Its loud,
though everyone is asleep. The staff, the residents, everyone.
I wish I was asleep. I don’t understand how they are able to do it with all the noise:
Beepers beeping, old women moaning, grown men crying for help, cell phones ringing, toilets flushing, television blaring. Its so loud, but no one else seems to hear any of it. I wonder if I should wish to be so lucky.
And this is it. This is how it will be; till the end. Everyone is just waiting, holding on so desperately for a return that deep down they know will never come. Bingo on Tuesdays, sloppy-jo Fridays, the occasional guest that brings both happiness through semi-familiar company and depression in the fact that they are seeing you in the state you are in. Their very presence confirms the fact that you are stuck. Stuck in that bed, in that room. You try to keep your cool, cause as embarrassing as this is, it’s better than being alone.
I can’t go there without crying. No one seems to be able to; unless they are asleep that is.
This way we treat our elders reeks of irony. Nobody likes it, yet we know similar fates await us. I really want nothing of the sort, and I don’t think you do either. Searching for alternatives leaves me sad, tired, and alone. All I know is that can’t be me, ever. Please don’t let that be me.
And so I return to my place feeling sick inside, only to medicate the way too many do these days: through the tube. Not traditionally my prescription of choice, but the force of gravity is overwhelmingly sucking me deeper and deeper into the crevices of the couch, holding me down.
Remote in hand I begin to fade out, zombiefied by the glow. My own imagination is slowly suffocated; it seems all hope has been lost. Twenty minutes go by, an hour. It has me. I can’t even be bothered to change the channel during commercial breaks anymore. My mind is infiltrated by mass marketing media that successfully reminds me how incomplete my life is. Shit I don’t want looks appealing. I find my mind wandering; wondering why I don’t have the internet on my phone, cologne that masks my natural sent, a new car, the list piles up. My memories of the voices of lost loved ones from the past are replaced with bastardized jingles that vaguely resemble crappy 80s pop songs. I cry, but no tears come out. So I watch more, laughing when I should be crying. Dying when I should be living. It all adds up and I grow tired, so I ask, why can’t I sleep in the convalescent home like everyone else?
