Staring at the ceiling

You are alone in your room, talking to yourself. You lie in your bed looking at the ceiling, lightened only by the reflections from the street. The windows are opened. It’s summer. You can smell it in the air.

By ‘talking to yourself’ I mean you’re talking to people who are not actually there. Inventing conversations. Mixing memories and dreams. You even gesticulate. Your mother knocks on the door at some point, breaking the spell. When she’s gone, you realize there is no one there with you. As always, you’re alone. And you suddenly think of all the times you’ve done this. You arrive to the conclusion that you’ve probably felt lonely all your life. After all, you’ve been alone all your life, why wouldn’t you feel lonely?

You start to think of how you spend more time imagining things you want than actually trying to get them. It’s a sad life. But there is beauty in sadness, too. A kind of melancholic feel to it. Almost bohemian. You drown in it. In the fear of rejection. In the poisoned hope you feel every time you come a little bit closer to what you want.

You keep looking at the ceiling. It’s black. Like your soul. But you have no soul. Only one life. One tiny, minuscule piece of time in the history of time to make something out of it. One chance. Only. One. Chance. And what are you doing with it? You’re staring at the ceiling.

Your legs are stretched out, long, pale. Beautiful, even. Does it matter? Beauty, does it matter? What is beauty anyway? You like your legs, though, you’ve always liked your legs. They’re long and thin and they look great in high heels. But high heels hurt. Beauty hurts. The beauty in sadness hurts. Your heart hurts.

And yet you keep looking at the ceiling.