3

Every day I have three conversations. It’s my apple-a-day, spinach on the dinner plate, two litres of water. If I fail, I walk home feeling a bit empty. If I win — well, if I win, it’s the same.

Three conversations. That’s not much. I know a lot more than three people. Less than other people seem to know — but there’s a solution to that conundrum, isn’t there? Supposedly.

Those conversations, those three conversations, sometimes they go well. It shocks me. Every time, it shocks me. It isn’t much to them, I’m sure, but every time I can hold a decent conversation for several minutes, I go home spinning. That feeling, it’s ethereal. But then there’s the other side of the coin. Oh, it starts off fine, it always does. Give me time. I will disintegrate into either a rambling mess or silence, specially for you. I can feel them inching away slowly, like I’m a rabid dog — no, they’re not inching really, of course they’re not. People don’t notice all that much, they don’t care. As if that stops me from tossing and turning all night long thinking about how stupid I am. The words I said right disappear into the shadows of the words I said wrong, which are now mammoth-sized. Larger than that. They are everything.

Other people hate me for no reason. They think I’m weird. That’s why I can’t talk to them, you see. I’ve lost before I’ve begun. But that isn’t true and I know it. Other people all get along perfectly well with one another.

Hell isn’t other people. I wish it were.