echoes of everyday

Whenever I step out of my house, I cower in fear.

The shields would need to drop, and my face had to morph itself into a kind, condescending smile, my manners shaped into a heart shaped form towards all living things. The nameless faces that walked past me would look up, scan me from top to bottom for mere seconds while already forming an opinion in the process, and proceed to leave my world forever, leaving me to ponder on his or her thoughts on my deformities and my insecurities.

The world churns and manages to spin itself year after year, and I still cannot find myself assimilating to societal norms of, well, being normal. Being happy despite of all the negatives, with plastic smiles and pre-recorded laughs ringing through hallways and into their already weary heart. I managed to keep myself out of the cycle, but yet as the world turns bright and dark everyday, my thoughts are filled with nothing but absolute silence, and absolute chaos.

I can lie to myself, yet I lie to others all the time.

The small talks, the hellos and byes,  and the preverbial need to be known amongst my already dwindling social relationships with humans I call 'friends'. I am no one, and no one has been me all these while. No one bats an eye if I am to jump off the roof today, or to intoxicate myself with copious amounts of alcohol until my mind can barely stand by itself. No one cares. No one knows. No one wants to know. Every human, every living being in this world, can grief over a stray dog being hit by a careless (or carelessly driven)  driver and yet, they cannot see me. I am here, a physical being attached to every fibre of my soul, and my lies, my tears are for nought. No one knocks on my door and properly asks me how I am. They would wave at me and say goodbye, a notion that all would do whenever they think it is the end of this needlessly productive relationship.

My needs never being put on the top of anyone's pyramid, I wander around in the wilderness, attempting to search for a foothold. I lied, I condescended, I fooled myself into thinking that I am myself, myself is me, and everyone else is a big pile of dung that should be fed to the withering plants. When the lies and the condescending stop, with ringing of the smiles and laughters in the midst of my mind's own betrayal, they see me for who I am, and hated it. Hated it. No one likes an honest man who could proudly say that ABBA is the absolute worst thing that could happen in the world, or that 'evil' people like Hitler or Stalin are just a manifestation of the deepest of human conscience. No one cares, and if I am to list a hundred reasons why Green Day is a terribly constructed band, they leave, or scratch their heads in unison like monkeys on a driveway. I am done, I am sick and done of this verbal and nonverbal folly that corrals itself into a vice grip whenever human decencies are being put on a plate and judge. If you want me to be alone and lonely, then so be it. If you wish me dead, so be it. If you wish me to be surrounded by nothingness and despair, so be it.

In the end, there are no surprises here. The world spins itself diligently, and me into a cocoon filled with fragments of a broken soul, a mere manifestation of what I used to be, of what a human should be. I am, I could be, I should be-

Dead and alive.