Day 10: I realize now...

Again, no pictures. My mood was still pretty foul during the day. I wore the turtleneck as I didn't bother dressing up much for a one-hour class.

I found out what my problem was. My affliction, it seems, stemmed from the fact that I owned such a small voice. The world we inhabit is huge. Enormous. And its immensity just weighed down upon me all at once. And I couldn't breathe. It's like laughing so hard at joke that it's so difficult to catch my breath again. So I gasped.

I wanted to shout. Clearly, a pillow isn't the best tool for that. Sure, it muffles the noise. I tried to be considerate. But it's the fact that I'm trying to be considerate that bothers me. I was tired of being considerate. And yet, in my one moment of fatigue, I was still trying to be considerate to people who wouldn't listen.

It's terrifying to not be able to hear one's own voice. I keep hearing everyone else's problems, but they're deaf to mine. Maybe it's because I don't voice. I keep a smile. I move on. I ignore that brief second where my words was spliced, interjected, by another. A lance shattering shield. And we move on. I didn't think my voice was that important. For what does it matter? I tire myself.

Interestingly, amidst my despair, I even agreed to help another person in his troubles. The solution was simple, but the process stole an hour from me. It was already three in the morning. Why do I do this? Can't I say no?

In fear of disappointment, I do not speak unless I need to. Unless I believed that there would be severe consequences if I didn't, or that the information itself needs to be heard, before it disappears. Forgotten.

I remember a line from Lahiri's book, where one of her characters, Mrs. Sen, asks the boy she's caring for if anyone would hear her if she screamed. The boy replied that the neighbors might, though they might think it odd. Strange. Peculiar. Otherworldly, maybe. I am like Mrs. Sen, I believe. I needed to scream. I wanted to be heard. But for what purpose? I know not the answers...

Everything is in pretense. It's so hard to find that single sincere individual in this world, don't you think? Some of us may have been remembered and valued for being good listeners, and we revel in that designation. And we expand like bubbles, absorbing every complaint, thought, opinion, joke, rant, wail, prayer, shriek, the verbs go on... And we forget that like a bubble, we are extremely fragile ourselves. How much of these foreign emotions can we contain within ourselves, before it explodes? I'd rather be a balloon, with a pair of hands carefully detangling the knot at the blowhole, slowly releasing air back to the atmosphere.

Aren't we all just plain individuals sitting at that empty bus stop, waiting for that single stranger to listen to all our troubles? Please, take it away with you when the next bus comes. But I pray you won't linger with my troubles, just as I've had with many others.