Like An Anachronism

Edit by: Unknown Artist

“I feel like the last of my species sometimes. Like a human-shaped dinosaur. ” she laughed grimly.

“As though I were existing by accident, as if I were a thing of the past already. An absurdity, an anachronism.  Something someone would point to to say it did not belong. Or something to stick in an exhibit in a museum for people to ooh and aah at. Except that I would be an object with no discernible history.  As if my history was buried with me, and it got left behind when I was unearthed, reborn into the world. I’m scared sometimes that I’ll never find out. That I’ll always feel this gaping hole and never be able to fill it. And my only merit would be to have existed as long as I would have—a sort of congratulations on not dying.

“No one understands, really. The only ones who can would be others like me. Other people from the past. Only they would understand the pain of a thousand years of living without remembering any of it. But I don’t fool myself into thinking they would be the answer. They might understand, but they have their own pains to tend to. Their own callings to answer to.  No, what we need are people with a love of old things. People who do not mind if you are a bit broken, because they understand that it’s pretty amazing that you’re here at all.”

Language of the lonely

Illustration Credits: 미루 http://www.grafolio.com/works/107391

Do you ever get these complex feelings of loneliness?
The kind where you feel so empty, but not just anyone will do?

You’re left staring at a contact list full of names and green dots that say ‘available’.
And you think that you could send a friendly text; nothing too grand, nothing too fancy.
Just a little something to fill that pit in your heart.
But you don’t do it.

Because not everyone will do.
Because this loneliness is not about being alone.
It is not about companionship or lack of interaction.
It is about understanding.
It is about finding someone who not only acknowledges you,
but who also accepts and understands who you are.

The whole feeling is akin to the experience of being in a foreign country where no one understands your speech.
It is like ambling down busy streets and hearing others chatter excitedly in a tongue you do not speak.
It is, exactly, the envy that you feel as you watch them, wishing, wishing, that you too, had someone to talk to like that.

And this is how some of us feel.
Like foreigners, outsiders, wanderers who look on.
We feel the frustration, the barriers that stand between you and us,
when we explain the depths of our soul in a language we know too well,
but you have never heard of.

And it can feel tough when the others all speak the same language, but no one understands yours.

But rest assured, child, that one day,
the language you speak will roll off someone else’s tongue.

And it will be, to your soul, the sweetest sound.

A Different Kind Of Beautiful

Illustration Credits: http://turkishlifecafe.com/

“I wish I was beautiful,” she sighed, envious eyes landing on the graceful, willowy girl before her. “…like her.”

“Why be beautiful like her,” he asked quizzically “when you can be beautiful like you?”

A short, strangled cry of frustration left her lips.

“But— Agh! She —beautiful is her. Not me. I am not…I am not beautiful in the way I need to be. To be beautiful… I need to be like her.”

“Tell me,” he said thoughtfully. “Do you like the stars?”

“…Y-yes.”

“And the ocean, do you like it?”

“Well, yes.”

“How about the dawn?”

“Of —of course.”

“They are all beautiful, are they not?” he said with a twinkle in his eye.

“And yet, the stars do not need to look like the ocean in order to be beautiful. None of them have to look like each other. They need only be themselves, and they are beautiful — do you get my point?” he smiled kindly.

Stunned, she could only nod uncertainly.

“Beauty,” he concluded,”is a personal experience. You need only think something is beautiful, and it is.”

When You’re Not What You’re Supposed To Be (Part II)

Illustration Credits: https://www.facebook.com/elesqart/

He had come up with an excuse to escape then, a sloppy one. One they would decidedly never believe. Surely, his phone would be ringing up in a few hours.

As he pushed open the door to his mess of an apartment, he numbly decided to ignore the clothes strewn all over the place and the balled-up pieces of paper that contained an incomplete masterpiece.

Instead, his feet took him to the balcony. It was the one thing in his life that looked like it had been given importance.

There were flowers of all kinds everywhere. Daisies, roses, poppies, lilies, hyacinths and many others surrounded him.

He sighed.

What about him?

What…Who was he? Where was he going?

His friends…they had all sat on the same school benches, had experienced happiness and heartbreak, had lived their youths together, all as one, and now…Now they all were on their paths to happiness whilst he was lost trying to find his.

And him, what about him!? He nearly cried.

His head hung in shame and sorrow, and blankly, almost lifelessly, he touched the lilies that had yet to bloom.

“Why can’t you just – just blossom already!” he cried in sudden anger.

He had bought the rose and lily seeds and had planted them at the same time, and yet, these lilies stubbornly refused…

But then, he remembered something.

On the back of the package, it had said that these would take longer to grow, simply because, well, lilies were lilies. Lilies could not grow as fast as roses, or else they might as well be roses. But they would eventually bloom.

It was just that they were…different, and so, they grew differently.

It was stupid of him to ask the lily to grow and blossom like the rose had…Why then was he doing that to himself?

When You Aren’t What You’re Supposed To Be (Part 1)

Illustration Credits: https://www.facebook.com/elesqart/

He looked at them with an ugly, uncertain kind of emotion.

They were talking, the lot of them, about things he had only dreamed of.

The shortest one was speaking of his latest travels, while his brother enthused over his newest job. Next to him was the one who had always been soft at heart, always with stars in his eyes, and now even more so as he spoke timidly of a girl who was more beautiful than all the stars and moons. And then beside him, was the tough one of the group; the rebel during their school days, who would somehow manage to come up either with mischief or with a new tattoo or piercing every other week or so. He was listening, with a look of uncharacteristic fondness as his friend talked about that girl he swore did not belong to this world.

“And you?”

Silence fell on the group as the question was asked. And it suddenly felt like they were all looking at him, all waiting, expecting.

And him, what about him?

His life, in truth, was a mess of empty coffee cups, half-written novels and sleepless nights spent wondering about the meaning of his existence.

But he couldn’t say that, could he?

And me, what about me?

And then, at that moment…

Envy.

That was it, that was the ugliness that had been growing in him. It had fallen on him like a drop of ink on a white sheet of paper, and then it had spread and spread and spread…

Existential Depression (Part I)

Illustration by: Lucy Salgado Illustration

Ever get this feeling that nothing seems to matter?

That everything seems void of meaning and purpose and interest?
And so, you exist in this huge blank space,
this black hole of sorts, and there is this…
this existential loneliness that fills you.
And what irony is this—to be filled with emptiness.

And what is it even,you might ask
—this foreign, incapacitating feeling—
It is sadness,anxiety, loneliness on a deeper level.
More than simple sadness, it is this void.

This tragedy of not being understood inside out.
It is the tragedy of being a mystery nobody can solve.
Of having secrets you are desperate to spill,
but only to the right person.
It is being a hundred layers deep,
and only being seen for that layer and a half
that you present to the world.

There is so much of you that the world does not,
and will never know about,
that you begin to question the validity of its existence:
What is this world? Why is it so important?
If it is the only dimension I can exist in,
then how come I feel so out of place?
How come the average lifespan is 60 or 70 years,
and yet I feel like I have been living for centuries?

It is being an alien in your own home planet.
It is speaking languages and knowing people only you have heard of.
It is being a world all by yourself.
(And all to yourself)
And yet…