COVID-19 Lockdown musings

During COVID-19 Lockdown, like all of us, I struggled to reconcile with many realities. However, again, like all of us, the lockdown gave me time to think. The result was a series of pieces written in a journal-like form.

In the below piece, I document the sensation of observing a world that seems so quiet around me, but so loud in my head.

ADHD

Dear Diary,

Quiet people fascinate me… what is going on in your head as you look out the window? Do you count the raindrops? Watch the droplets join each other in dance?

Perhaps this fascination is the result of a complete disconnect from quiet. I am completely unfamiliar with quietness, with peace, with silence. What is it like to hear your thoughts? What’s it like not to feel like your mind is a forever concert of pain and fear? What’s it like to just be able to find that one thought without sifting through piles of discarded memories?

What’s it like to enjoy the quiet? To welcome it? What’s it like to make it your companion? I don’t think I’ve ever experienced quiet…

Quiet people fascinate me, they sit there and feel the most extreme emotions yet they never show it. What’s it like not to break into a run? Not to grind your teeth? Not to contain yourself? What’s it like to choose quiet not force it upon yourself?

My mind is my home but my home is loud, my home is chaos. I am as familiar with tornados as you are familiar with the noiselessness… I look out the window and hear the thunderstorm, the raindrops become champion racers on their way to the finishing line.

My home is to labor through every thought I ever had. My own personal inferno. It is genius materializing only to tease me with its potential, before running away, aching me to chase it for the rest of my life.

My home is: taking comfort in all the things I never will be. I have made a home for myself in the wasted potential.

For no other home exists for me, not in the quiet, not in the chaos. So here I lay the flag of a wasted nation.

Here I lie in bed and accept my fate.

Until next time.

Amina