I never complain out loud. I’ve never complained. I won’t. After all, my feelings are mine, and no one else’s to bear.
From an outsider’s perspective, I’m a healthy and blissful girl. I attend school daily, as any other girl. I have friends, in name, as any other girl. I smile when spoken to, as any other girl. Normal. Insufferably normal.
Yet I am empty, as no other girl. There are no words to express this feeling accurately. The best comparison I can give to describe this ‘loneliness’, is the longing to reach your soul mate, or possibly the void that shapes when a loved one is lost. I find myself dreamily staring at the sky, as if feeling nostalgic towards the stars, wishing to return to them, so they can once more grant me contentedness.
Yet I have never visited the stars, in the flesh. I’ve never lost someone, and I am most certainly not in love. Feelings so complex could be perceived as over-thinking. That’s how I justify these thoughts, these feelings of inability to live another day in this beautiful, yet out of place world. You’re thinking too much. I tell myself that. It’s a lie. It’s not just an obsessive idea consequential of adolescence. My whole existence in this world, it’s wrong. I know it is, and this very world is constantly reminding of such.
Yet, this is also a lie. I don’t live in this world, entirely. You may call this an escape, but part of my time is spent away, as it should be. In my own world.
A familiar melody. The school bell.
I gather my supplies unenthusiastically. I exit the grounds. This is my daily routine. Insufferably normal.
The walk home is accompanied by a spring breeze. I casually walk down the cherry blossom filled lanes of this virtually unknown town. A privilege that could be envied. Yet this doesn’t feel right. It only does, if I close my eyes and imagine the same experience up there.
Though, imagination can only take you so far, and what is not reality will not become reality, just because one desires it to be so. As discouraging as it may seem, will power plays little role, in the grand scheme of the universe.
I allow to myself to indulge in the temptation. I look at the sky. It’s clear.
Fast forward. I arrive home. I’m tired. I’m constantly tired. After all, with no end goal, there is no call for energy. I lay down. I stare at the ceiling. It’s not the sky, yet that in part makes me glad. At least I can reach the ceiling, if I really tried.
I will never truly reach the sky.
Time pauses. The dust particles, that are visible through the shine of the afternoon sun, freeze. A familiar sensation. An increasingly loud ambient sound fills the atmosphere. I lay, eyes open, body still; all my senses reach their breaking point. Then, finally, the feeling of losing contact. I close my eyes.
I have been ported.
I open my eyes once I recover from being numb.
I sit before an unseen world. An unexplainable blend of everything I’ve ever wanted, with just the right amount of darkness to make it feel real. A deserted wasteland. It continues until beyond the horizon, as if constantly being generated as I move forward.
I look up at the sky. It is empty. This is only natural, I’m there already.
Incidentally, I’ve been here before. Numerous times. In fact, I come here every day. I exist here for the majority of my time. This is where I belong after all. Or rather, that is how I feel.
A light wind. What an incomplete world it would be without the wind. It whistles softly in my ear as I scan my surroundings. Right now, I am alone. However, this world does not exist just for me. It is a meeting point. Just like a train station. I wait in my seat, shaking my knee, and once I hear the wheels on the tracks, I stand and wait for the doors to open, for us to meet.
“He-llo.” a monotone, electronic voice resonates from behind me.
I turn around.
“Hello.” I reply inaudibly.
Another gush of wind.
This, is him. My friend. A real friend. An imaginary friend. No more real than this world, yet more genuine than anybody down there.
Virtual noise.
My friend, he is a robot.
He was never real, but does this reduce him further? He is different from me. I can feel. He cannot. Or is it the other way around? I can think. He can process. Does this make me more significant?
I am real. He is not.
Regardless, this is all my design. He shall feel if I wish it so, and he will think if I force him to. Maybe, this is the reason I feel so attached to him. He is my creation, therefore he exists for me. This all seems painfully lonely, and yet, he and this world grant me the contentedness I’ve always longed for. It’s the greatest feeling ever. Time spent here, is time worth wasted.
