Life as a Viewing Experience

“You’re glowing,” they speak.

And whatever could that mean?

The room has gone dark long ago, with no slits in the curtains for moonlight.

Or sunlight, but who focuses on details such as that?

Certainly not you, not when they have just spoken to you. After all, what a marvelous feat it is!

You would never have thought that something like this could happen to someone like you.

You didn’t think it was possible for an observer such as yourself to be spoken to.

You were simply watching.

As you always do. An observer watching, day in and day out, rain or shine, night or day.

Now you have no need to focus on such trivial things, as an observer you don’t need to focus on things like that. You simply need to watch. Do enough and just enough, that way your head remains above water enough to keep on watching, observing… viewing.

Viewing it all as though you have any right to at all when you have no means or want to participate.

That’s why it is always so strange.

Strange, when the people you’re watching speak to you, interact with you.

Why would they want to interact with you?

Surely you would be seen as a creep for simply watching it all fly by your eyes, surely you are a creep for staring.

It must be painful to watch you drift along looking pitiful and worn down.

Yes, they must take pity on you.

Although it still seems that it would be impossible to reach you, you who was just supposed to drift by and eventually away.

Away for good when you have nothing left to observe.

But this sparks something strange, something that almost makes you want to respond.

That makes you want to reach through the screen and grab their hand and walk away talking for the first time in a horribly long time.

But no… you can’t go.

Not when there’s still so much to observe.

You aren’t ready to let go of this life yet. For while reaching through the screen sounds so exciting… it’s just too much.

Almost like a form of Stockholm Syndrome you just can’t let go of watching, not interacting, for fear of the unknown.

It is understandable, for watching unafraid is all you have ever known.

Besides, you know better.

You know that the glow they referred to was just the light from the screen that separates you two, casting itself onto your face.

You were a fool with that brief hope, for you have always known better.

Always known that you would never be with them, you would always be stuck behind glass only you can see.

Stuck.

Destined to always be the one viewing life as an experience of someone else’s… not your own.