The Locker Room

I’m fine sitting alone. Don’t invite me over to talk with you out of pity. If I wanted to be with people, I’d insert myself into a conversation about the chemistry test or how spring break was with a gathering of people who’s interconnected past defines their friendship. Mine would too. If I wanted to participate in the societal  practice of small talk with groups of people who are by default on the right track to become active citizens of this world, I would. As they prepare to fall subject to the standards set for them and follow the steps to become ‘successful’, I sit aside; I watch how they act when faced with adversity, or rather, when life is so cruelly unfair to them and them alone. Only then does their view on life become cynical. But not long after it bounces back like a boomerang, the app they use to project their perfect life upon others as soon as the next good thing happens. It would be dishonest of me to say I haven’t participated. I’ve so selfishly made myself room. I’ve talked about the person sitting in front of me and problems the world presents as if I’m the only one who has to deal with them. However, the guilt is lifted as I enter a different world. I have my own place. I’m not there now, but it’s my place. Ironically it’s the place no one goes. Not unless they’re like me. The people who do, they’re all observers. They sit alone and watch the perfect people become examples of how we are born to live life. We talk about it. We share and speculate what we think their future holds. Our pasts don’t touch. We don’t know each other. Yet the music in our brains synch as we tell the world the irony in the way God created it. When we’re here there is no locker room. The sky is clear and we see reality painted like a picture but we can also see the surrealness of the expectations on the canvas. The people in the painting are clueless as to what the outside holds. Occasionally a lost soul melts off the canvas and into our place. Sometimes they attempt to corrupt the peace and are later glued back to where they belong. Other times, they share what they know and become a citizen of our world. If one of us were to start a conversation about our world with the characters in the painting, we would either not be successful with sharing our knowledge, or we would get stuck trying, immersing ourselves into a place where societal rules infiltrate our brains and the music will fade and the observer would become just a regular, normal person that grows up to make six figures and is praised by the artist. But the people in my place know the truth. That's why the artist hasn’t painted us in. That’s why we have our own place.