Zombie

Most of the time I’m nowhere. Not in the despair where everything about life and love and the future makes me want to scream and crawl into that dark hole that somehow feels sweet in its bitterness, where I could write my pain out raw and watch it leave when I hit publish. Not in the euphoria either—that cloud-nine moment when it’s a girl or a career win or just a bright fresh day, and I’m singing out praise to the sun and freedom and love. Those feelings are intense. They’re real, and they matter.

Right now I’m stuck in the flat middle, and it’s like a kind of numbness I never expected. I go to work. I laugh at parties. I fool around. I listen to music. It all happens without any particular thrill or dread, without the feeling that something special is happening. No high, no low, just the middle distance.

It’s like watching a beloved film for the thousandth time. A movie you once loved more than anything. You know every scene, every line, every moment. You know exactly what comes next. You could recite it. So you watch it anyway, and it doesn’t break you anymore because there’s nothing left in you to break.

I’m living the exact thing I was terrified of as a kid. The ordinariness I swore with my friends I’d never let happen, not like everyone else. Routine. The everyday. A decent life that doesn’t feel like anything at all.

It’s like I surrendered in some long war and accepted the bitter-sweet defeat. I laid down my weapons and looked up at the sky and waited for it to be over. The living death has arrived. I’m a zombie now.