My Dirty Black Shirt

There was no one in the room except for the shadows lurking in the far corner. It was quietly moving, as if taunting me, longing to strike. I don’t dare vanquish it for I know its burdens. I have been suppressing it for the better good. Still, it managed to escape from my decrepit solitude, and caught me off guard. But I didn’t care. Try as it might, it is just a figment of my deranged imagination, a hallucination so distorted; I sometimes forget to live my reality.

People. They expect me to be great, to be brave, to be useful and to do extraordinary stuff because they once saw me doing those kind of things. But I’m no different from those street rogues begging for mercy and a little respect. I crave for attention just like what usual people do. The only difference is that I don’t know how to act when attention finally stares me in the face. I tend to discard them most of the time. I hate those people who love me, and I, though unaware as I always am, love those who don’t love me back. Perhaps I take those who adore me for granted. Maybe I think that they will always be there as my fall back plan, if once again, for times so many, I’m turned down by the people who catches my gaze. When will I stop dreaming that these people won’t be there for me forever? I should stop now.

I don’t talk much. Silly but I really don’t, especially if it’s about myself. I do believe that the world has more pressing problems than listen to an old child’s whining. But these past few days, I’m drowned in a dilemma, torn between my wants and the things I must do. I disparagingly took down the rest of myself with a final contemptuous look in the mirror. Surely I don’t brag too much? Or do I? Surely, I don’t think high of myself, or at least higher than the others? Or do I? Some credit for my great, brave and honest acts. I’d rather be drowned in my own despair than suffer from being an airhead.

The shadows stirred, heavily swaying in the air cast by my fan. Longing for its fingers, cold and tight around my neck, I took a moment of rest. It did not come. Maybe Death wants me to finish this first before it reaps me. An unfinished business might cause him troubles. (That was meant as a joke. Please laugh.)

I don’t wear black anymore. When I was younger, my playmate told me that black is an evil color. True enough, in every TV shows I watched, black is the color of the enemy. When I entered high school, my friends and my foes looked at me with a raised eyebrow. I wore black every now and then, when we were not in uniform or every time we went out. But I was accepted fully by my friends, though copy my lifestyle was a trip to the moon for them. And that’s one of the things I miss in high school. The variety of friends I used to have, without them contemplating much on how we look with each other’s lucidity. We were after the company and not the brand names or image we wish to portray. It’s tasty, and sweet, but like all good things in life, it did end.

Today, I am forgetting my dark belongings, thinking that they belonged to my past, full of immaturity and restless teenage wheezing. I tried to get out of my shackles, the chains that bound me to my black, broken heart once again, and as I did, I know that all of it should start from every little, baby steps. I kept my dark metals away, tucked neatly in my chest, a remainder of a must-be-forgotten past. My anger, my world, my once forgotten soul, locked securely, never to be commemorated again. The death of my childhood brought more sorrow than the world’s bearings. But like all the good things in life, it must end.

Three years has passed since the day I cursed my wretched life and I never regret what I did. Seeing that my kind is slowly being tormented by the advent of pop followers, who dress in black, uses my chains to symbolize their emotions and use the phrase of their favorite sub genre to justify their self-expression. They are a hell lot different than me. People just confuse it, for these creatures ruined our essence, our recluse, our shelter. My kind does not succumb to their sentiments that easily. We do not hate the world or humanity, in a manner of speaking. Just their vicious lies and violence they toss at one another. But this new breed, these teens and their generation, that is their way of discovery. I have mine. And like all the bad things in life, this will end.

Wondering deeply about my sorrowful repentance, I seek again my life, as I once knew it before. Believing only in myself, trusting no one but me and listening to my own private and silent debates. I miss it a lot. But the time has come for me to grow. And I guess, the dirty black shirt that hung on my cabinet, the one I disappointedly mistook for the infamous effigy of Death, beckoning me to its heartless gaze, will have to remain untouched and unused for tomorrow’s appointment. I have to start a good life. Yet a teeny voice mocks from the side of my ear, giving my dirty black shirt a grotesque, twisted face of a boy I once knew, saying that all good things, will eventually, gradually, ultimately, end.