When you end up alone inside an empty house on a Sunday afternoon, the empty house in which you grew up, which more than ever, more than anything, reminds you of how empty your life feels nowadays... How void of emotions and affection your inside feels... Father on a trip, coming back forever, wishing he never had to... Mother with an invitation in her hands, for somewhere else. One. For her only. One way ticket, stating no return on this journey shes set her heart and feelings on... Away. So far... Brother being elsewhere as well... substituting whatever has been lost from in here with strange people. Friends that you know theyre going to fail him just as you have been forsaken by your once dearest ones. But hes just 17 and you cannot explain to him that everything changes. Everything goes away. Everything and everyone goes away, never to return, leaving you there hoping like a fool. To describe it as tragically as you have experienced it, words fail you... And you have never managed to approach him. And he hates you and you dont know why. Maybe it is because you only tried to protect him. Maybe it is because you used to quarrel when you were young. But that was because you were jealous of him. He was the youngest and you used to wet your bed in the nights because you were so insecure. Because you were afraid you were not loved. And you couldnt help it but wet your bed. And you were dead jealous, but you didnt know what jealousy meant back then. And you kept waking up in the middle of the night in a pool of tumbled, wet and cold bed sheets. And you were so ashamed of yourself. 6 years old and trying to change your bedclothes in the, unimaginable for your mind then, small hours with the lights out so that they wouldnt wake up and tell you off. Or you would just crouch and try to avoid the wet spot. But your nighties would be wet and cold and they would stick on your limbs, keeping you freezing until the morning... Maybe youve tried more than you should to keep all this ragged tapestry of people, events and emotions together. And you will be blamed for that in the future. People tell you not to care. But how can you not care when its your family? Makes me wonder... which is the greater distance? Everything changes. Everything goes away... And the only thing thats left to us to connect us with other people is a sequence of numbers per person. Maybe two. Digits hastily saved in the memory of our cell phone. Or on our homes speed dial. Numbers which maybe you have never used more than once, some others never. Of people you once met and you didnt want to lose. But whom you lost and you deceive yourself that by holding this little piece of information that is -admit it- useless to you, you actually keep that person at an arms length. And you dare not erase them, as they make you feel safer. How many times youve browsed through them to soothe your insecurity. I. Know. People. The more, the better. And if, somehow, one day these numbers are erased then you feel how unbearable loneliness and despair can be... No real connection. No feel. No touch. No warmth. No voice even. Bits and bytes on glowing screens. Our speech and thought fragmented and confined into 160-letter crumbs. We will eventually end up unable to operate otherwise... And when you end up alone inside an empty house like this one, that was built to be the shelter of a family and their ever-growing feelings, but now, having started to disintegrate from within, it has remained a vacant ruin, you feel so utterly alone. And you deeply regret the times that you tried to escape from in here. Only that you never really managed to. The further you went, the closer you were drawn to your homestead. Maybe because leaving was not what you really wanted. Because you knew that home was where youve always wanted to be. But you didnt know that then... All you knew was that you wanted to live, to feel, you wanted forget, you wished to be forgotten and start all over again. But now that your devotion to false promise lands was withered away , in terror, you find out that not only you havent escaped from what haunted you, not only you havent forgotten but , instead, there is noone any more, noone that remembers you. All you should have wished for should be some p e a c e ... And you stay in on a cloudy Sunday afternoon. With noone whom you could call. And all those 233 numbers you have, prove insufficient to soothe your pain. Because its early afternoon and it is not polite to call other peoples houses at this time. And the only thing youd want would be to hide into the closet just like when you were young. When trembling from anticipation and excitement, maybe a little scared of the dark as well, peeking through the slight crack between the flaps youd wait for the others to come and find you. Youd watch them look for you under the bed and your desk and impatiently call out your name because it was dinner time! bath time! joanna!... But now, being 21, Im more afraid to do that. More than when I was 6. I dare not hide in the closet. Because then, Id snuggle between piles of clothes and greedily inhale the lingering smell of the detergent my mother used, and watch little specks of dust dance in streams through the waterfalls of sunlight that would sneak through the cracks. And after a while Id see a sweet, dear face with a twinkle in their eyes looking towards the closet and approach and, while opening it, I would throw myself into their arms... Now Im afraid that if I hide myself, very few will realize it. And even fewer will search for me. And noone will stick to it to the end... Im afraid to even try and see if Im right. As, if I do so, I am bound to spend the rest of my few days abandoned in the comfort of my darkness. Noone will come to my rescue. Now, carving deep red trails on my forearms with a pocketknife I used for carving wooden boats of pine wood when I was little and embark little ants onto strange lands after the rain, Im trying to carve little boats and set them assail to drift me away on the ocean of tears that floods my eyes... This is more autobiographical than it should be. More than I can withstand. More than you would want it to be. Having less content than all the previously mentioned... Do let me get away with that... _________________________________________________________________ STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. 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