The outside life

There is the life you can see. The house, the job, the food you eat. It tells you what to do after you wake up, it pushes you in the back. You might have forgotten the original reason for doing it after all.

And there is the invisible one. It creeps in from the wet walls and drips on you while you are asleep, you drink it with your coffee and swallow it with your cake. You try to wash it from your dishes, but it comes back and hits you during the meal. You wonder where the taste comes from, you search for weird spices you might have added during cooking, but there is nothing you can find. You do the test and boil plain brown rice, again you discover something you haven't asked for. You sue the rice company for unknown ingredients. You loose the case, your taste buds not enough as evidence.

You try denial. You concen- trate on the house, the job, the never ending meals. You set your alarm, gather the family for lunch, dinner. Oat porridge in the morning. You want a normal life after all.

But the smoke is there. It enters the building through the creaks and crannies. You watch it circling up. It doesn't make an effort to escape your house. From now on you measure the amount of sugar through a haze.

Finally you wonder whether you have any choice at all, who invented this invisible trick. You want to -pleaaase- eat boring tomato soup, and god keep the unknown seasoning.

You keep on figuring it out, inventing the recipes, you don't cease searching for the simple taste.

But then, unexpectedly, during an early nightly morning you can see who stirs the pots. It is you who brings in the flavour, it is you who has to stop.

picture from http://pascalcampion.blogspot.com

Escape

Finally you have made it. You are sitting on that cosy terrace, alone, coffee in front of you, a newspaper. Exactly what you have dreamt of all these weeks, when jumping around between buzzing phones, demanding customers, friends' kids and mandatory gatherings. You devaluated yourself to the background, riding the train you yourself bought a ticket for in the first place. But now you are here and you need to concentrate. You say the word out loud to yourself: con-cen-trate. No time for the newspaper. Only a few hours to re-think, to move your life around and leave the café with a plan in your hands. You want time for yourself, to Live Your Life Fully and Without Compromises. Front cover guru magazine style. You wonder how you ended up like this.
First you start by cancelling all upcoming appointments. Disappointing other people will become a daily routine. You need a wide white open space- that will have to filled up again, fine-tuned to your own needs.
You know beforehand time won't be enough to do everything you have never done. You delete reading books, you plan a cleaning lady, you order take-out. You only do the most efficient sports.

You are working consistently and speedily on your life.
Suddenly you notice you are not enjoying your coffee. You are stressed. You refuse the vegan extravagant apple cake - too many calories, distraction from the list.

You have 45 minutes left to sit, to finish up, to come up with something. After that you have to dive back into the race.
Then you notice something. You are doing it again. A-gain. A big sigh. Disbelief. But time is not up. You reach over, grab the paper, wail the waiter for a giant chocolate fudge and spend your 45 minutes.

picture from http://pascalcampion.blogspot.com

Life

'Are you hungry?'
'Always'.

Feeling

So it was that she was waiting for him to call. Which meant she was doing all other things only to let time pass by- please save me the effort to sugarcoat this. A woman obsessed. Provoked by the silence she started leaving her mobile behind when going for walks and moving around in the house, only to quickly check the screen almost by accident. Having read plentiful in the selfhelp section, she knew she shouldn't do what she was doing, she, the pitiful, waiting for a guy.

'Don't put your life on hold,' her best friend advised her. Nevertheless, there she was, giving it all. And she didn't even care. She managed to sleep through the first two days, explaining her mom it were the effects of leaving behind her caffeine addiction. The third day she looked at her old bedroom walls, feeling comforted by the safe world of teenage posters. The fourth she distracted herself by alcohol and cigarettes, sparing an intervention with the coffee abstinence. The fifth day she googled his name. The sixth she started to wonder why the call was so important to her. So f*ing important. The last day she decided she couldn't find an acceptable, sensible reason for it at all.

A clear indication that some more waiting needed to be done.