Once in a Long, Long While...

Raindrops pounded on the window. It was early morning. A cloudy morning.

I woke

Half asleep

Pitch dark… pitch dark

I woke up again, but why? Oh yes, the rain woke me up. That sad rain. He's just bored in the loneliness of this gray day. A day that is no different from any other day. Sad and gloomy.

Morning.

I think because of the gloom that lives here with me, I can no longer see what is on the other side of the room.

Is it hard for me to breathe?

No, it's not hard. I was able to get up yesterday, I even managed to get through yesterday. It was like that a week ago, it was like that a month ago. I was doing fine. What about today? Am I going to make it? Tell me, can I do it?

Help me.

My sleepy, empty eyes could no longer be seen in this gray reality.

Okay, I just need to get out of bed. Try to shake off this misery, like I did every day before.

I don't have the strength.

The blanket is infinitely heavy.

Just try to crawl out from under it, okay?

Rise up and stay a while

Now I'm sitting up. I could see the other end of the room. I stepped back into the darkness.

Well, hello there.

And pay it off

Pay it off

Who am I? Who am I and why am I sitting here on the bed? Why am I even awake? I am just wondering... Why did I wake up exactly in this body? Is it mine?

The silence that had been eating away at my ears for several minutes became unbearable. The sound of the rain only wanted to wake me up as soon as possible and start drowning me out in this hopeless day, and then it didn't care about me. I didn't hear it anymore.

I raised my head to the ceiling. It was just gray and lifeless. Just like the chandelier.

The mirror. The bathroom. I turned on the light.

Into the merciless and cold execution of my ears, beside the silence, now also entered the crackle of light that came from the dim and green lamp.

"What are we?" I said to myself in the mirror.

"Have we always been like this? We used to laugh, remember? We knew how to laugh. How you've changed. I look at my scar next to my eye and realize that my body is the same. I've been living in it all my life. Where is the kind of me that lived in this body just a few years ago?"

I leaned my palm against the mirror and brought my face closer.

Someone on the other side did the same.

"Am I an outsider? I'm an outsider here, aren't I? I am unable to find joy in life as someone in this body did a couple of years ago. What has changed? Have you changed? Have I changed? Same lips, familiar cheeks and eyebrows, still the same grin. The only thing that's changed is my hair. Does it really matter? I just-"

I looked away. I couldn't stand no longer that kind of eye contact with him anymore. It was too hard.

A new participant entered the game of sounds.

Water. Cold water.

Make up

I washed my face. It didn't get any better. Now I was only more awake and sharper in my perception of reality.

I don't need this.

The longing has gotten to me and seems to have begun to enter my body through my ears and mouth.

I can't breathe.

Help.

I walked out of the bathroom and headed for the window. The curtains are down.

Give me some light. I need light.

I'm helping my heart

Trying

I'm trying

I opened the curtains, but I couldn't see any sunlight.

It's been a long time since I've had a glimpse of sunshine.

It had stopped raining.

Now it was just gray and cold outside.

I don't remember that. I don't remember that view out the window. My room. I've lived here all my life. Why can't I see what I once saw? Things have changed. I've changed? Have we changed?

The tree. Such a big tree. I look at it and see a warm summer day. A blue sky. My friends. They are beside me, and I smile.

"Help me climb the tree," I tell them.

They laugh and then help me.

We are all together.

The leaves are gone, winter is near. I don't care about the leaves. The branch I once sat on is gone. It's been cut down. Where are my friends? It seems like I don't know. It was a long time ago. How are they doing?

The playground, and there are so many children walking on it. I remember their laughter. I remember the noise of joy that was there all day long. I remember the yellow sand and the big children's slide.

Open your eyes. What do you see?

I don't see sand, only dirt. What happened to all the slides? They got ugly and overgrown with grass. The kids have grown. Everything is gone.

Why did I go to the window? Where is the light I expected to see?

My room seems to have remained the same. There is only one exception. Now there's also hopelessness living in it.

I must get dressed. Where are my clothes? If I stay here even ten more minutes, I'll rot.

I want to run away.

The morning fault

Hit my will to leave

Jeans, T-shirt, sweatshirt. Anything you forgot? Headphones. I am lost without them.

I need a dose of music right away. She understands me.

She wants to help me.

I don't remember where I put them? The horrors of my flat play tricks on me. It seems to me that sometimes they hide the headphones. I run from room to room in complete silence.

They laugh at me.

What is it? An old nokia. My grandmother's old phone.

I sit down on the bed. She used to sleep here.

"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry you're gone" I said out loud "But would you want to live now and see me jolted and battered? I don't know..."

The phone was covered in dust, no one had used it since she died.

I looked at my hands for some reason. Maybe I was afraid to pick up her phone. What would I see in it?

Suddenly the silence of my apartment was destroyed and driven away by the sound of that old phone. The light of its screen and the sound, with the fastest speed, drove all the claws of gloom and despair away from my neck.

I trembled, but it seemed I was beginning to breathe ... again.

"Enter the pin code."

Oddly, no one ever took the SIM card out of the phone.

I remembered the code. My grandmother had asked me many times to help her with the phone. I explained to her how it worked and what it could do.

"3032"

Pin code accepted.

The phone was the most common. My grandmother had used it for years and now it was gone. Really, the phone doesn't care about that. It also performs its functions and does not give any indication that anything is wrong. Its screen is still bright, and the monkey in the picture is still smiling.

Who is he smiling at?

The more we talk

The less I will

I turned the phone off. It made me more miserable. A person once lived in this room. The grandmother I loved so much. I still do. Here the TV worked all day long, there was laughter and chatting.

Now there is silence. Dead silence and dust.

I'm an outsider here.

On the left side of my grandmother's phone were headphones.

What are they doing here?

Yeah, I'm definitely an outsider here. I must go.

After putting on my shoes, I grabbed my keys, unlocked the door, and headed outside.

The door closed.

It near

Here

Help me