Just an ordinary day...

You wake up in the morning and for a split second, while your brain is adjusting to reality, you don’t know where you are and what that reality is. You reach instinctively to the other side of the bed, to the right, always to the right, only to find some throw-pillows occuping the space. They’re blue and nice, you have chosen them yourself while shopping for some comfort, but they have a major fault: they cannot say “good morning” nor can they hug you. A first little bubble of emptiness pops-up inside of you but you get over it, as you get out of bed... You then start preparing for the new day. You have the bathroom all to yourself to spend as much time and make as big of a mess as you want. No one will rush you, no one will complain that you shower like a duck, spreading water all over the bathroom floor, no one will ask how long till you’re done. And yet somehow deep inside you wish someone would... and this adds up just a tad more to the little bubble... You then drink your morning coffee and smoke the first cigarette of the day. In silence... Sometimes you do play an uplifting song, just to get you through that silence and try to lie to yourself that this is going to be a good day. But most of the times it won’t. You just sit there, with your numb thoughts, looking out that window with such a beautiful view that you bargained so much for, sipping some black coffee from your white mug, while your bubble is slowly expanding... You uninspiredly open the closet door to choose from your 10 suits and 30 dresses and 25 pairs of shoes that you absolutely adored, under the illusion that they could miraculously make your day better. But they won’t, won’t they? You start combining clothing items and you could use some random suggestion on which outfit would look fabulous on you today, even if you know that you would definitely fight the hell out of whatever suggestion cause it would not match your nails or your hairstyle or your mood. You think to yourself: men are so bad at this! But annoyingly enough, some part of you would still like to have that conversation and explain for the 20th time why you cannot wear a dark blue suit with black shoes. Yet there’s no argument there. Just silence... You just pick whatever outfit falls into your hands first and roll with it. And by the way, you are already late to work so you must leave aside the bubbles and imaginary conversations and move your ass to the office. No one kisses you goodbye while closing the door but it’s ok, you are in too much hurry to think about it and you just focus on ordering an Uber while in the elevator. 

The Uber driver - the first person you see everyday, the first person who speaks to you everyday. He does have a somewhat enthusiatic “Good morning”, sometimes even throws a “how are you?” in there. Of course they are fake and scripted, you know it. And how pathetic is it that you get to hear these first words of the day not from someone who knows and cares about you but from someone for which you are just a “ma’am”? Anyway, you start the ride. 17 QAR for 30 minutes of silence, sounds like a good deal. On your way now. You catch up with your Whatsapp chats, as some kind but distant people thought of you during the night. Fewer and fewer lately, since you decided to clean up your life. You think it’s nice of them to care if you live or die and you feel connected for a moment. But then you realize they are there and you are here and there’s nothing that could change that. So you get back to staring out the window still empty... As you leave behind the nice part of the city, you see the calm sea and the beautiful palm trees for a long portion of your trip. You still like that. A lot. You’ve always dreamed to live by the sea and have palm trees around. You remember that the first time you saw a palm tree in your life you were already 20 something but that did not stop you from actually physically hugging it. How silly! Now your dream has come true - you have them everywhere around and they seem trivial... beautiful but trivial nonetheless and unable to fill your emptiness...

You finally get to work. The driver stops right in front of the building, which is great cause you hated the idea of walking too much on high heels. He asks you to give him a 5 stars rating. Of course you will. You would have done that anyway, cause you know life is hard for them and they could use the extra buck. You wish him a good day. No goodbye kiss though... As you step out of the car and start walking towards the entrance, you turn up the music volume in your airpods to the max and enjoy your last moments with yourself, before putting on the mask that gets you through the work day and start smiling. You tried being your true genuine good honest straight-forward expressive self but it did not bring you any good. On the contrary, it got you to the point where you could not eat for days and your stress levels made you react foolishly and against your own interests. You did struggle for a while in your naivity that you could improve things and #bethechange and all that childish nonsense that you traded your previous life for, but then you realized that this is not the place and that greater men have fallen on the same path. So one day you just gave up and stopped caring and now you enjoy the comfort of your mask and focus on something else. Well, not completely stopped caring but mostly not caring. Anyway, you walk towards the entrance giving generic smiles and hellos left and right to people that don’t even know your name and receiving the same in return - pointless yet customary exchange in a workplace - while asking yourself why the fuck do you do that to yourself everyday. But you carry on to your desk. Your nice clean and OCD-level organized desk with a view that you wanted back in the day when you cared. What the hell is it with you and the obsession for a nice view? Little presents and reminders are nicely placed at the window, together with a welcome note saying that “we will work hard and have fun”. It’s been a few months since you got that note, maybe half a year. You can obviously see the work hard part but keep wondering where’s the fun part? Somehow that part got lost on its way. There was a time when you still cared, when you would sit on some desk, legs crossed, and joke and play silly and have fun. But then things happened and decisions were made and... in the end, you don’t even want to remember. 

