Adishri

A majority of my day, goes in silence. I wake up to a loud ringing that kills the silence of the room, where I lay motionless in an imaginative world for a few hours. What force it takes, to switch from an altered reality, to a physical one. Movements make me realise I’m still alive and that there’s a sound to how I move. The same cracked wood flooring I step over, the clasp of my feet into the slippers, the steps I take to reach the same sink every morning. But I still remain silent.

I look at the empty toothpaste, I think but not speak of getting a new one. The only time I can’t hear my thoughts is when the bristles of the toothbrush scurry my teeth. I think about the day ahead and meet my eyes in the mirror as I brush. What I see in my eyes for the day, determines how it may go. On some days, I have eyes that are afraid and on the others, I have eyes of joy. I think again on days of fear, how best to protect myself or do things to feel a little lighter. On days of happiness, I wish to spread it to the eyes I meet out in the world and multiply my adventurous spirit. And yet I stay silent, private in my decisions.

When I get ready, I am introduced to other minds for the day. My eyes suddenly feel stolen from my mind, in exchange to those who will see me later that day. I pick clothes that fit me well and away from my skin. I hear in my head the voices that once tried to stuff me into their stencils of how one should look. With age, those voices turn into whispers, but on days of fear, they find courage to speak again and go to war with me. I wait for the days of joy to show me how much my clothes love my skin, like a gift wrapped to perfection. Even then I’m silent, after a parade of dialogues and emotions in my head.

I walk to the bus stop and I see all kinds of eyes. Some on the board to see how long they’ve got until the next bus, some on the phone because they’ve seen it already, and the others looking at the direction from where the bus will arrive. Sometimes I meet eyes that are familiar, we always take the same bus but we’ll never know each other. It’s like we feel we can get ahead of time if we looked strange and busy while we’re all waiting for the same bus. I wonder where I learned to look busy, my brain probably registered repeated movements and gestures from films or other people. As an observer of the world though, my hands never know what to do. They feel silly to do a hundred things at once to look ‘normal’ because apparently being too still is absurd and doing too much is also absurd. So I guess I have to balance it like everyone around me and this time it’s not just me who’s silent, so are they.

On the train I see a collection of hands, eyes and feet. Some of them just happen to know how to sit or stand within their space. Cross-legged or a casual lean on a moving train, either reading a book or scrolling through the phone. There are some who look up at the advertisements to seem occupied, while others stare at the floor in deep thought. I like watching the people who fumble like a glitch in the matrix, and how they recover from it. I like hearing people talk, some of them know they’re being heard and try to mellow down. Some go louder and forget there’s a world that exists apart from theirs, which makes me smile a little and admire their confidence. But the rest of us, most of us, are silent.

The walk from the station to the office, is a selection of thoughts and choices to make to live through the day. After witnessing a variety of silent energies on the journey, it’s time to shift to a more communicative approach. Whether I like it or not, or because money and my career makes me. I look at the faces of my co-workers that seem to change everyday. Sometimes buried into the screen for an early start. Sometimes joyful while sharing a story from the previous night’s events. When I walk in, the rhythmic courtesy amuses me as we share our morning pleasantaries. Asking the others about their previous night is a hit or a miss if they’ve already shared it with someone else. I can tell by the enthusiasm or the summary that its already been told and I’m just pressing replay on an old story. That’s when I’m asked about my night, I read the energy of the room again and match its wavelength. But I will never spare the details with a colleague whose energy weaves with mine seamlessly over our morning coffee.

Post coffee is the most silent of all, we suddenly face the tasks ahead of us for the day. Intense independent energies, questions asked and answers given in a formal tone to satisfy the job. The flaps of the fan spinning is all we can hear, or the occassional cough and sneeze followed by the innocent bless yous. This is eerily my favourite part of going to work, everyone seems to be the realest in an office space when they have work to do. Playing with other energies with an occasional joke or entertaining banter doesn’t always come naturally to me. It only means I have to play with my energy a lot to match theirs. On some days I do and when I don’t, well, it’s slightly embarrasing. But I carry on and hope they forget. I sense my energy dim when things like this happen, until the like-minded colleague saves me with a funny dog meme. I feel lighter then, and ready to try again.

The end of the day finally comes and I hear the sweet sound of some of my colleagues wrapping up. I look at my work and wonder if I should bother staying for longer, or stay and finish a little more to save some energy for the next day. Saying goodbye for the day has an unsaid awkwardness to it. Asking about their plans for the evening and anticipating the right time to end the conversation to part ways. Some of them exhausted, sighing for a night of cleaning their room ahead of them, some of them chirpy to meet a few friends for drinks or to go on a date. Mental notes for all of us to remember what to ask the next morning. It’s bittersweet, I care for these energies and people around me but the endurance of office relationships intrigues me. Nevertheless I engage and so do they. I enjoy the fact that socialising at work becomes more natural after a couple of months, even though a majority of the hours spent at work keeps us silent.

On the train back home, I sit and I wonder if I’m the only one who senses or notices these things. Maybe I’m sensitive to energies and others just have the natural ability to stay out of their heads or are numb to it. It amuses me how versatile we must all be to function in this push and pull world. Like we’re all trained to be human beings when in reality we’re only humanising our soul. And maybe I feel so out of touch because I know my soul isn’t human, it’s an energy, an alien perhaps, in this manufactured world. And I pretend, day in, day out, like the silent energies on the train. I can’t be the only one in conflict with my soul, trapping it to feel normal in a human world. I’m sure we all think to ourselves, talk to ourselves, as it is but our only form of freedom. Silence is my freedom.