Leaving Home

So I must leave. Go to the here and now when those who work the morning shift are relieved of their posts by those who are working the next. I come back here where the cacophony of flapping lips jars me out of concentration. Worker bee sounds. Buzzzzzzz. I work in a bee hive.

Some days I am part of the drone. The blues and the yellows of the other bees look beautiful. I notice the differences. I can zero in on one buzz, then zoom out to hear many, and be part of it.

Sometimes it sounds like an Ohm, a smooth continuous drone that melts into time that erases Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I am my in most functional, my most efficient. To be efficient, I must be empty. It is convenient. I am light, I am not a burden. I am in harmony with their rhythm.

Some days are like this. Now. When I come to work wearing funny non-black-and-yellow stripes. When I forget to wear my pants. When I cannot try on their opinions. When trite is useless and I am on the verge of throwing that back like a fuck-you.

I have given up explaining myself. It is beyond them to comprehend the cause of my faults for which I will apologize, make amends with concrete plans and schedules, but for which I will no longer attempt to explain. Genuine apology without its history. It makes me sad; I sometimes wish I embodied their definition of normal.

Like this girl right across me. Go to school, work and excel at it, find a boy, get married. Soon, have kids, work, enjoy domestic life, work, enjoy married life, work, despair over family life, work, miss being single, work, re-learn gratitude  and contentment, work, re-enjoy family life. And after all the ruckus and the celebrations of human life, up and die, truly content, wiser, grateful for what the universe has gifted us with. Change one's mode of existence, yes, and head on to Valhalla.

Every so often we try to figure ourselves out. Fix and re-fix the self. I can be brave enough to be my own guinea pig, except that there are casualties around me. All the bees die. Or I chase them away. The guilt of knowing that these casualties are by my undoing.

See, I have talents: I can wear your patience thin. I can run away when confronted. Scratch at your face unreasonably when cornered. Sing to the moon like a lunatic. No one believes what I sing about.