Claustrophobia

There's no getting out of this, it's the same everyday. The same suffocation, the same mounting gloom, just the same. Waking up everyday into a nightmare and waiting to sleep because that's the only respite from all this monotony. Maybe that's why I feel so drowsy. The same people. The same city. The same place. Each day is a carbon copy of its predecessors, with the minutest degree of change, like those pictures which look identical but if you look closely you might see a few tiny differences. Exactly like that. But those tiny differences, those microscopic deviations aren't enough. They've never been, or maybe I ask for too much.

Being nagged, and nagged, and nagged until my head is pounding with a thousand irritating commands, until I can't block it out anymore. Instructions, rules, laws, there's just so many.

And then there's people. I don't want new people, at all. I just want my people. They aren't many,I've got a few. And I want them around me all the time, I want them to surround me and protect me and be there for me, just like a cocoon, and let me be with them. Just someone who I can attach myself to and not let go of. Maybe that's why I get clingy.

I suppose I'm waiting for some sort of a miracle, something that will save me, because I need saving. I'm not insane, that much I know. But that's the only thing I'm aware of, because I don't know what I am. Always hollow, always empty. I fill the air around myself with words because I can't take silences. I can't be the same inside and out. So I talk. And it's meaningless gibberish, but at least it shuts off my thoughts, and escaping from those has become a must. They're like a constant drone in my mind, and when it's bad, they ricochet off the walls of my skull ( at least that's what it feels like to me.)

And then there's home. Wandering around from here to there or hiding in my room, that's all there is to it. Getting out is not an option, because going out too much is "awaara gardi", and I can't explain to mum what I feel like, because this isn't something she'd comprehend. She doesn't have time for my silly frivolities. No one does, and I don't blame them. But it isn't sympathy I want. It's escape, even for a little while.

So I go to school. But lately, that's not working either. Because there's so many people, too many people. But they're just there and they don't mean anything to me apart from a few empty conversations, a few meaningless hellos, you see them, you talk to them, you come back and you forget all about them till the next day. I wait for the day to end so I can go back home. At home, I wait to fall asleep. It's just a constant process of waiting. When Min Min asks me why I'm so jaded, I don't know what to say to her. Because I don't know how to explain this constant torturous claustrophobia. Or what to do with myself.