Oblivion

The moonlight shaded into his room, casting long shadows of things kept on his window sill. It was a cold winter night. The power was down and he shifted in the semi darkness, trying to find his way to the door.  Slowly opening it brought in the cool breeze. He lay down in the veranda, closing his eyes, feeling the cold air flow into his lungs. There were a million battles that raged inside him. He thought of home, miles away, somehow it almost seemed a dream to be there. He thought of life, how a lot of people would have done anything to live the life he was living. It was peaceful, like anyone would want it to be. And he had enough in his pockets to get by. “Life was always measured by the things you own, the things you could do with what you owned”, they would say. Only living it made it different.

He opened his eyes looking at the tree just outside his apartment. It housed thousands of little beings. Were they all happy? He would think. But would they ever feel how he felt? Happiness. That was it, just the one thing missing. It was all coming from him, from a man who had learned to live alone, be alone for a major part of his life and yet, fought not to be a loner. And, happiness was about having to go home to someone. Someone to open the door waiting to welcome you home. It was about being there, being a reason for someone else to be happy, to live. Tears slid down from the corner of his eyes as he tried to blink them away.

The leaves of the tree shifted in the breeze, casting long and small shadows that changed with time. Life had been one such shadow. You tend to try to change with it, face your demons and be something you’re not, meeting the expectations of people you think matter. Whatever beholds you changes you into something you don’t want to be. You get carried and drifted, broken and gaunt. And you try to fix it, make amends, trust in people and love them and it was just for that day that you push on, when you look back thinking,  ‘why me’?   You smile at the image of your own making. Was it worth it?

The days had been struggle. Bereaved and scarred, he tried to elude from the depths of his mind. Stiffening himself up, he got back to his room. The shadows still gave the room an eerie feeling. His shoulders ached. The silence seemed to engulf him. It was a labyrinth ahead, like a twisted map of the city.

There was a little rustle of something moving beside him, disturbing the silence. He was glad, for the silence had gotten too loud for him. Grabbing a torch from the window sill, he lit it toward the source of the commotion. It illuminated garlands of cobwebs around the far side of his room where an old oak table lay. He got up noiselessly, walking towards the table. A lizard stood on the table, probably uncertain about where to run. A smile dawned on his face as he looked at it. It would always be around him when he was home. Its sounds would wake him at night sometimes. It couldn’t speak to him, tell him anything. But it was one of the things in this labyrinth that knew he was alive.

A broken sense of comfort came over his heart, as the lizard crawled away from him, disappearing behind the wall clock. It was always about lying to yourself, putting your heart at ease and living that lie till you believed it was true or fighting to believe it was. Everything was subjective, choices, answers… It leads you somewhere, makes you face something new. For what made it all worth was, a couple of laughs like the rain in a desert, a couple of lies that made you feel better, and a smile of belief that masked it all under the hood.

In the end, it was maybe, all that mattered…