When last flicker of attachment snuffed then the world went silent. Not literally, of course. The hum of the fluorescent lights persists. The clatter of keyboards, the murmur of conversations, the relentless thrum of the city – it all continues. But I hear it as if from behind a thick pane of glass. Distant. Detached. Irrelevant.
Everything I touched, everything I knew, suddenly became alien. My hands are no longer mine. They are tools for performing tasks, for manipulating objects. My reflection in the mirror is a stranger, a simulacrum wearing my face. My memories are faded photographs, brittle and meaningless.
They say time heals all wounds. But what if the wound is the absence of feeling itself? What if the cure is the very thing I no longer possess?
I considered… options. The sharp gleam of a knife. The oblivion promised by a handful of pills. The seductive pull of the abyss. But I am too tired, too apathetic, even for that. Suicide requires a spark, a flicker of will. And my will is a broken thing, a withered vine clinging to a crumbling wall.
So I remain. A passenger on a ship sailing towards an unknown destination. I watch the world go by, a silent observer, a ghost in the machine. I am neither alive nor dead, but something in between. A liminal being, trapped in the twilight zone of existence.
Sometimes, a flicker of something stirs within me. A faint echo of the emotions I used to know. A pang of longing, a whisper of regret, a shadow of… hope? But it's fleeting, ephemeral. Like a dream dissolving upon waking.
I try to grasp it, to hold onto it, but it slips through my fingers like sand. And then, the silence returns. The vast, empty silence that is my constant companion.
I see them, the Others, laughing, loving, living. They are immersed in the game, consumed by its passions, blinded by its illusions. They are building their castles of sand, oblivious to the tide that will inevitably wash them away.
And I envy them. Not for their happiness, which seems so fragile and fleeting. But for their capacity to feel. To care. To believe.
I am a ghost, haunting my own life. I walk among the living, but I am not one of them. I am a stranger in a strange land, forever separated by an invisible barrier.
The days bleed into weeks, the weeks into months. The seasons change, the world continues to spin, but I remain unchanged. Frozen in a state of perpetual detachment.
I imagine death as a release. A final escape from this charade. But even that hope is tinged with doubt. What if there is nothing after death? What if this emptiness is all there is?
I don't pray. I don't meditate. I don't seek solace in religion or philosophy. I just… exist. I wait. I endure.
Perhaps, one day, something will break. Perhaps, one day, the silence will be shattered. Perhaps, one day, I will feel something again.
But until then, I will continue to play the game. I will smile. I will nod. I will offer polite, empty phrases. I will pretend.
Because that is all I can do. That is all I am.
A ghost. A puppet. A player in a game I no longer understand.
And all I want… is to be free.
But freedom, like everything else, seems like a distant, unattainable dream.
So I close my eyes. And I wait.
Waiting. That's what I do best now. Waiting for something that will probably never come. Waiting for the end. Waiting… for nothing. The hum continues. A relentless, unwavering drone. A constant reminder of my… existence.
Is this existence? Or merely a pale imitation?
I don't know anymore.
I just… am.
And that, perhaps, is the most terrifying thing of all.
This inconsistency... it's not just amusing, it's revealing. It shows that even the deepest-seated belief is fractured by the undeniable reality of the physical world. It shows a fundamental human pragmatism that overrides even the grandest spiritual claims. It shows fear – fear of pain, fear of loss, fear of chaos – that drives them to seek tangible help even while professing faith in the intangible protector. It's a tacit admission that the earthly systems, imperfect as they are, are more reliable, more real in their immediate effects, than the promises of the divine. They act as if the material world is governed by predictable rules, rules that can be understood and manipulated by humans, even while they say a higher power directs everything. The sheer energy expended on building and maintaining these secular structures is testament to where their actual trust lies, when push comes to shove.
And who fully believes, truly? Ah, that's the core of the amusement. No one, not even the most fervent preacher. If they did, they wouldn't need the hospital, the police station, the courts. They wouldn't lock their doors at night. They wouldn't save for retirement. Because God would handle it. Every action that relies on human systems, on the predictable—or at least learnable—laws of physics and nature and society, is an implicit admission that faith alone is not enough. It's a hedge. A rational bet placed simultaneously with the spiritual one. And it's the rational bet they act on when the chips are down. The hospital is the place to go when you're dying. The prayer is... what? An emotional release? A last resort? A habit? A performance?
Even those closest to God, the ones who claim visions and direct communication... do they step off a cliff banking purely on faith that angels will catch them? No. They walk down stairs. They look before they cross the street. They wear seatbelts. Because somewhere, deep inside, the ancient, practical, survival-driven brain knows gravity is real. Momentum is real. The fragility of bone and flesh is real. Things unseen, things unproven, things that demand absolute surrender in the face of the tangible... it's a bridge too far, even for the devout. A safety net of skepticism, no matter how deeply buried, remains coiled.
But those who do fully believe... what do they become? If someone could truly switch off that pragmatic, skeptical back-up system? If they could live purely, completely, utterly without relying on the physical world and human systems, banking everything on the unseen divine? I've seen glimpses. A kind of terrifying serenity in the face of tragedy that looks like dissociation to me. An unquestioning acceptance of authority, if that authority claims to speak for God. A sometimes chilling certainty about complex moral issues, delivered with the cold confidence of someone who believes they have a direct line to absolute truth. A surrender of personal responsibility, perhaps? "It was God's will." Does that absolve them of their choices, their failures, their complicity? It seems like it could. A loss of critical thought, maybe? Why think when the truth is revealed? Why question when the answers are given? It seems... limiting. Constricting. Like choosing to live in a single room when the whole universe is outside. They would be... potentially dangerous? Unpredictable? Unreachable by reason or evidence or shared human experience, living in a reality built solely of faith?