I decide it is time to finally get started. I don't understand why I hesitated all this time, knowing that for each wasted moment, a part of me curled into a ball and died, alone in a corner somewhere, far away. I don't want parts of me to die.
I, like everyone else, am just wandering through life trying to find myself, complete and content. But that is the tricky part. I don't really know what will complete me. Or if I'll ever feel that way, no matter what I do. All I know is that my time is up, because if I let things go on any longer the way the are headed, I know that I'll soon see myself in the mirror with gaping holes. Parts of me are leaving for good and I have to find out what has to be done to fill those gaps. There is no more time to hesitate or hold back. I have one good hunch on what might make me complete and now all that is left is the final leap. This is it. A blind leap of faith is my only option . My ears are pounding under the sound of the ticking clock.
Determined, I pick up my pen from the table and sit to write. The nib hovers over the empty page.
Tick-tock.
For a long time.
Tick-tock-tick.
I can't think of anything. My mind suddenly seems blanker than the page.
The lights go out in the window across from mine.
I have to do it. I know. But no words come to me. Nothing.
I curse myself. And after a long debate, complete with name-calling, the voices in my head make way for some more silence. More blankness. More emptiness. I put the pen back where it was till I'd disturbed it.
I stand up and walk away, leaving behind a page as blank as any. A clock chimes twelve somewhere far away. Another day is gone with the smoke and ashes from my cigarette and the page remains unprinted, and the pen still filled with ink.
Thoughts slowly start creeping back into my head now that the task at hand has been abandoned, and I stand at the window, a little more empty of myself than I was the day before. A chill midnight breeze scrapes my cheek slyly. I watch another piece of me jump off the clock tower at the twelfth chime. And here I stand, far far away, spectating, speculating, calculating and utterly useless.
I wonder if perhaps, it is too late now; Too late for the remaining mes to make any difference; If too many mes have already died. I wonder if I am half full or half empty. Both. Perhaps I am more empty than full, though. I look into the mirror to judge better. I can't really tell. It is that time of the night when optical illusions are abundantly at play. The lighting is bad and there is too much smoke.
In front of me is an insomniac, staring at me from over the dark bags under his eyes. His hair is ruffled and his beard is unkempt. The room reeks of disappointment and wasted youth. I put out the cigarette. He is certainly not the person I would have expected to see in a few years, as I set out into the world, a fresh graduate in literature, with big dreams, a pen full of ink and a blank page. The ink in the pen and the blankness of the page have stayed, but the dreams I once had in me have all evaporated, a little bit with each piece that's gone missing from me.
And here I am, an insomniac with dark bags under his eyes, ruffled hair and an unkempt beard. And holes. Missing pieces. I down another glass to fill the gaps, waiting for the next me to jump off the tower. There's nothing more to do now. Just the wait.