𓍯𓂃 do you feel love? | short.
adult content ⋆ minors do NOT interact.
⋆ 𝐒𝐘𝐍𝐎𝐏𝐒𝐈𝐒. Have you ever felt as if the passing of days erased your existence like an eraser replaces the wrong stroke with its absence? Have you ever felt love? I haven't.
He walked past people as if he were made of air. Faces turned to opposite sides, bodies moved away without realizing why, and even the footsteps on the asphalt seemed to ignore the sound of his own. It was as if the whole world had learned to go on without noticing his presence, as if he were nothing but a blur in the corner of their eyes.
An almost palpable feeling that things were different tightened something inside him. That, only a feeling of discomfort, but one that did not cling to anything in particular, to an organ, a tissue, the sensation floated, but it was vague enough not to understand what it was about.
At first, he believed it was only fatigue. Long days, sleepless nights. But over time, the sensation of transparency grew until it became a constant wound. His reflections in shop windows were faint, blurred, almost always a second late. He saw a delay of himself, but his voice was so low he did not even dare utter a word to disturb the agitated human beings walking beside him. Imagine if a complaint of his distracted them from their truly interesting routines and their real problems.
It had always been this way, he thought, being a nuisance had never been part of his profile, it was not as if this time he could not figure out on his own what was making him sick and on his own find the solution.
You were born alone, deal with it, someone’s voice told him, from what he remembered a long time ago, since childhood, maybe? Then, yes, deal with it.
Seek help. Sit in front of a therapist in a room too white, where the ticking of the clock seemed to mock him. Talk about the emptiness surrounding him, about how everything felt cold, distant, untouchable. Open his mouth for the next 40 minutes so his troubles would be reduced to an anomaly scientifically proven by other people who used them.
White.
That was how he felt. A blank canvas.
The therapist listened in silence, occasionally leaning forward to jot down something never shown. When he answered, it was always with phrases that sounded automatic, devoid of human weight.
Have you tried getting some sun?
Exercise?
How is your relationship with your family?
Have you been eating well?
Have your hobbies distracted you enough?
“Go on. You need to hear yourself.”
He did, but each word seemed to dissolve in the air before even being understood.
No matter how intensely the sun burned his skin, everything went back to the way it was as soon as his body crossed the first shadow. If he forgot the pill that heightened the sensations so he could feel like a normal human being, that experience was nothing more than the attempt to watch a bean sprout in a jar of cotton.
He could not answer if he was okay with his family, it had been so long since he had seen them. How was his second cousin who was about to graduate? he thought. Had his best friend already married? There were no recent memories that made him believe he had even cared to see them for a few minutes.
Shame.
That was the state he had been in the last time he saw them, the day he decided it would be best not to see them again until this passed… He did not want to be forced to deal with the demon of comparison that settled in his mind every time he was forced to see how their lives managed to move forward so smoothly, their plans had worked out, their future plans made sense, how they had willpower, desire, ambition, all of that within their respective complex lives — and why only for him should it be different, why only for him life had to feel like living in a constant chase between surviving and staying unstable. Why.
At home, he found proof of a life that did not seem his own. Photographs where he appeared alongside friends, but with a strange smile, too stiff. Notes written in his handwriting, but with phrases he would never have said. Memories that seemed stitched together by someone who only knew half of his life. The more he tried to hold onto himself, the more he came apart into loose pieces.
On the table he saw his collection of hobbies, unfinished drawings, fragments of incomplete poems. Everything had been like this, his passion for writing and drawing was no longer enough to keep the hobbies alive, no longer served as distraction, he found himself anguished holding a piece of paper by the table.
When he opened a document on the computer, he spent hours with it open without typing a single word. At the touch of pen to paper all the ideas of something that could have been written disappeared. All the drawings were black smudges, without a single point of light.
All his handfuls of words were empty, hard, meaningless, bitter. Nothing like the supposed talent everyone insisted he had.
He preferred to crumple another sheet of paper rather than insist, sliding down the wall like a raindrop on glass.
At night, the dreams were worse. He dreamed of a white sheet dragged across the floor, like a child’s disguise in play, but without a face, without a body, only the fabric lifted by nothing. He woke with the sensation that someone was watching him from the foot of the bed, motionless, waiting for him to notice its presence.
In the middle of the road, under the headlights of a car, stood the figure of the white sheet, still, unshakable. The vehicle crossed through the specter as if it were smoke, and it did not move. A chill ran down his spine. The specter lifted its empty “face” toward him, and though it had no mouth, a cutting voice echoed in his mind:
“Do you feel love?”
The question hung in the air. He wanted to answer, but nothing came out. His lips would not obey, his throat produced no sound.
He followed the specter as one follows an omen. The streets became dark corridors, until the lights of a house appeared ahead. Through the window, he saw his parents at the table, laughing together. On the table, served dishes. A place setting remained arranged, but no one seemed to notice it.
Further ahead, another window: friends gathered at a party, toasting, celebrating. He knew each face, each gesture — but no gaze turned to the door, none seemed to miss someone who never arrived. Another still: a woman he had loved. Now she was with another, smiling, fingers intertwined, as if there had never been room for another name in her life.
The specter remained by his side, motionless, almost patient, until the truth weighed on him like a cloak at the subtle glance away toward the mark on his left wrist. He was not invisible by accident. It was not delirium, nor extreme loneliness. The world went on without him because there was no longer anything of him in the world.
He was dead.
And those he loved had learned to live without his presence. His absence had not left a screaming void, only a silent space that little by little had been filled. Perhaps that was the cruelest part — not the end itself, but the discovery that the world remained whole without him.
The specter touched his shoulder, and for an instant there was no more cold, no more weight. Only the certainty that there was no return.
Notes: I hope from the bottom of my heart that none of the above applies to how you feel, but if that's the case, I hope you feel better now. I'm here with you. Be well.
