I haven't put my thoughts to paper for days. Why would I when only my continued frustration and disappointment would fill the pages. It might be therapeutic to write my thoughts down, but I have no desire to write the same words every time I pick up this pen. Things are different this time though, I feel like I have something worthwhile to write once more.
It has been several days since my last entry, painful days of waiting and hoping and being disappointed over and over again. I continued my usual routine, I worked my boring job and whiled away my break time surrounded by smiling people in the shimmering sun whilst I brooded and bemoaned my own misery. Every time footsteps drew close to me, my breath caught in my chest and my head swiveled in the direction of the sound like a bloodhound who has found the sent of a fox. Each time my eyes were met only by a passerby who like just about everyone else did not know I was there.
More and more it felt like I was falling back into the dark chasm I had so briefly crawled out from. The sun once once a pleasant sensation on my skin returning to a tantalising light above my head, beckoning me towards happiness that was so hard to obtain. Even to me it seems strange, sad even, to be so damaged by her failure to return to my bench. Why should a fleeting meeting have such a profound in pact on me? Why should I be so desperate so see the face of a stranger who spoke but a few words to me? It is indeed a depressing thing, but I am a sad man. When nobody is willing to acknowledge your existence unless forced to by circumstances beyond their control, when you are nobody to the world but one of the faceless masses, a part of their daily regime that they are forced to comply with, even a few words in passing can mean the world. Someone simply treating you like a person can lift you out of that chasm in an instant and I am simply grasping at that breeze trying to hold onto it.
I write this diary to turn my thoughts and feelings into something tangible, to create proof that I exist as a human being and that I'm not just a featureless part of the landscape in the store, or at that beach. She had given me hope that I would one day no longer need to resort to immortalising the most pathetic parts of my self just to prove that I'm a part of the same reality as the beautiful people I scorn from my seat. Today, after waiting so long and fearing she would never return, I heard a greeting at my side and in an instant the dwindling flame of my hope roared to life in a blaze.
I turned my head and there she was, smiling that brilliant smile and gazing at me with those dazzling eyes. She had come back and what's more, she remembered me. As we spoke she expressed surprise to meet me in the exact same spot. I tried my best to muster a pleasant smile as I told her that I always came back to this same spot during my breaks. I lied and told her that I enjoyed the scenery. I could never let her know that I'm drawn to this place by a magnetic hatred instead of a desire to simply sit in peace in the warmth of the summer sun. She spoke to me about her job, about the customers that she saw all the time and about how she disliked their pretentious attitudes and disrespect. More and more I felt connected to her as I drank in her words whilst my heart hammered so loud in my chest that I feared that she might hear it.
I can say with utmost honesty that never before have I been so happy to hear another human being complain. The sound of her voice had me enthralled however and being spoken to like a living, breathing person instead of a machine made me feel more alive than I had felt in years. Conversation cannot go on like that though, you have to actively be a part of it or eventually it stops and a heavy silence hangs in the air weighing down on the air like lead around the ankles of a diver and you drown in the discomfort of it. With that in mind I felt anxiety flaring to life, I had to fight to maintain my calm demeanor as the words begun to flow less readily from her mouth as she searched for a way to keep speaking. I blurted out the first question that came to mind, anything to give the words a reason to come again.
I asked her what drove her to continue working so hard at an establishment she so despised. A light blush crept across her soft features at the question and she giggled the most melodic laugh I had ever heard. Her reaction simultaneously surprised me and made my heart leap for joy. She quickly returned to normal however, leaving me wishing to see that expression again. She was embarrassed she told me, because she thought it would sound childish. I needed to know however, so I prodded lightly and sure enough she happily, albeit shyly, divulged that she was pursuing a career in music as a singer and that she was working two jobs to pay for tuition at a special performing arts college. I think I smiled for real when she said that. Never before has a person been so suited to the stage, the way she seems to glow would draw the attention of even the most disinterested and even when she spoke her voice was music to the ears. I told her that she had nothing to be ashamed of and that it was perfectly fine to have dreams of success and fame or a passion for the arts and continuing to draw courage from her own I told her that I would love to hear her perform.
She laughed again when I said that, that beautiful clear sound filling my ears like the chiming of a bell.
"I will if you will" she said to me, her tone playful. I didn't understand and I just looked at her like a fool and she laughed once more. "I'll sing for you if you do it for me" she chuckled, teasing me and enjoying the look of horror on my face. I couldn't make a pleasant sound with my mouth if offered a million dollars, even my voice is dull and uninteresting. I continued to just stare at her dumbfounded, prompting another bout of laughter - not that I was complaining. She looked at me slyly
"Well what can you do?"
I sat there for a moment. Wondering what I could possibly do that would equal the chance to here her voice. The only thing I have ever been remotely good at is poetry, but I'd never shared anything I wrote with anyone before. I never even read my work aloud in class at school if I could avoid it though. In the end I realised I had been silent for too long and that things were definitely getting uncomfortable as the joy slowly begun to fade from her face. In a hurry, I forced a smile onto my face and told her I was a poet. Apparently that was a good answer, because the glee returned to her expression and she spoke once more.
"It's a deal" she said, adding "I'll be back tomorrow and I'll sing for you if you let me read one of your poems."
With that she stood to leave, but not before asking my name. I told her gladly and grinning at me again she told me that hers was Clarissa. I told her that it was an appropriate name, my turn to leave her stunned it seemed. She asked why, bemused and I replied that Clarissa means famous. I didn't tell her that it also means bright and that just by speaking to me on these days she made my life a little bit brighter. Now I need to get to work, I haven't written anything aside from these miserable diary entries for years and I need to produce something worth reading, that I can show Clarissa without shame. I'll work as hard as I have to in order to hear her praise me and to listen to that melodic voice in song.
