The shocking ease with which a perfectly joyful, all-good-things day turns increasingly tinged with bitterness is an ugly thing to witness. Ask me. Please. Ask me anything. The list, of late, has been never-ending, ever-expanding, unfathomably washed with coats of jealousy, loathing, pity. The best things to drown yourself in, day in, day out. Outside the water, it’s sunny and warm and it must be so easy to smile because everything is A-OK! and the second you dare to dip your toe in the water it all just

stops.

Hi there. Welcome to my world. On your right, you’ll find a kitchen. It doesn’t look like much, but I swear, you won’t find a better place to mess around in when nothing else makes sense. At least my cooking is good. Unless it isn’t. Don’t tell me. What’s that? That desk-like thing right there? No, you aren’t mistaken, that is indeed my desk. Or the remnants of it. See, after hours of bearing the weight of my uninspired ideas and dead-end, good-for-nothing writing, it decided it had had enough. We don’t talk about it. 

They say apathy is boring but what do you do when apathy is preferable to picking up a shovel and continuing to dig a grave? The reminders of your wasted potential, the absolute worst. That email weighing down my phone, the one that reads Congratulations! The [insert name of niche publication most would never know about but is somewhat of a big deal] you worked so hard on is now available for pick up! A reminder of yet another instance in which something you thought would lead to something more, something not now, led to absolutely nothing. 

For a while, I’ve been obsessed with train-related analogies. Stemming from Chidi’s philosophy lessons in The Good Place, I’ve had some time to think about changing choices. Would anyone change their answer if they got a second chance? Or will split-second reactions always remain the same? In my analogies, two frameworks emerge. Storyboards, one can say. Vastly different yet eerily similar outcomes. The first one finds you tied to the tracks, unable to move, and someone with the power to completely derail (*add positive connotation to derail here) the horrifying fate that awaits sits at the helm. Spoiler alert: I die. 

Scenario 2. You’re running up the stairs, bag in hand, watch flashing 09:13. Your train is at 09:14. Just as you catch a glimpse of it, it’s gone. Just like that. Oh. That’s okay, your friends text you, already on the train. A better one is coming, they say. Maybe you’ll get a seat. You believe them. The game continues. 10 minutes pass. 20. 30. You wait. I wonder when the lesson will drive itself home and I’ll learn to turn around and leave. Day by day, it seems the train has no space for me. But that’s besides the point. It’s finally here! Jam-packed, but that gives you hope. If everyone else can get on, so can you. Right? Right? Your screen flashes: Press Enter to Board Train. 

You know the key works. Fifty times, a hundred times, you keep pressing it, hoping it’s jammed and it’ll magically start working. Come on. You know better by now. And so you stand there, frozen. Screaming on the inside but a smile plastered on, waving goodbye to everyone you know. No, don’t get me wrong, it isn’t a fabricated smile or a plastic goodbye. There’s a clear pane installed in my mind, a clean division. One side houses all the good emotions, reserved to be projected upon others. The other, is there a need to spell it out? Internally, you’re frantically hitting Enter. Externally: the picture of calm. Contentment. I’m right where I need to be. And with your heart hammering in your ribcage, you watch every single train pull away. Your bag is gone. The shovel is there instead. 

I woke up to a Medium broadcast email, as I do every day. Today’s list housed a headline that yelled, reached out through the tiny screen. By A.L. Bellettiere, poetically titled “Sometimes It Takes Silence to Realize How Loud Your Life Is.” I’m glad it worked out for them, but unfortunately, it took silence to realize how silent it truly is. Back in January of this year, I wrote this: “the December to January pipeline has been an eventful one. Everyone keeps walking, blurring past, and I’m at a standstill, waiting for the rest of my life to finally finally begin. Will it now?” After a nearly 5 month wait, I’m delighted to say I’m equipped to answer this question. No. It will not. 

In my Notes app, you’ll find a list called “Writing ideas.” The paragraph above was written on 18th January. The last edit made to that Note was 28th May, 01:44am. It reads “the bitterness of being at a standstill — arrested development.” 130 days and the stillness is still standing. There’s a coffee cup stain on the so-called desk in my room. It once had a story to tell. Now, it’s a faded, brown ring, a ghost of what it once was, with no one to tell its story. I think we’re friends.