It is imperative that I remind myself that the four walls that enclose the air I breathe do not delimit the world end.

It is paramount for me to look at and witness my life as it unfolds in front of my eyes. A book contains its story even when it’s closed. In the same way I am alive even when I feel so distant from the reality I inhabit.

I fear my fears, I push my life away. I look at the past from my hazy window and I let it crush me like a piton’s grip. The world has frozen and I don’t know when that happened. I inhale powder again, hoping that it will make me feel like the people around me. My stomach rebels against this foolishness and reminds me that there’s never an easy way out.

I miss all the feelings I couldn’t bear having on my back any longer. I miss fighting for the pain of my existence and I miss feeling alive. They say it’s good I’m not there any longer, but this nothingness seems worse than smashing my head against my heart. I’m back at sea, no land in sight. No land inside.

I invoke an earthquake, an IT outage, the ground to open up and gulp me down as I finally see the earth we have hidden under all this concrete. I beg for the fall of everything, I beg to be forgotten and I beg to be remembered, as I crawl back into this hole that has my shape. A foetus that pays taxes.

I beg for the return of pain.

I beg for the return of life.