buried alive

they build up, don't they. things. creep up on you slowly, unnoticeable and gradual, like the soft ring around your waist that did not use to be there or the lines on your face that are deeper than before. small things, ones you thought to be irrelevant and yourself who you thought to be able to deal with them; back in the day when these things didn't matter all that much these were still plausible options. or maybe it was in fact so that other things, good things, mattered more, and you didn't pay attention to these things that now eat your sanity. 


until they started to build up and broke the surface of mattering, of making a difference and of bearing relevance. emerged like the towers of atlantis would rise from the sea a million years from now; unapologetic, impossible to ignore.


monday mornings, the continuous rain, crumbs on the floor, the smell of her perfume that you never liked. the same route you take to get to work, the sound of the brakes of your car when you slow down to the crossroads to give way to the girls who look younger and younger every year. the feeling of vague panic that you experience more and more often not knowing entirely why; but it could have something to do with the fact that you are growing older and nothing really seems to work out the way you planned it to. suddenly you miss the hissing sound of the gas stove more than you thought possible, and at the same time you know that this is only because your stove is electric now.


and you honestly don't know what to do with this sediment of things that has grown into a size of a mountain, and that is maybe the worst about it all. gradual as it may had been, you still felt it, the built-up of things. you sensed it when you realized your patience had started to wear thin and was quite certain of it when the reflection in the mirror no longer felt like your own; and yet you did nothing. you could have, perhaps, stopped it -- shoveled some of it away, made some space, release some of the burden before the mass of it became too heavy to move. but you did none of that, partly because you stopped looking into the eyes of the person staring at you from the mirror and partly because you lacked the courage to even try. 


and now you don't have the strength anymore; the build-up of things has grown taller than your head and sealed you inside itself. so you go on as you have, day after day after day, because it's the only thing for you to do. and things continue building up, and you hope and fear for the day when you won't be able to remember how the gas stove sounded like.