Hiding Places

He woke up in the dark, still hanging in his dream. Sweaty hands swept across his pale face, moved his messy hair away from his still half-closed eyes. No muscle was ready to move yet, his eyes struggling to adjust to the dim room. Outside, vehicles droned and roared, engines spluttered, smoke rose into the air searching for freedom, becoming one with the clouds. His curtains shifted in the soft breeze, whispering through the marginally opened window. Footsteps sounded in the hallway, approaching. And water repeatedly dripped from the bathroom sink’s tap, a rhythmic tapping he’d almost adjusted to. It still caught him out first thing in the mornings, but otherwise blended in to the city’s gnawing symphony.

At this point, she came in via the creaking door and looked at his unmoving body, blinking at his figure. He heard her enter, and listened for what she might say, hoping that she wouldn’t tell him he was late for anything. As far as he was concerned the calendar was clear for today, a rare chance to re-coup. No meetings, no eyes on him, no rictus grins for cameras or otherwise.

The night before had been chaotic. Friends were visiting — hers, not his — and this always made him feel anxious. He wasn’t usually self conscious, but there was something about being around her friends that made him especially uncomfortable. It was as though they could sense his past through his skin, they could feel that he didn’t belong in this city or even in this (relatively cheap) flat. The wallpaper sometimes sagged on the walls of the bedroom, but pushing it back to the wall with a firm press was enough to make it stick again. He felt as though he experienced the same process, falling apart to be pulled back together when given some time to heal. But her friends could always see straight through him, they saw the cracks he was always masking more effectively than anybody else.

So, these friends visited. They played their usual songs, difficult to hear over their talking to one another, the cheers and yelps and laughs which filled the room and shook its walls. He wanted to slide out and sit at his computer, perhaps doing some work but most likely scrolling aimlessly through content he didn’t care about. In one ear and straight out of the other. But instead he sat, trying to please her by showing a willingness to interact, and he listened in to their conversation whenever he wasn’t actively zoning out.

The droning music, all sounds he’d heard before but which had left his memory soon after, gave him a terrible headache. He began to feel nauseous, feeling these faces turning his way, feeling his hands become clammy, pairs of eyes burning into him, his flaws rising to the surface. They talked about their backgrounds and their successes at work, their words filled with joy and optimism. It wasn’t a conversation he could join with any honesty, despite his decent earnings and semi-stable position. He came from a place where to be here, now, in his socialite nightmare would have been seen as ‘making it’ to most. He didn’t have to do manual labour which ripped his skin apart or broke his bones, made his muscles ache and aged him at double speed. He didn’t have to walk home beneath the sky’s eerie veil of stars, He still had beautiful hands, with soft skin and only one callous which he’d gained when drumming as a teenager, sitting at the top of his palm — a scar earned before he transcended the area he was supposed to be trapped in, and therefore a memory he tried to ignore.

He was a man stuck between two places. As the girls continued discussing their recent promotions and who they’d recently had to fire, who they had recently forced into financial panic but thought nothing of it, he sat silently and thought, sucking on his cigarettes and letting the smoke escape his mouth in small clouds. He remembered how his father had worked 16 hour days six times a week, welding, taking any available overtime with a bizarre joy, coming home and falling asleep within minutes. He’d spend the weekends half asleep, murmuring to himself at the tiny kitchen table with a half-filled bowl of cereal before him as the sun crawled across the sky. He didn’t have the same strange, cyclic life as his father — he moved around quite freely, he worked to his own routine, it was his thoughts and feelings which ultimately paid the bills here. And yet, he was still alienated. Everything felt so corporate and tightly compact, so forcefully constrained and shackled. He felt like an outsider sitting in this room, and the same feeling plagued him when he walked — though it felt like floating — through the bustling city streets. He’d always wish for it to rain so he felt able to raise his hood, something to hide behind, something to stop him from being observed by the CCTV and the passing faces which all seemed focus on his tiny body.

Now, lying in this bed after three hours sleep and an intense nightmare, he felt he couldn’t face those same fears again. Was he still in his dream, still in those dark streets sprinting between the cover of the streetlights? He curled up into a ball, the muscles in his thighs stinging as he did so. Trying to hide his devastation, he swallowed his feelings down. But they seemed to become wedged in his throat. Are you okay?, she asked. But she didn’t sound sincere, it seemed more like a question asked to save herself from drowning in the awkward silence. He said nothing, closing his eyes tightly and fearing her eyes as they burned again into his skin. He said nothing, remembering where he had come from, remembering all he’d had to do to escape his prescribed fate and the 16 hour days and his father’s brain, remembering the people he had lost in the process. His ex-girlfriend had told him he could run but not hide from who he was. He’d balked at the time, but he knew now that it was true. The ghosts wormed their way into his brain and stayed there. He said nothing, and life continued its ravenous devastation outside, the clock continued to tick, the tap continued to drip and he still felt nothing but the deepest shame, the most pained impostor syndrome, his internal hiding places threatening to leak out of his body.