At your desk it’s all kind of a routine. And you hate routine. It’s killing you inside, killing your neurons, assassinating your spirit from behind. You came here with your positive energy, confident that you could drive progress, work on new and exciting projects, implement disruptive strategies. The naivity of the thought makes you smile for a moment. Back to your routine interrupted by a few cigarette breaks. They used to be social-intellectual breaks some time back. Now they are just cigarette breaks, random moments of solitude when you check-up on the empty bubble inside you. Still there. Moving on... Have you noticed that you started smoking a lot more lately?

The work day is about to end. Nothing notable today. Feels a bit like a waste of time. Yes, your time. You know, the one that you were supposed to enjoy and live the hell out of and not waste? Your best years, the ones that you so much preach about? Yes, that time. Gone! Puff! You remember that in the beginning you used to stay in the office a lot overtime. You cannot count the times when you were the one to turn off the lights, with a feeling of martyrdom and accomplishment. Yet now you cannot bring yourself to stay one minute over... So you take your empty bubble and you just leave. 

Uber. Same 17 QAR for additional 30 minutes of silence. Same sea, same palm trees but in reverse, and a bit more traffic. You feel tired... you just lay your head back and stare out the window passively. You look at all the cars and for a moment try to imagine the parallel stories of each and every person in each and every car. Some will most likely go home to their spouses and potentially kids, enjoy some dinner and family time in front of the TV, some will take a shower and meet up with friends for a fancy meal and an expensive glass of wine, some will hit the gym or the pool, get to feel good about themselves and prepare a healthy dinner to share with their partners while talking about their day and some will just have some cheap takeaway dinner in front of the TV, then fall asleep on the couch while binge-watching some series. Just regular lives that people have chosen and are satisfied with. Are they happy? For sure some of them are. Or at least they think they are and that is enough for them. But would it be for you? You feel far from that... far from them... far from everything and far from happy. And as your ride ends with the specific Uber app sound, you say goodbye and wish a lovely evening to the driver knowing that those might potentially be the last words you are going to say for the day... And this goes to the bubble as well. 

Home at last... You use the word “home” for lack of a better word. In reality you know that the apartment you live in, as beautiful and well-designed as it is, with that amazing view and the comfy bed, minimalist and clean and with your personal objects displayed is not home. Truth be told, you no longer have a home and you feel it deep in your heart but you just keep calling it that. As if someone would miraculously appear out of nowhere to greet you and give you a welcome home kiss. Or wait for you with dinner. Or with a plan. Or with an invitation. Or with some reproach. Well, even the prospect of a fight is appealing enough at this point instead of the shower-gym-dinner routine and then wait to see what the evening brings. It would at least be a connection of some sort. But there’s none, so routine it is... and then? You’ll figure something out. 

Sometimes that something is going out for a drink with whoever is available, sometimes is shopping, sometimes is simply taking a walk and sometimes it’s joing someone in whatever activity they’re doing. Like some sort of Marla Singer going to every support group. But you don’t mind as long as you get to fill a bit of that bubble with something, be it a feeling, or a kick, or an interesting discussion or in the end just some time off from your thoughts. And, just like with the Uber driver, you know it’s fake and that people could not care less. In the end you are just some company, a passtime for them just like they are for you. You know that if you’re sick, no one will take care of you and that if something happened to you, no one will be by your side. And not for being a horrible unwanted or unloved person, but because of the life choices that you made. Yet that is the closest thing to a friendship that you can get and you will have to settle with it or live completely alone. And you cannot always do alone... so you accept it, you compromise in accepting it even if you feel that it is not the real connection that you needed. But whatever it is that gets you tired by midnight and delays the moment when you will again be alone in bed...

It’s late now. You survived another regular day on your way to nothing, consciously cheating yourself with big ideas and some lively music. You even have a small wound in your right ear from overusing your airpods that does not seem to heal for months. With the last drops of energy you remove your make-up to apply some treatment to your face already destroyed by the sun and the sand and you contemplate the huge bubble of emptiness inside of you that you generously fueled during the day. This cannot be it. You cannot refrain from saying over and over and over “there must be more to life than this. I am not that person. I know I am more. I know I can do more than this”. Yet you are not... and you only say it to yourself in your inner voice cause there is no one there to hear it. So you will simply post it on Facebook before you slide in your uselessly double bed with your clean sheets and the same few blue pillows to your right. And for a fraction of second you close your eyes and you intensely imagine that someone was there, to just pull you next to him with a childish smile while you place your head in that comfy spot between his arm and his chest, careful not to harm your ear as you still have pain from your piercings, warming up your feet between his, kissing you goodnight and reassuring you that tomorrow would be a better day. But there’s no one. And tomorrow will not be a better day.