Day 6
I’ve barley slept again. Not much. I close my eyes and lie there like I’m pretending to sleep, which is apparently different from actually doing it. My brain keeps running laps in the dark. Thoughts piling on top of each other until they start sounding like static. It is funny like that. The world goes quiet but your head gets louder.
Mostly I just feel numb. Not sad exactly. Not anything exactly. Just… dulled around the edges, like someone turned the color saturation down on everything. I keep waiting for something to break through the fog but it never quite does.
So I distract myself. or at least try.
I scroll through my phone until my eyes blur. I consume media until all that is left are little pieces. bits. I reorganize things that don’t need organizing. I walk around the block like there’s somewhere important I’m supposed to go. Anything to keep the thoughts from getting too comfortable. Because when they settle in, they start whispering things I’d rather not hear.
Sometimes I step outside and smoke a cigarette just to have something to do with my hands. The night air feels warmer lately, or maybe I’m just noticing it more. I watch the smoke drift upward and disappear and think about how easy it looks to vanish like that. Just dissolve into the dark sky and be done with it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my hometown lately. I’m supposed to visit soon. And part of me feels this strange nostalgia about it…the familiar streets, the old buildings, the way certain places smell exactly the same no matter how many years pass. There’s a comfort in knowing where everything is. Knowing which corner store stays open late and which roads are empty at night.
But that place also knows too much about me.
It holds versions of me I don’t always want to remember. Things I did. Things I survived. Quiet moments where I tried to turn pain into something I could see on the outside instead of just feeling it inside. The kind of memories that stick to a place like fingerprints.
It’s strange to miss somewhere that hurt you.
Still, I keep thinking about going back. Walking those streets again. Seeing if the town feels smaller than it used to, or if it still has the same gravity.
I guess that’s the thing about nostalgia…it edits the film. Cuts out the worst scenes and leaves the soft, golden ones behind.
Right now though it’s just me, the quiet, and the cigarette burning down to the filter.
And the thoughts I’m still trying to outrun.
