Disillusionment

This is what it means to be severed.

It happened so quietly you almost missed it; one moment you were a thread in the fabric of belonging, woven into flashing lights and liquid euphoria. The next, a labyrinth opened before you like a wound in the earth, swallowing you whole with its towering walls, grey against the pebble sky. Here, a dull blizzard rages on, endless and muffling.

You used to be someone- used to exist in vibrancy, part of a river of veins pulsing with shared purpose. Never before had you felt the stony burden that now crushes your ribs together, settling across your shoulders like an opaque fog. Never before had you heard your own singular breathing bounding off stone walls, heavy with absence.

You prayed so hard to be untethered, and now here you are.

The mornings are stale, engulfed in ash and snow, bleeding into the deafeningly quiet day. All you can do is walk, and every step takes you further from what you once were. The memory lives under your skin, warmed by phantom heat and yet never surfacing. Everything you knew receded like a tide, and you are now left with empty sand.

Sometimes you hear laughter carried by the wind, achingly familiar. You are taken back to that living room, engulfed in smoke and half-presence. Familiar sounds of console beeps and friendly affection fill the air, but feel transparent. Ghostly, almost. You can feel the weight of bodies pressed against yours on too-small couches, hear the conversations spiralling into emotional supernova in the early hours of the morning. How easy it was to be profound, to be loved. Now, the memory recoils at the touch.

Here, you are not the same.

The silence has its own texture now, thick and filling. It plasters over the spaces where chatter used to live, where spontaneity used to boom. Sometimes, you speak out loud to yourself, testing if your voice still works. Every time, you find the words fall flat against impassive stone.

Mostly, the walls of this labyrinth are smooth and blank, but other times they crumble. Through the cracks seeps a mellow, aureate light that warms your hands and face, and your outline starts to blur. Sometimes you turn a corner and there is a small comfort- a new expense, or a message from someone who remembers your name- but these crumble. You find out the hard way that the feeling they leave behind dissolves the harder you try to hold on.

The blizzard obscures all direction; you cannot find a way out, cannot tell if you are moving forward or simply wandering in circles eroded by your own feet. But somewhere, and you know this with all the certainty in the world, somewhere at the heart of the maze waits a small Soho pub, its windows glowing amber against the grey, filled with faceless people you have yet to meet. The pint glasses are cheap and the floor is sticky, but within the wooden walls lies a haven. It is crowded and urban and ironically lonely, a paradox doused with possibility.

This will become your faith now: the hope that somewhere ahead, that the maze will open into something warmer than memory. That the laughter there will be different, but no less real.

It remains elusive and you cannot find it. Not yet. But you know it is here, standing strong. You know that it is better than what you have, warm as the light bleeding through the cracks. And so you pick up your feet,

and you walk.