What Am I For?

I am a creature. I am dressed in black. These things hang off me, loose and ill-fitting. They are wearing me.

I walk down the cobblestone streets. Black wrought iron balconies stack overhead. I know people are looking at me, as they do, but I can't see them right now. I can't see myself. I am blind, trying to fight my way up the street, trying to fight my way towards a semblance of normality, which right now feels like immersion in some sort of common self. The issue, though, isn't a hyper sense of individuality--it's nullity. Who am I right now? Absolutely nothing. What am I doing? Absolutely nothing. 

My brain, panicked, goes into a deep freeze of indecision. It's never sure how to handle these scenarios which periodically arise. Eat something nice, it says. I eat. Nothing. Sit in the park a while, how refreshing that will be. Nothing. Remember that time, and that time, and that time. That time when you mattered to a person. Something flickers, something turns over. The programming is back. You are a human, you have human friends, and there is a narrative here. There are dangling threads that you must pick up. You stand up and your brain says, time to go home Bronwyn. Good. Walk. What a nice, normal day.

And still. The candy stalls on the street exist to distract. Something is wrong. Eat candy. Many cheap multi-course restaurants line the streets. Something is wrong. Carbs. Bright clothes are plastered on wide-eyed shiny mannequins  Wear them and someone will like you. There will be sex and everything bad will go away for a while. Or everything bad will revisit you. You have to hope for the former.

It's possible that everything is fine, and you are wrong. And you hope that means you are special, but probably you are just chemically unbalanced. But you're not crazy, just looking at things a little further underwater than most at the moment. You're pretty sure the life around you, here and where you came from, is one shade paler than desired. Privilege helps correct the tone. The problem is so well-concealed at times, though, as to be maddening. You want to have hands that can encompass it all and correct the tilt of the light, restore the tone. You can't, though; it will always remain this way. Either you change, or you suffer it. Choice is yours.