and so the saga continues. the depressive hermit escaped to a cave of someone else's hoarded, useless memories, and i have fled to an unstable but contented playhouse.
the asylum, we called it, because we gaily proclaimed our supposed insanity. an apt title, for a house that eats souls and locks them in to fester in its corrupted rooms from which few escape. we are the lucky ones, he and i, for we are stronger and better people for the testing. those who remain, however, pass on messages of apocryphal cheer as they sink deeper into the abyss.
the hippie is hardening slowly to life's realities - her needles that she fervently believes to heal others she now turns on herself to ease her pains. her last love defrauded her, and she in return repaid the favour. now she tortures herself, baiting her heart by rekindling their 'friendship'. she says it is peaceable, but i feel the tension in her words from a hundred kilometres away. she tempts herself with boys - beautiful bodies but childish souls - to avoid her own maturity. after all, that would require her to think, and for now she would much rather carouse in her self-constructed escapism.
the whore, on the other hand, is in love. the self-professed and sticky kind, reminding me of half-chewed insipidly sweet gum stuck in a stranger's hair. she blogs - i may be expecting! planned and wanted and please don't tell me i'm stupid. i roll my eyes; everyone already knew - stupidity and impending doom, both. he doesn't know yet, but the internet does. she announces their convenient abscondment to adelaide, to increase their menagerie. a child bride, playing at grown up games; ugly in clothes and masks too old for her naivety. i pity the fool. he digs deep holes. i'm glad i left my shovel behind in that house.
i find them an endless source of amusement, and grounding irony - a tragic pantomime compelling you to watch, but allowing you only boo and hiss from your seat.
the depressive is now merely a hermit - slowly healing his scars and learning to love himself again. nocturnal, he prowls down to work the nightshift at the local supermarket. he is happier than i've ever seen him - happier, perhaps is not the right word, but he is certainly content in his new cave.
and i? i play at house in an apartment that is still not my home. my belongings lay obfuscated at my parents', belying the pretence that i still cohabitate their home. i have no home. recently, however, the merest inklings of belonging have begun to impugn my homeless martyrdom, and whilst i still feel like a child playing at 'house', ikea and i have begun to make me a new place to belong. i too, am happy.
