"The greatest hazard of all, losing one's self, can occur so quietly that it is as if it were nothing at all."
— Søren Kierkegaard
Thought wavers, of course it does, and yet absurdly there seems to be an exception, doesn't there? Nothing intoxicates quite like fine wine, they say, but then we forget that fine wine changes, doesn't it, from one nation to another, from one tongue, one table, one memory to the next. And we sip and stumble, calling it pleasure when perhaps it's only confusion, or a kind of longing disguised in glass. And yes, we get intoxicated, but some of it, some of it is sheer folly, laughable if it weren't so piercing. Deception doesn't merely trick, no, it seeps in, slowly, quietly, until the mind begins to rot from within like old wood soaked through with rain. And unrequited love, oh that, unrequited love is no mere sorrow, it is a slow and persistent cancer, not of the body but of the soul. It does not scream. It whispers. And it lingers.
In all this you walk alone, don't you? And you find yourself, piece by piece, in the silence no one speaks of. No one tells you, but you are alone, utterly and undeniably alone, wandering through the debris of your own becoming, searching for the only two things that seem to matter, love and purpose. They move together, don't they? At least that's the lie or the hope or the pattern we cling to. Some find love first and purpose follows like a shadow, faithful and full of direction. Others discover purpose and never find love at all, or maybe they do, but it doesn't stay. And then there are those, those who find neither. I am one of those. I have neither.
I am a stray dog, mind scattered, home gone, and the world no longer makes sense. I sit here now, on a terrace in a land that feels strange, almost too strange, and yet it aches like home. The sky looks familiar, but I don't know the names of the birds. The coffee is warm in my hands and bitter in my mouth, but it is the only thing that wakes me up, the only thing that reminds me the world is still turning and I am still in it. I drink, I remember, I ache, and I wonder, how long can one go on before the silence becomes the only language that makes
sense?