While in Waiting

This feeling I feel is unlike any other sickness. It burns in my gut and extends to my throat and reaches back to my heart. I feel abandoned. I feel forced. I feel as if I don’t belong. As if I shouldn’t exist in this world where existence is inevitable. I always ask the question of why I’m here. I look at everyone I encounter and see their power, their place, their purpose. But when I look at myself in the mirror—in its rarity—I see nothing. It almost seems like I’m a ghost. A figment of everyone’s imagination. A nightmare that will soon dissipate. Maybe that’s why in my dreams, I got suffocated twice. ‘Cause I was a mistake, a glitch in the system, and someone was trying to correct it. Maybe that’s why the preacher laid his hand on me and pushed me toward the floor—because God wanted me to fall to my knees and plead for mercy. Maybe He knows I’m guilty of not being perfect. Maybe He knows I’m incapable of ever being that. So I should beg for forgiveness, ‘cause all of his children are made in his image, but I’m made of glass. So easily seen; so effortlessly broken. This is the shell that encompasses my being, and I must pay the ultimate price. 

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I haven’t written in a while. I stopped having the drive, the motivation, the incentive. Instead, I would listen to instrumental music mock my lack of language as I stared at the empty page on my laptop screen. My fingers were motionless ‘cause it hurt to even think of moving them. No thoughts came to my head. No desires fought their way to be filled. My cup was empty, and it felt like it would never be attended to again. 

            I’m so cold. It’s almost summer, yet I’m chilly—staring at this computer screen as I try to find the right words to say. But the only word I can write is cold. My fingers burn as I force the word out of my mouth like a hardened breath. “Cold.” I begin to smile, and my hand shakes. “Cold,” I say again. Tears want to run down my face, but I won’t let them. This is the only act of agency that I have left. It is my sacred gift that I shall not give up. So instead, I laugh—I expand my voice in a scream only God can hear and relish in the burning of my throat and the tightening of my chest. “Cold!” I repeat, hollering the word as loud as I can.

            Do you see me yet? Can you hear me? I’m cold! I’m so cold!

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Sunlight is too bright in the morning. It shines with ease and defiance every time it seeps into your window and through your curtains. It shouts, “Hey, make sure you get up now! You got stuff to do! No time to be lacking today!” Little does the sun know that the moon calls me every night. The sun is unaware that I dance around the stars like an orbiting planet. My eyes seldom close during moonlight. So why is the sun so persistent? Why can’t I shut my eyes and not feel the heat from the flame beaming at me? Telling me to get up, telling me to start my day, telling me I should’ve slept the night before. 

            I can’t sleep. I can never sleep. 

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When laughter fills my heart, I let it. It’s the only thing that makes me comfortable—makes me secure. It’s safe; it’s liberating; it’s fulfilling. To just smile and scream unprovoked. To just flail arms around and kick feet into the air. Most look crazy when they laugh as if every ounce of humanity has left their body, and they have become something much greater than this flesh. They have become happy and reached a level of self-actualization that no one could dream of accessing. That’s the truth about laughter. It exposes how fake and rehearsed our humanness is. We are more than life’s routine. We are grander than any schedule and any persona. We are in our sincerest form when we holler at the top of our lungs, gripping the skin of our stomachs to try to cease the aching. When we curl our toes and throw our heads around. When we run across a room, lifting our knees to our faces. When we grab on to someone else, tugging at their shirt, hoping for them to help us calm down. That is the definition of being human, which is why I love laughing. It’s an escape. It’s a revelation. 

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Keep waiting. The results will come back in a few days. Keep waiting. 

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No one teaches you how to feel, how to breathe, how to love, how to mourn, how to sleep, how to wake, how to blink, or how to exist. You learn it all on your own. ‘Cause, the essential aspects of life are self-taught in the solitude of one’s mind. Never to be discussed or debated. Never to be brought up or questioned. Life expects you to know how to operate it, and if you don’t, you don’t belong. 

            Right?

            Aren’t we machines programmed to live a life like the one we’re living now? What happens when we can’t keep up with the agenda of being alive? Are we inadequate, a mistake, a glitch in the system? 

            Too many questions and no answers that follow. 

            Instead of dwelling on these ideas, I grab onto my stomach, which churns every thirty seconds to the minute. I have to wait for the results to come back. Then I have to retake the test. Then I have to wait again. Then I’ll be okay.

            That is, if I’m indeed not sick. But if I am ill, it can’t compare to the burning in my gut that extends to my throat and reaches back to my heart. The pain that comes when I feel abandoned, forced, as if I don’t belong. As if I shouldn’t exist in this world where existence is inevitable.

            But at least I’m inevitable. And that’s the blessing of remaining.