Vitruvian pose

A micro story from Micro Stories Collection and Short Stories

While lying down in your bed in a Vitruvian pose you feel the weight of the sky pressing on your body. This is the flipping moment where you can either decide to make an effort or hide from all. Precious ten seconds which will define your next 24 hours. A single thought can make a world of difference. What would it be today, you wonder.

You find it exhausting, this search for the one single thought which will allow you to get out of bed. To wash yourself and comb your hair. To put a mask on and go to work, and act as if the world’s burden were not on your shoulder.

Each day you sink a little deeper in your hole, and you add layer over layer to your pain, which is now so multifaceted that you are sure that even a psychologist would not be of any help, none can understand. You don’t understand either. You were in pain, and you asked yourself why. Then you started to be in pain for being in pain. Then you added the pain of not being able to manage your pain. Then for not following the program to learn how to manage your pain. And the pain of feeling inadequate because nobody around you seems to have any pain. Now, it is all so tangled that nobody can help you.

You did not call in sick that day. You showed up for work and on the way home, you bumped to a friend. You wondered if she is still a friend, if you have any friends at all. Nobody has called you for a long time. Sure, you haven’t replied to e-mails and the few occasions that someone called you to do something, you declined. But should not friends keep calling you, even if you don’t show up for them?

Your friend suggests you have a coffee together, but you don’t want to talk, especially to someone who does not care about you. Before leaving, she tells you again to get in touch to organize a dinner together. You think she always says so, but they never organized anything, you know she will never call you and beg you to go to dinner.

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