Perils of the Mind

The action of inaction, the churning of the mind. Thoughts recycled like water pummeling the shore, grounded briefly before being pulled back into the endless wasteland of the sea. She once asked a friend what she daydreamed about and the reply was nothing, her mind went blank. Perhaps her brain did not compensate for the emptiness of her life. She asked another friend if he was happy and he said that intelligent people are often times unhappy, but remarked that he wasn’t referring to himself. She still didn’t know if he was being truthful; she would most likely never know. All she knew was that she needed to empty her mind. Her thoughts prohibited her from socializing, concentrating on schoolwork, sleeping. She wanted to be free from them; they consumed her, cut her off from normality. But she didn’t want to give up herself, the cloud gazing, butterfly watching, people observing. Some mistook her for an idiot as she stopped in the middle of a city street listening to the leaves whisper. She spoke to them and they spoke back. She was one with the world, yet so far removed from it.
This is why there was no one at her funeral, just a priest and the next door neighbor that fed her cats. She had stopped feeding them, would sit in her recliner all day staring at the wood grains of the floor. But when asked by the neighbor how she was doing, she always replied that she was “decent”. The neighbor thought this an odd response, not good, not bad, but acceptable. But unlike her young neighbor, our heroine had realized that sometimes acceptable is the best one can hope for. She knew happiness was a temporary emotion, something that came and went, never staying for desert. She had never chased the happiness that was owed her. She had once thought that her years of loneliness entitled her to happy golden years, but this notion quickly faded. She moved inside, sat in front of a large picture window and watched; it was all she had learned to do. She had seen all there was to see, had witnessed the little moments that pass all of us by. But she had misinterpreted. This is why there was no one to wish her farewell on the day she died. There was nothing to say farewell to.