Neither here nor there
Somewhere behind these walls, I find room to breathe. I turn the music up loud so that I could drown in it. I hope never to be found, never to be reached. I wish to be left alone, but anyone who wishes to be alone wishes for another to be alone with them.
Behind these walls I keep my thoughts, my dreams, my fears, all for me. I hear sounds sometimes. I hear you walk up the stairs, one foot in front of another, your slippers slapping softly on the steps. I follow soundlessly, pretending to be a cat. I hear rain of my childhood, the heavy persistent rumble as the sky mercilessly floods the earth. I hear snowflakes fall. I hear music at the end of my fingers as they move of their own accord, music in my ears, music in my head. I hear her timid singing voice, her gentle guitar. I hear her screaming for me. I hear her systematically telling me my inadequacies. I hear him take me apart. I hear you take me apart.
The other night I dreamed of a house of wood. It was a place of many rooms with many secrets. In one beautiful spacious chamber, two women were discussing poetry, or maybe a work of art. I peered in through the window, they saw me and smiled at me but they did not invite me inside.
I remember very well the day I learned to speak. I must have been fourteen, anxiously timid and painfully shy. I lived in this room then, safely hidden behind these walls so I could never be touched. Our entire year level at school took turns to spend nine days out in the countryside at the outdoor campus. I had dreaded the thought. I had dreaded the idea of being near unfamiliar people, in an unfamiliar place. But it was there I met one of the campus co-ordinators, a woman with fire in her voice and in her gaze. To this day, I had no idea what she saw in me. I supposed it must have been the last day of camp when she pulled me aside, looked at me intently and said, "Speak." She was almost shaking me by the shoulders. "You must learn to speak. You have important things to say." Nobody had ever told me that before, and, suddenly lost and having nothing to hold on to, I collapsed into a waterfall of tears. With those words, I caught her fire. From that day on, I wrote, I sang, I played music as if I would burn to death if the fire inside caught up with me.
That day, I left this room. I come back to it occasionally, when the weather gets bad outside. Like today, like these days.
It is cold here, but it is familiar. I get up and examine the thoughts I have shelved away a long time ago. The voice inside my head won't stop speaking. It sings, it spills poetry. It complains, it screams, it tells me this can't be right, it systematically tells me my inadequacies, it takes me apart. I turn the music up loud so that I could drown in it.
14 February 2004, Saturday, 10:58 PM
Alter ego of dandruff
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