Sie sat there, wondering if sie’d always be waiting. Waiting for permission, for an invitation, for a reason to get up out of hir comfy bed, to brave the cozy solitude of the indoors and breath in the company that other human voices and hearts provided.
For a long time, sie’d been wondering at the silence from hir phone. Sie’d grown to resent the thing. The only messages sie received on it were distress calls, cries for attention, problems to be solved. Rarely, if every, did sie receive soft texts out of the blue like
“I miss you”
“Just thinking of you”
“Hope you slept well”
“See you soon”
It’s a wonder sie had grown to resent the tiny thing. Every time a notification flashed across the little screen it was always bad news. Someone else dead, someone else sick, someone going away to another place, making sure you know that the silence on the other end of the line shouldn’t be taken personally. It was them, not you.
Sie snuggled down deeper into hir cocoon of blankets, seriously wondering if this was all life was. Work, home, TV and drinks, black out to sleep, then work again. Food carelessly thrown in as an afterthought, a preservative measure to continue on in the conscious drone. A trance like existence interrupted only to talk someone off the edge. In distress, hir brain came alive, and sie could imagine a million different ways to draw others out of the darkness.
In hir silence, all alone in a state of never really ever being alone, sie wondered who was there to draw hir out of hir own darkness.
Was it hirself?
Wasn’t that what all the crap about self care was about?
Sie considered for the millionth time getting a therapist. Perhaps that was the draw. Being so terrified of being alone with your own thoughts, that you hire someone else to be at the other end of your ranting. Someone else to sit in the darkness with you. Misery always did love company and sie craved the presence of another so at least in hir sulking sie wouldn’t be quite so alone.
The minutes ticked away with more “me time”. Perhaps sie should be grateful for the time when the clock seemed to stop, where there was stillness and all the world was at peace, all the world was alright for a few precious moments. Sie could breath easy in the comfort of hir own bed, not in someone else’s hospital room next to another sick bed one more time.
Maybe the alone time was supposed to bring ease…maybe after the panic of actually being alone finally subsided.
In the stillness sie wished it with all of hir soul; deciding to find comfort instead outside amongst the stars for in nature one was never all alone.
Caia Rose 