By Chidimma Nwaka
Pain is one of the unexplainable feelings. The heaviness of the heart, the smile that looks like a fortune if your lips should twist, and the race your arteries pump through your body as if you had run thousands of miles.
Pain hurts our sleep. The moment you lay down to sleep, you feel like you are drowning. You walk, but your legs go numb, your voice becomes shaky, and everything around you becomes distorted. Tears are supposed to make you feel better, but even a bucket of them cannot lift the weight in your heart.
I don’t know if I am the only abnormal person, but my pain causes panic attacks. The tension, the anxiety, and all of that. They say that nerds are depressed machines. They lack expression.
Maybe because I expected too much, or perhaps I joined the competition. What am I competing for?
I become lukewarm and waste my time doing nothing important. Life becomes still, as if I’m not moving, but the earth rotates daily to remind me that I was not just stuck in my thoughts. My environment was not waiting for me either.
My mind goes blank, and it is funny how I have not aged yet I forget the important things. Especially the person I used to be.
The saddest fallout is the one you quietly leave. They think you are ignoring them, but little do they know you are slowly drifting away, into the dark, darker tunnel of your thoughts.
The tears that flow through your eyes sting your iris and cornea as if you sat close to fuel smoke. Dark rooms are your favourite, and sleep paralysis makes you tremble even more.
I just want to feel alive again, even if I don’t have to be with the person I have loved so much lately. I just realized how much weight we put into loving someone, and yet we feel them enjoy our absence and pretend we mattered.
Matter, they say, has weight and occupies space.
But I choose my matter.
Twenty-three kilograms is okay for me.
