the world flowed through me

I stopped speaking in order to listen. I listened so that I could learn. I learned so that I could finally figure out how to be heard.

It started with the noise. There was too much of it. One yell was always met by another. A single voice silenced others. We had no sense of who we were. I grasped onto the simple soundbites of what I heard and held tight. It was all I could do to try to make sense of it all.

The world flowed through me and I tried to be one with it. Alone, I felt adrift from others. One world apart, worlds away. Others seemed like they were in orbit around some distant star while I stayed on my own solitary trajectory.

Distant. Destined. Destined to become more distant and detached from what others would do in any given situation. Changing course wasn’t an option.

I focused on maintaining my own atmosphere. I slept when I slept. I ate when I ate. I moved when I moved. I’d learned long ago that I couldn’t trust the air, so I spent a lot of time focusing on my breathing. I feigned that there was more to it, but that was a lie.

We lied together. The lifelong bonds we formed, the supposed vulnerabilities we shared, they were all a harmless rouse we conjured up to intertwine our existences with one another. Strangers sharing separate realities.

We were because we wanted to be in order to become whatever we hoped it was all for.