The umbilical cord that once kept us connected was cut a long time ago. Yet, you still manage to crawl under my skin like an infection. Feeling torn between caring about your well-being and you having to solve your own problems. You wanted this, so enjoy it. I want to be free too, so let me go. I want to return to who I was. Like a nomad, I travel back and forth in this barren landscape. My whole life is scattered across three different locations. And so, I can’t truly call anything my home. But is home the place where your belongings are temporarily in cardboard boxes? How does one make a house a home? An empty house is not a home, that’s for sure.
A pounding bass slowly gets louder and louder in my ears. Like an incoming train, it appears in my line of sight. A whirlwind of endless decisions I have to make arrives with it as it comes to a screeching halt. Some people offer to help me, but I’m a fighter, and I don’t need anyone’s help. That’s what I keep trying to tell myself, but in truth I just find it difficult to accept help from others. I try to keep myself strong, but I break into a thousand pieces in your presence. I try to force a smile and pretend that I am doing fine. But I can no longer keep up appearances. I’ve played the clown for so long that the curtain is finally falling. But there’s no thunderous applause. People leave the room, leaving half-eaten bags of popcorn behind, and the space fills with an icy silence. It’s just me in this theater with no one left to entertain.
I’m tired of crying, so I try not to cry anymore. I gather the pieces off the ground and make a mosaic in our remembrance. The night is mine, and my eyes grow wider in the dark. This is a brand new world filled with things to discover and explore again. A smile hides a lot of things, and it will get me far. Maybe I’ll survive the night, maybe I won’t. I will dance my sorrows away until my ankles swell and my feet burn. But I keep dancing because this is my newfound home until the sun rises once more. A place to slowly forget about you, about us. This club will be my temporary temple of dementia. My mind can’t decide whether I love it or actually hate it here. Like a pendulum, my thoughts swing from pleasure to displeasure. This party too shall end. But a temporary escape is still an escape. And it will mend me in the end, I am sure of it.
I was once your man, and you were mine. I have been so many kinds of men that sometimes I no longer know what kind of man I’ve become. What kind of man loves like this? How much love do I still have left to give? Once upon a time, I had sharp edges that have now been filed away. And from those smooth, blunt corners, new sharp shards have since developed. A strange form of natural evolution. I know what I want now, better than I did before. And I know what I need now. I try to hide behind eyes that are too tired to stay open. I might take a really long nap and awaken with new knowledge. I always keep going, because in the end, this is all I know. Life has made me harder than I want to admit.
But I’m still me.
Martijn Winkel 