Internal Monologue

A story about you, a contemplative thought experiment on having everything, yet feeling nothing at the same time. Your life in but a few words, sad, but perhaps hopeful.

Everything you do, everything you have achieved. You grew up in a single parent home, not a bad thing by any means, but you worked hard to get where you are. You have worked three jobs at a time, sometimes spending upwards of eighteen hours a day working to save for your first home or your first car. Maybe you started a family, maybe you didn’t, wouldn’t have made too much of a difference to the rest of your story.

At one point, you were so set in the monotone of work and sleep you spent your days trying to speed time up by any means so that you could pass the year faster, in case any exciting or life changing event would happen, egging it on. Anything. Any kind of drama, you invited it. As if the orbit of the globe around the sun wasn’t a totally arbitrary way of measuring when something exciting or different may happen.

Look at you now with your comfortable life, you have means, you are in your prime, mid-thirties, maybe forties or fifties, sitting on a deckchair in your lavish garden, the bright yellow sun reflecting off of the turquoise water gently lapping at the edge of your blue and green mosaic pool. You take another sip of your mojito or your daquiri, you have been day drinking every day now for the past few years, destroying your body. You are bored, you feel empty despite knowing true poverty and now having everything you could’ve dreamed of when you were younger.

You have always lived within your means until recently. You reminisce about those days, maybe that’s where it went wrong? Maybe you should’ve started a family, or not. Maybe you should’ve never accepted that director position. Maybe you should’ve never accepted the pay rise, or maybe you should’ve studied something different in school or perhaps, never cut off your family and friends. You look back at your life and all you can do is doubt your decisions that have lead to this point.

People have always told you to open up, to be honest with your friends and family about who you are and how you feel. Or at least, they used to before you cut them all off. You don’t need them. You already find it difficult to connect with others, you are convinced no one will understand your point of view, or why you are the way you are. You are not broken, you don’t need to be fixed, so you don’t see a therapist. Depression? It isn’t real, it can’t physically hurt you. Anxiety? The same. You look up the symptoms for these illnesses, you can check every box there, but you have powered through, others must just be weak. You are convinced that as long as you convince yourself that everything is fine, you won’t bite the bullet. You have survived through too much, clawed through too much, and yet, all for nought. You still feel empty.

You are a strong, independent individual, you don’t need someone to validate your issues, estranged from your family, you soldier on, you power through. Deep down, you know that it’s wrong to try to face the mountain alone, but you do it anyway on a daily basis.

You do your best to follow your dreams, moving to some other country for a while, only for that to get stale. You buy a new car, or another home, a few months of catharsis at most before you become cold to it, you get bored. Others call it wanderlust, but you know that is not the right term for it. No one really understands, not even you.

You have got a holiday planned in a few months, you are headed to a place you have never been, hoping deep down that it’s going to cure you of whatever it is that ails you, but there’s always that voice in your head that tells you it won’t make a difference. Who knows, maybe you will meet someone while out there? Maybe you will end up in one of those loving relationships people always boast about on social media. Doubtful.

You have always been lonely, not for a lack of partners, but you just find it difficult to connect. You are convinced that you will never find someone who is on the same wavelength. A partner is just a partner, it isn’t like they can magic away your issues.

Maybe when you are back from your holiday, you will finally contact that therapist your friend told you about – but you know that words won’t help you. Words are just words. Maybe a psychiatrist then? No. You don’t need any pills to make you forget about whatever it is that troubles you, you need the problems gone, not forgotten. It is a different, difficult and monstrous beast, the one you face daily.

You wake up in the morning, you take a selfie, holding up a vibrant pink cocktail with a strawberry on the brim of the glass in the morning, posting it onto your favourite social media platform. You smile a little as you see how many people like it, commenting about how much they want to live your life, or how beautiful and handsome you are. They have no idea. You smile for the camera, but almost immediately return to your asinine expression, browsing through a dating app or calling over a friend with benefits to make the loneliness go away for the day. Once the likes stop rolling in, you forget about it, as if it had never happened. The smile fades, and emptiness takes hold once again.

So you hold up your drink to the sun, your only constant companion, reliable as ever and you say “cheers” as you drain the rest of your sickly sweet drink, once again, hoping for something exciting to happen, to shake the monotony of pretentious brunch and pretend smiles and likes. Who needs to talk, anyway?