Stay alive. Part One.

(16/08/2018)

I grew tired. I guess from the unceasing and overwhelming influx of information. From everyone. From everywhere. Everything is great. Work is great, family is great, holidays were great, the movie was absolutely great, the dinner – great. Constant thumb up. I observe the great lives of different people; those famous and those private. Everything was great. Everything perfectly cut for the purpose of social media feed. It must be great to generate sufficient amount of followers, comments and likes. It’s funny how much people can show or do for a like. A like that will make their day great.

Greatness. That’s what you see first.

But when you look into their eyes, you’ll see sadness, emptiness, anger, disappointment, fear. Things that aren’t great and are pretty uncomfortable to comment on. Things that don’t bring you followers, quite the contrary. That’s why people hide them. They disconnect from their feelings and emotions and delve into the shallowness of modern era in order to be accepted and liked.

I sometimes look at an old photograph of mine. I was the same. Empty on the inside, but with a smile on my face to cover up the nothingness. I remember as if it was today. I was in a bad shape. The fear of unknown was taking over and the lack of resources on how to deal with it only added stress and tension to it. I would show the picture to different people. They’d all tell me how great I looked, how great the photo was and how great it was to see that I was great. And I wasn’t; that was the problem.

I grew tired of it all. One day I came back home. I sat on the sofa and listened to the white noise coming from the street. Just noise. I took a deep breath and paused. Thoughts were running through my brain at a fast pace, but I didn’t pay attention to them. I exhaled.  And then inhaled again. I thought about a place where I’d want to be at that exact moment. The vision of gentle waves crashing against the smooth surface of the rocks by the shore. I kept the vision. I saw next the blueness of the water that merged with the horizon and the yellowness of sand on the beach. And suddenly, there was me standing on the sand with the eyes laid upon the waves. I looked troubled.

“Why are you so sad?” I thought.

Yes, why was I so sad?

~~
© Lusessita Kingsley 2018