The Existence Question

I am sitting with my head heavy and thoughts numbed. It has been long since I did something. Since I moved from my desk. I try hard to get out of this inertia. To do something in this moment.

There are only two thoughts in my head.

One moment I want to write, to scribble down each thought that is running through my mind. To pour out the avalanche of emotions that are building within me. Churning every passing moment into something that is crying to get out of me. To become an expression. I start to write.

But in the very next moment, I feel like throwing the pain away. To tear out the pages from my notebook. To shout. To cry. And to run away from here. Somewhere far away from this desk. No. Not only from this desk. But from this place. From this world. And from this existence. Forever.

But I don’t run away, yet, nor I write.

Just hours and hours of idleness. Forever. Neverending.

Time has lost its meaning. It is passing by slowly. Dragging forward at almost negligible pace. It feels as if it is chained to a heavy object that is hindering its flow. Making it crawl at a snail’s pace. Minutes turning into hours. Hours into days. My whole existence becoming a series of empty portraits. Every portrait showing the same me. Time has stopped.

Suddenly, I become conscious and look around myself.

Life is moving ordinarily otherwise. Every sign of life is there. Some talking and laughing. Others working and slogging. Some making shapes on presentations. Others typing out on their reports. Eyes tethered to the screens. Fingers dancing on the keyboards.

Fingers on keyboards. Its clacking sound filling the air around me. How clear I can hear it now. When others are doing it. The cacophony of this action. Its uselessness. So evident in my ears. So cruel to my senses. I never realized this before. I want to throw up.

But others do not. In fact, they are enjoying it.

A girl from that group turned her head towards me, and I try to say hi, but somehow, for some reason, I just cannot. My lips are stuck up, sewn together so that I can only make an incomprehensible sound. A sound of someone mumbling. I must be looking weird. She would laugh any second. I wait for that. But it never happens.

She keeps on looking at me. Her eyes falling on at a point behind me. I don’t exist for her. She is ignoring me. Even with my eyes wide open, a look of horror on my face, its color drained and white like death. She would do it any moment, I think, look at me with sympathy, and realize my pain, and rush towards me, to help me out, to comfort me, to give me peace — if not all this — at least give me the look of recognition. A look of respect.

She keeps on looking like this for some time. Perhaps for ten seconds or more. Her whole body motionless. Her face expressionless — a figure frozen in the sand of time. Before she makes tiniest of movements. A tilt of her head, and smallest of the movements of her lips. And then she turns her head, but in the opposite direction, slowly, but definitively, before her head is completely turned away from me. And rejoins the conversation, that meaningless banter, as if she never looked in my direction, as if I never mattered, confirming my worst fear about this moment, about me, that I don’t exist anymore. That I am dead.

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