The Definition of You and Me

[ THE DEFINITION OF YOU AND ME ]

It doesn't happen all at once, unlike the way people fall in love or fall asleep. Those things happen somewhere in-between spaces of intertwined fingers or uneven breaths. Finding self-worth sadly doesn't come as naturally or quickly as that, no matter how much we'd wish it to be. Fingers can't help but gravitate towards each other, breaths can't help but contract and expand, and all we can't seem to help is each other. We're helpless and human, so that's how you and I begin. We don't put the best foot forward or hold out the less clammy hand. We don't say the right words, think the nice thoughts, or feel the right emotions. Instead of perfect, we are human; we stand beside each other on a busy street, inches apart, refusing to acknowledge the other's presence.

We are strangers in every sense of the word.

The cold evening air blows at us, and it makes us hover closer to each other. Maybe it's the Universe giving us a sign, but it hasn't treated us very well in the past years so we ignore it like a petulant child. It's all evident in the slump of my shoulders and in the dark circles under your eyes, how we're both too busy with life and too free to die. It's a paradox that pushes and pulls, pushes and pulls, pushes and pulls. We go with the perpetual flow like normal people, like all people, and it continually wears us out - sometimes slowly, and sometimes suddenly.

It happens slowly for me, but it probably happens suddenly for you. Mine is such a steady decline that I wonder if anyone has even noticed how my words have trapped themselves in my throat. I keep losing the strength to force them out as the days go by, because I keep thinking that my efforts are better spent on other substantial things, like eating, sleeping, and waking. All the mundane things of life require conscious effort from me now, and if I want to be normal I have to focus on them. It hasn't always been like this, but now that it is, it renders me absolutely mute in your presence.

Your weariness is probably from a wham-bam-boom! of moments that has stripped you of your energy - a series of unfortunate and catastrophic events that has relentlessly badgered you until all you can do is surrender and fall short of expectations, goals, and dreams. You are empty of anything else but the anger and frustration coiling around you like tight wires, ready to spring at a moment's notice.

It's in the name of self-defense that you lash out in the form of a dangerous glare at a guilty passerby that accidentally elbows you in the rib.

The wires around you coil tighter, and if I had the words I would ask if you could still breathe.

You let out an indignant huff, letting the anger seep out a bit before it consumes you.

We stand on a pavement that has cracks running along the cement in the kind of asymmetric chaos that momentarily distracts me from you. The lines trip all over each other as they race down the road, and it reminds me of the way my colleagues fight to climb the corporate ladder. I try not to think of them with a bitter undertone, because the working world tends to turn even the nicest of people into savage animals that would leave you out to dry just to save their own skins. They're really just playing the game of life, like I am, so I shouldn't fault them for that.

But some nights - like tonight - I wonder if all the competition is worth it.

I haven't moved from my spot in the office food chain in ages. My colleagues would say it's because I lack confidence, my boss would say it's because I don't have the initiative, and all I would really like to say is that it's because I am tired and I'm not sure how long I can keep going. My work is infamous for being uninspired, and lately it takes all my willpower to even get it to that same mediocre level.