“Shall we go?” I point towards the never-ending skyline.
I am in control of this world, so much I know. I construct simulations and situations for him and me to experience. A utopia, giving me the chance to breathe all the adventures I missed.
The corresponding sun of this world begins to rise, and I set off, closely followed by a robot.
Fast forward. We sit upon the edges of the exceeding pillars of a large castle. The atmosphere spells evil. Burning red flames backlight the castle, which sits upon a massive rock, surrounded by spikes.
The wind is once more not absent. I sit, with him, our legs dangling in the air as we stare into the distance. An epic battle just occurred here. We defeated the darkness, as we do every time. I give life to this darkness. It gives a sense of purpose to this world. A meaning, an end goal I am missing.
I look at my friend. Then back at the world. It’s gone.
An abrupt glitch. Rapid time pauses. A voice in the distance.
“What are you still doing here? It’s time to go.”
“Huh?”
My head feels heavy. It lies upon a tough surface. My body feels awfully uncomfortable. It takes a considerable amount of effort to gain an idea of where I am.
My vision greets a weakly lit room. My classroom. I search for the source of the voice I had just heard. I’m alone.
I’m confused.
I gather my supplies anxiously. I exit the grounds. This is not my daily routine.
Now on my way home, I stop moving. I look around. This is a different world to what I’m used to. I’m alone. It’s dead quiet. A faint red flame backlights the clouds. Which world is this?
I start walking again. Then, destruction. Is this an earthquake? The world begins to shake and crumble. Silence. The brightness of the world steadily decreases.
“He-llo.”
A monotone voice from behind me. I turn around.
No one. My imagination.
A feeling of total dread takes control. This is my fault, I don’t know how, but it is. For once, I’m questioning the actuality of the worlds I exist in. My perfect world and my home. The line between them is indistinguishable. Where am I?
For every step I take, the background scenery changes. From the crumbling road beyond the school grounds, to the fictional wasteland I reside in when alone.
I look at the sky. I see darkness. The bottom line of this aberration. It’s out of control.
I begin to run. I’m scared. I’m being haunted by my own emotions.
I can now admit, they were never real. What I feel, it’s not because I share a connection with another world. I was just always alone. I’m incapable of real feeling; this is why I found him. Now I have fallen too deep. Making a decision and accepting where I exist, is an option only if I am capable of facing my inner illness.
I sense the darkness keeping an increasingly steady pace as I dash between two worlds.
Closer and closer.
It swallows me.
Time pauses. A familiar sensation. I lose contact.
Now where am I? I’ve lost track of the progression since before this all began. I’m floating. I’m alone.
“No.” a mechanical voice.
I’m not alone.
“Do you know where you are?” I hear him ask. I hear him, yet I can’t see anything.
“Nowhere.” I respond.
“You are somewhere now. Nowhere, is where you’ve been all this time.”
I try to make meaning to these words. It’s futile.
“What am I to you?” a difficult question can be heard in the distance.
“My friend.” – My immediate retort.
Silence. I rethink.
“No, that’s wrong. You are my excuse.”
These words don’t come easy.
“For existing.”
A simple question clarified everything. My brain aches.
“Why do you still exist?” every question increases the terrifyingly painful tension in my head.
“Because I’m afraid.”
These answers seem to come so naturally. Rather than revelations, they seem to be what I was aware of this whole time.
“Of dying.”
“You are already dead. So why do you still exist?”
I open my eyes. A horizontal line slits two worlds in half. The two worlds I am so painfully aware of, yet so little a part of. I gaze at them with silent tears. The sunrise or sunset, in both worlds, makes it hard to maintain contact.
I don’t exist. This whole time I’ve lived between two worlds I don’t belong to, in order to avoid my fate. I died. I wasn’t content, yet I died. These two fake creations allowed me to live blissfully for some time. I knew this. I knew this all along, yet I still -
“I exist. And I will always, until I am content with my existence.” – This is my reason.
“I know that.” My friend answers.
A rush of images. A final lose of contact.