded self

I need to turn the ventilator on to feel slightly better. The cold air on my face is trying to numb my anxiety. A temporary effect mocking me. The pain shouts restlessly from within my stomach. Tiny angry hands are trying to break through the meat, the skin, eating me up from the inside. Outside I am just the reflection of whom I once was, but am not anymore. They don’t realise it, because I have mastered the perfect copy of myself. But when I look in the mirror, I see it everywhere. It has taken my body shape, the colour of my hair, my perfume, my laugh. It sits there in the back of my mind, all the time. It got itself so comfortable, we started living together, rent-free.

Between four blue walls I try to spit it out like a bad word, but when I take my next breath, it gets sucked in once more. It continues to play this incessant and tiring game, holding me hostage. As I let my body fall to the ground, my hands search for something to hold on to. My breathing grows harder and the voices in my head louder. Now I don't feel the cold anymore. Black and orange patterns move and ripple over me. I open my eyes and I see the sun coming through the leaves of the apple tree in my grandmother's garden. I am lying on the grass, waiting for summer to end, filling my head with stories. I am so small, so innocent, so unaware of what lies ahead. I let the heat caress me and hold me in a comforting embrace. Someone opens a tap. I am pulled back to that pale and numbing floor. Tears are drying. I unlock the door and slowly walk towards the mirror over the sink. I stare into my red swollen eyes and see nothing.

The relentless tapping of keyboards dictates time and thought. I try to wonder away, back to that garden, but always end up in the same rabbit hole. On the other side, there is no wondrous world, but an emptiness full of echoes and discarded selves. Every version of me I carefully construct and create in lonely moments, ready for everyday use and disposable at the end of the day. The simulation has become the reality. There is no thin layer anymore, the two have converged and melted together. I am trapped in the tiny crevices, a mere blemish in the process. Get back to the tapping.

I rarely find solace. Even in sleep, my fever dreams don't allow me to rest. Forests grow too intricately tall and seas swallow mountains. I want to run, but can't move, I want to scream but only silence howls out of my distorted mouth. Roads lead nowhere and people don't have a face nor a name. In my dreams I look for the answer I cannot find in my waking hours. Sometimes I think I get a glimpse of it, there at the bottom of the path. I stretch my arms out like a child who's lost his mother. I am a formless body gasping for air. And then a deafening sound fills my ears. It's the alarm on my phone. I need to get up, I need to start tapping again.