talking to the moon
The stars have always spoken to Dan.
He finds solace in them because they're comforting whenever he sits on the uncomfortable lawn chair on his balcony, basking in the petrichor that's perhaps a bit too pungent; but he's okay with that. The rain is pattering against the roof of his house, and so Dan just sits and watches.
Dan's gazing up at the stars with a hopeful heart, because he loves how their flavescent hues contrast against the darkness of the night sky, and how they act as the sole source of brightness in his otherwise sepulchral life.
Yet, as he's looking up at these stars that are millions of light years away, he can't help but remember that he is constantly surrounded by radiant people, who didn't need or feel this love that he held for stars because they encompassed their own vibrance that he lacks. That fact constantly plagues him and he hates that stars act as the very reminders of the recurring dullness in his life.
And when he looks at the stars he can't help but feel tempted to end it all, with one leap off of the balcony that would turn haematic screams into nothingness; and he's okay with that.
He knows he needs to stop torturing himself with such beauty found in nebulas, when the grave price was vermilion scars and amethyst abrasions engraved against pure skin. Every argument he tried to make against it contained some sort of idea about cherishing life and all of the bumps in the road were just "part of the journey", but none of it really stuck to him because of the whirlwind of melancholic emotions that constantly ripped the recesses of his mind until he could feel nothing but numbness spreading across his body.
Dan finds himself trying to stray away from the tempting balcony that overlooked the entirety of the London skyline, where he could view all the lives of people he yearned to be; the people who encompassed a vivacity and an affinity for life that he so desired.
But Dan knows how to laugh. He could laugh with such vigor that pain would rise in his chest and crystal tears would inevitably form in his eyes. Dan knows what 'happy' feels like. He could never say that he had never experienced true elation and jubilance filling his stomach. Most importantly, he knows how to enjoy life and he knows a life apart from this one filled with dreaded memories and sorrowful tomorrows.
He just woke up one day, and he was different.
Instead of the Dan whose dimples carved permanent marks into his cheeks and laughed so loud that the noise would pierce all ears in the immediate vicinity, he lacks emotion and the curves on his smile have devolved into nothing but detached stares.
And he's trying to stop from drowning in these dreary thoughts but attaining real happiness is too difficult and he can't help but succumb to the suffocating, insistence waves that come from heart wrenching tears.
Every flaw, every problem he sees within himself, every late night contemplating the importance of his own life seemed to precipitate into one blur of emotions that defined his early adulthood: aching needles poking at every crevice of his being.
It's been consistently clawing at him, and now he can't even do anything without it seeming like it needed required ample amounts of energy that he didn't have.
He doesn't want to work so hard just to be happy.
Dan sits on the sunken sofa cushion in the dark living room of his flat with the television turned on to a low drone, the incessant flashing of the changing commercials on the screen burning into his eyes. He had forgotten how long he'd been sitting there for; all he knew was that it was only to distract himself from going out onto the balcony, because the cravings for feeling and emotion became unbearable to the point where his body was longing for the ground at the bottom of his building.
