Exile
I feel like I’m in exile – from my life, from being myself. Each little reminder is too painful. In company, i remember intimacy. Others are praised, and I am almost sure I have all the same worthy qualities, though nobody ever says so. People don’t bother to speak to me, because they assume I am uninteresting. As though I have no thoughts in my head, when I have more time to think than anyone I know!
I see young men and wonder why none are attracted to me. I like the face I see in the mirror. But no-one else seems to. I like myself, but even my own relatives seem to dismiss me as worthless. And when, after two days of stoic cheeriness, I sink into melancholy, they want to play "white cloud is just tired". As though I were a toddler whose behaviour has to be excused with some line about it being past her bedtime.
We sat through the tourist commentary, aboard some floating bus, a two-hour slouch around the harbour. I imagined captaining a small trading ship, rigging and masts, rolling on the raw sea. Or remembered.
It feels like I am trapped in a body in which I am incapable of really expressing who I am – in which I am incapable of truly being myself. I can’t work, lead anyone or manage anything. I can’t be rough and tough and independent. I can’t make money, travel or go into business. I can’t even choose who I associate with, to any great degree.
I feel like a taxi-driving refugee, and nobody knows or believes that back home he was a professor, a millionaire, an ambassador or a prince. And now there is now way he can be.