I Will Answer For No One But Me

The café again. The eerily whiny, grind-the-coffee-grounds café.

The sounds trickle through my ear like water through a tap. A myriad of clanks, grinds, pages flipping, and bustle. I rub my eyes, and look down at my work. I struggle to make sense out of it. The strains of classical music drone through my ear, another element, another presence- this once is fighting to make itself more comprehensible than the others.  But, there is one sound, one solid, distinct strain, that presses and taps more insistently-

I’ve become a woman of instinct. I’ve learned to listen to this trait. I tap my fingers along these keys, and look around me. A sour look distills itself along my features. The coffee house is no longer a cheerful place for me. I feel like I’m drowning, and suffocating beneath these words, which spread themselves out around me, like spreading fingers. The wrap pain around me. And I can’t really focus on sadness. To focus on them would be to think, and thinking is too painful. At the same time though, I feel that whatever is painful, is worth noting. Because with it brings some kind of feeling.

I try to think of something else.

Every feeling in me is primed for the sting of loneliness- readied. Like I can eat the sting of loneliness, and it would welcome the sustenance, like as food. Quiet whispers of my imaginings are cast, thrown deep into the night. Murmurs of regret and uncertainty. I look down at my phone.

Odd . . . my feelings are always hurt when someone doesn’t answer my texts. You’d think that after everything I’ve been through, it would be different, but it is not. The light in this café casts a tinge that is way too bright for me. The atmosphere around me is demure, it is quiet- a better word for it might be suppressed. It is actually really loud, but the cheerful chatter, and bright lights make it difficult for me to think. The words begin, and then they flow until I become dry. I lick my dry lips. At some point, I know I’m going to have nothing left to say. The well will have run its course.

 

Writing is an excellent course in pragmatics. I am creating and I am weaving something out of nothing- isn’t that what it is? I am spinning words from the empty sheet in my mind, and stretching them into sentences- statements which otherwise wouldn’t have existed. Not been born. Were they born out of love?

Or perhaps hatred?

 

I feel so empty. I don’t know that anyone can possibly realize how empty I really am. I’m shooting messages out, lines, over across endless rolls- the rolls stretch out in my mind into endless sheets. I’m trying to reach random people, trying to fill the gap that he left behind in my book. I rushed ahead of myself. I forgot my purpose. I let other people take over that purpose, and forgot my focus. I must focus. I look down at my work.

I try to be so strong, but most days I don’t realize that I am weak. I try not to be splintered, but I don’t know how to hold myself straight. I become dizzy with the fight . . . and then can’t see.

I try to remember that I have friends, but sometimes they are difficult to see too. And, lonely nights with long draughts of coffee, the latter have become my best friends. I’ve started to watch my phone like a hawk . . . hoping, that someone will contact me. Hoping that the screen will light up. And, sometimes, a message comes in. And then a ray of light blossoms, and a kaleidoscope of colors bloom, a moving bubble, with different lights reflected, that I hope desperately to touch-

But, soon the moving images disappear. I look at the name read off, the reflections vanish. Hope leaves, and the air once again is clean- cool, blank, and drab. The paneled, smooth sides of the coffee house panels come into view, again. I study them blankly.

Is there some way that I can pull myself out of this? I find myself drowned by the feeling- I look down at my foot. It is bouncing valiantly in the air- the rest of me seems detached.

I have an interview tomorrow. It should be sufficient energy to raise my spirits- but what will it offer me, besides money? Money. It is a basic necessity that everyone in this life needs. It’s an element. Like water that we drink, earth that we walk upon, or the air that we breathe. It’s something that every human being uses as sustenance. Nothing unique about it. How could it raise my energies?

I remember Jesse telling me that he didn’t like money. It was a cold, rude way to state his views. He told me that he didn’t like money in general, and for me to be so ignorant not to know about what was at stake, by merely referencing Donald Trump in lighter mentions, was absurd. So absurd, that I was beneath stupid, in his mind, and he hinted that he was offended by my even talking to him.

