Attention

No one thinks about me anymore and it is admittedly to my detriment. There was a time when I may have warranted some attention, where I received that attention whether truly warranted or not, but that time has passed. I don’t know whether I really warranted it, but I got it. And negative though that attention may have been, and it certainly was negative - unpleasant, unsavoury, distasteful - it was nevertheless there. It was there because I felt it.

There was a watershed moment, I believe there must have been - I mean I don’t think the evolution was gradual. I can’t point to a particular time or place where I stopped being the thing that was thought about, to any widespread public address or fanfare, any sharp pain or explosive puking, any immediate inexplicable loss of eyesight —  it wasn’t really under my control or watch — but it wasn’t a measured withdrawal, a protracted goodbye, I feel it was something sudden and quite matter of fact, yes at my behest, but with the willing agreement of all those tired of wasting their energy all consumed up and thinking. As soon as I gave the all clear, they were like rats up a drainpipe. They were liberated.

Now, I have become ignored left right and centre. At least that’s how it appears set against all that horrible attention I used to bring upon myself in those times when I sought it. Back then, I would do almost anything to be in the eye-line, I was a trouble-maker, and it was mostly negative. It was all a reckless, shoot-me-down, unapologetic sort of free-for-all. It was a tirade against myself and anyone who came close. It was a fast-and-hard hunkering down for abuse, it was tantrums and freak-outs and bouts of machine-gun madness which led nowhere, which culminated always in an embarrassed twitchy silence.

When I was thought about, I carefully weighed up the pain against the meagre nuggets of succour and off-cuts and the awkward second-hand contrived husks of sympathy I could always garner. I always went back for more. It always seemed worth it. But I was more relentless than you could imagine. It didn’t take much.

Since I now spurn attention, since I now require much less to be an object of focus for others, for all sorts of random bods, this is precisely what has come about. I have been given what I struck out for: a thought-free no man’s land, a place without ballast, a sphere devoid of burdensome sidelong glances, free from the unabsorbable pressure of imagined or faked interest. I have practically conned myself out of existence.

Now, there is the silence of nothing, a stilted peace, the repose. There is a vacuum, an unbroachable black hole. My body — if you can speak of one — is in its correct alignment. It is rested. My mind — whatever exists of it — swims in the opiates released after a short but profound sleep. No one is thinking about me because they know I don’t require to be thought about. But it won’t last. They will think about something closer at hand for now, something urgent and pressing, something else that has perhaps replaced my burning need for extraneous thought and attention, something equally alarming and all-consuming, equally stupid and moot, something brought into focus only by dint of its asking to be, by virtue of the fact that it wanted to be focussed on when it might just have easily escaped that focus, or when it might just have easily been anything else of the million and one things that could have been focused on that actually were.

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So I found out that people had never really wanted to think about me in the first place. I am coming to terms with it. I suppose it is sad but I don’t feel sadness. I suppose it is sentimental and sad and worthy of pity. I suppose that I feel like breaking down into someone’s arms and imploring them hysterically to come back to me to think once again ever so vigorously about me. I will countenance any type of thought they care to have about me - nothing will be too extreme.

But I can’t explain because I can no longer force it. The reign is over. I have burned myself out. They will think about me eventually again maybe, but maybe it will be a long long long time coming. It could take aeons, multiple lifetimes. And the thought will be different this time, it will be natural and dare I say wholesome. It will be for the common good. I wonder though: will I be able to hold out for that long, will I be able to wait?