It’s my birthday

Posted by: Laura on: August 9, 2016

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It’s my birthday and I’m trying not to succumb under the weight of the pointlessness I regularly feel, at every notable marker of the passage of time.

My Facebook profile is full of comments from people who don’t know me, wishing me a happy birthday out of some vague sense of obligation or pity. People I have called friends in the past, but who I haven’t spoken to in weeks, months, years. Let’s be realistic with each other, people – so much of communication is just meaningless words. Why not be honest? Why are we all pretending to know and like and think about each other?

There is a person in my life who I can trust (as much as I’m capable of trusting anyone), one of the few I’d still call a friend. He contacts me when he feels sad or lonely or angry, and I provide him with logic and ethics and distraction, depending on what he needs. He knows I’ll never contact him, asking for him to return the favour. He knows that’s not who I am. There’s no birthday message from him, and I feel more comfortable about that than about all the empty words from everyone else. It may be a lopsided and occasional relationship, but at least it is what it looks like. No-one in that friendship is pretending.

There have been times when I’ve thought myself hideous, disgusting, evil, terrible. And, much less frequently, time when I’ve thought myself dynamic and intelligent and charismatic.

Now I know the truth: I am nothing.

All the things that make people people – kindness, wisdom, bravery, the ability to form lasting and consistent relationships of one sort or another – are things I lack. I’m not wringing my hands or crying about it. It’s just a basic fact.

I am not extraordinary. Not even ordinary. I am barely human. I don’t think or feel like other people, and I lack the talent and commitment to turn that difference into something meaningful.

I have imagined for so long that I might be able to change who or what I am, or at the very least channel it into something. I’ve dreamt about being the kind of person who has some sort of impact on the world.

But I know that I am an empty shell. It doesn’t matter. That’s the beauty of the world – I can be n0-one and it’s okay.

It’s just a matter of finding a way to live as no-one. Finding a way to accept that dreams are for other people.

And as I try to find a way to live in the world, a way that doesn’t make me want to die, time is tick tick ticking away, giving me less and less time in which I’ll have to live.

 

 

 

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