It was a faint comment. I had drawn a comparison between him and the man, as a jibe. I meant it to be jocular and light, as- in the past- he had so many times goaded me in much worse ways, over my conservative roots. His reaction was insane. He discarded me. Like an old shoe. Cut me like a pack of ribbons out of his network, and told me that we could still be friends.

Well needless to say, I didn’t talk to him afterwards. How could I, after what he had said? My pride, my confidence, and natural mind, and grace, would never been so flattened. He underestimated me- he didn’t understand. I’d degraded myself by jumping into bed with him, that night, but, many months before that, my inner self had been train-mauled. My emotions, and my character had been in a train wreck, way before anything physical happened. My spiritual-self had been damaged, beyond reparation.

And so had our friendship. That is, if it ever really was a friendship. It was as cracked as the Republican Party now seems. I’m dealing under the present deluge that it wasn’t. But what can you do? There are very few people who can tell you the difference anyhow. And, maybe it is not necessary.

I look down at my phone again. He made his decision to delete me from his network. But, that is notwithstanding the hand he reached out, to drag me out of the depths of ruin- with the offer of still being able to text him if I so wished. What he didn’t realize was, or didn’t care to note, was that my decision was final as well. I put it into my pocket, and I stand up-

I will not answer to anyone but me.  

Reviews

[Wolfwind Words]

First reaction... I read the last line and got the image of someone with two phones sitting at a table, texting back and forth from one to the other. After having my morning start with a bit of a chuckle off that, I looked back through the ink and thought...

Seriously... It was an event of a tripple edged sword. One blade per person, plus an extra blade because of the politicians name that was used. Sadly, it's become that his name is more like a curse word. Instead of someone calling a person an a*****e or a b***h, they just call them "Trump" and it's even a worse insult, for some at least. It reminds me how frustrated I get when grown men and women in business use the term "Sick" to replace the term "Cool" or "Awesome".

Musingly though, the event described should have been moot, resolved in the balance of social or perhaps societal oopses. Which then leads the passive observer to let their head fall sideways and wonder if there was something far deeper going on that sat the stage.

Analytically however, I felt that the overal piece was speaking of a grander message, or perhaps an internal musing about taking control of one's stride, regardless of the ripples before and aft of any given situation. While the ripples in the foreground are filled with frustration and anxiety, those that are left in the rear are steeped in fear, which has it's own sets of anxiety to play with. On of which is boldly etched in the ink, that of loneliness.

On a somewhat related personal side note... Since I've been going to College, the last two and half years or so. I haven't had a phone at all. It's been a very introspective learning lesson about the ins and out and ups and downs of spontaneous thread weaving... or the lack of it.

And so to end... Thanks for sharing your adventure! =)

Aaron

[Foxemerald]

Hey Aaron,

Thank you for giving me an inspirational muse to play with, while I am at work- and taking me away from the world of the mundane, and other things that I’m ‘supposed’ to be engaged in.

I appreciate your insight with regards to this piece. It was comforting to me, in some way, to read your words; almost like I was receiving validity to my own thoughts. That the reader was made to turn their head at the event, gives me assurance that the message of my words were clear- and also that, in this event, it was not only in my head (and fancy to the subjectivity of the author) that something else was going on.

And yet, this wasn’t written about a single event. On a deeper level, this was also a ‘coming in,’ of stubborn independence, of finding one’s own, the courage to make a paradigm shift in one’s own, personal life- to make tough decisions, to rip up the anchor of one’s ship, and let it go. You were right, in saying that this told a greater tale than what was seen . . .

In the tails of this event, I actually removed myself from Facebook (as you know). The only activity I maintain upon the site is via my fan page, which, really, is just a way for me to share my work. I tugged the ropes from the other side of you, and started communicating with everyone by text. My line of thinking, here, was that my real friends would find a way to contact me, outside of the great, social-media monster; and that it was a good test for my true friends as well. The thought has crossed my mind that going without a cell phone would be a good experiment, but I haven’t quite gotten that far, yet . . .

Have a great day!