Private Peace

Location: On her way to somewhere and trying not to steer too far from the main roads
Mood-of-the-day: Cloudy, with a hint of sudden and quick drizzles.

I did very little writing this week and I fear the same under-the-weather phase is going to continue for a while. Not just blog writing or assignments (which two are overdue btw) but any writing; s’matter of fact, I hardly feel like picking up a pen yesterday (I prefer traditional methods over digital in fiction digest). Unlike when I feel very sad, I don’t let all the moodiness run overdrive for an hour just to get it over with and then go downstairs to set the dinner plates. Rather, I feel tired of feeling tired.

I suppose these are something like a sad moment, not a sudden downpour of depression like I had at secondary school but more like a weeklong overcast that gave only cold drizzle or humidity to the point of head aches. Here I sit before a PC that’s not mine yet I wholly depends on and just watching letters of the alphabet appear in structures on a white sheet of softcopy paper, wondering if words such as these are truly my own, instead of a collection I’ve complied from others’ lethargy.

But would I be offended to the emotions of others who felt similar weariness? That there are others of such introvert nature as to compare with mine? I don’t know. An age such as now scarcely needs more others like me. As the world sped along to the rhythm of production, I was the person who sits in idle, narrowly in between the highways of Time that has no speed limit, lost in her own inner traffic. Surely the barrier is too small to accommodate so many dreamy recluses. Eventually one of us will fall to be crushed road kill, or worse, become the bane of innocents. Would I be the one to fall?

It is not a crime, in my heart, to sit and listen only to your own breathing. Not snatches of available time scattered in a day or one to spend with your workload on your head or an instructed meditation from a self-help video. Only pure, idle, selfish peace. Selfish indeed, more so for one such as I who would have spent such time drugging herself in the addiction of playing games or reading legends. But I did it, for myself to add, a bit of time only to breathe and not even counting the breaths.

And that’s when these moments gave me a sense of new air. An illusion I’ve made for myself to make the dread less dreadful? A time wasted in an hour where time is limited? A simplified form of prayer? An excuse for sluggishness? A private soul healing method? A forced silence after cycles enduring drudgery in the mind? An unexpected thundershower of all these questions at once? There is little reason for me to use metaphors or descriptive language to the something what outsiders would term as ‘being lazy’.

Inhale. Exhale. I was not trapped in on the barrier in between the highways of Time. I was one who had stopped on the side of the road to turn away from the suffocating busyness. I had stopped to see the simple sunlight beyond that wearisome overcast and not judge it for anything. There is a feeling, only good. Yet my place is not here, and while there is still gas in my car, I must follow the rhythm or else splutter and fail to be stuck into the highway barrier. But I do dream sometimes, after those private peaces. I dream of a life after my destination, where I could see the whole world on a bright sunny ending.

Signed: *Ophie, having little to say or do and yet still not feel guilty about it.