[43] Do I Still Have Time?

She didn’t react to my behaviour. Nor did she express any contempt. But all I could hear in her footsteps and the saintly silence with which she worked, all I could hear was reaction and contempt.

I am a child of my mother. My age is 22, and I have no job. Not because I can’t have one but because I don’t want one. Most of the jobs that are up for grabs as they like to call it are jobs that won’t satisfy me. What’s the point in working for a job where you find everything but joy?

My daily routine shuffles between reading and writing locked in my room. The only outside appearance I have is during breakfast, lunch and dinner and lately, those appearances have gone down to none. It’s been 3 days holed up in my room doing nothing but reading philosophies that speak of individuality and of an ideal soul that works for himself and his happiness. I do that but I find no happiness in that. It’s been 3 days since I’ve seen my mother’s face. All I hear is a voice and I can no longer put a face on it. The voice first was eager to get me out, then it grew restless, then it grew monotonous, then tired and then… defeated.

I sleep exactly at 2:15 AM because it takes me exactly 15 minutes to sleep. The clock no longer seems movable, it seemed to be a part of the furniture it stands on. It glues onto it now. It dictates my routine. My time is on this clock. It ticks so I tick.

I no longer hear my mother’s voice, I only hear sounds now. Sounds that express emotions they wanted to but couldn’t. In her steps, I still hear that reaction, but no longer filled with hope. Speech is nothing but a frequency tuned to a dead channel. A thought comes and goes.

“Why did I choose a room with no balcony?”

The air becomes stale. The will to open the window is stale. The bars on the window are stale. Will I be in the will of my parents when they die? Who will die first? Them or… me?

Questions become all but a facade to make myself aware that my brain, it still functions. There no longer seems light inside the room, nothing but the light seeping through the parts the curtain can’t curtail.

I’m awake. The mirror lays shattered and I no longer see myself. I can longer see the disappointment, the guilt, the awareness of my unawareness. I see myself through the shattered glasses, I see a version of me. Versions. Pieces. Pieces of me. Laid down on the ground. I sink down the floor. The tiles give me chills. I become aware of the hair on my skin rising like buildings that I wanted to raise.

I rise up. No, only my tired eyes, they rise. They watch the fan swinging its blades in a circular motion and then suddenly it stops. It no longer swings. My eyes make an effort to look down at my table. I only see half of the clock. 10,11,12,1,2,. It shows 2 something AM or PM. Is it 2:15? I wait for the second hand to come up from the lower half. I need to know if it still moves. Does it still tick? Do I still have time? I wait. Wait. Waiting. Waiting. Wai….