I wrote this shortly after finding this website.
“The Bars of my Cell Window”
When silence is your only friend, one begins to think that ones mind has started to deteriorate. What’s worse is that silence, or anyone else, can’t assure you of your mental state. I go to the bars of my cell window and look out, where I see the people moving about, doing whatever it is that they do, living that so-called normal life that exists outside of my cell. Thinking on it, I can not remember when it was I last left my cell; it’s been so long, I think I have been locked in here since time began.
I am not upset about my circumstance, but it is agonizing to wonder how they live outside this cell, all those people talking, whispering, crying, and laughing out there. I can cry. I can laugh. I can whisper and talk too, but what baffles me, what enrages me, what fills me with endless rage and despair and envy is how they do it all: they do it all with others. I can neither comprehend why nor how one can approach others so casually, so easily, so readily. So I stand at the barred windows and take in the people in this city beyond my cell and I hate them and I love them and I want to have a better understanding of what they are doing out there.
A few times I tried to communicate with them. How does one converse with someone when ones cell is so separated from them, when they are so far away? It is hard, to say the least; even when I am able to start communication through the bars of my cell window, I don’t know what to say. My cell is so different from the outside world.
As I stand at the bars, something in my cell catches my eyes. The doorway of my cell, a solid block of black, impenetrable, opaque glass, lights up, as if impersonating my window, and opens. I stare in shock. For as long as I can remember the doorway of my cell has been closed, and now I can go outside: how awesome a thought. I step through the doorway, full of suspicion, and I see that I am not completely free. I see that there are massive walls outside, keeping me in- or maybe keeping them out. Strangely, I don’t mind so much about that, though logic says I should.
Then I see the amazing thing: the suits. The orange suites of the people emerging from their other cells, all looking as stiff from the years of solitude as me, all wearing the same fluorescent orange suit that I wear, that the people in my window conspicuously lack. They are like me. I am not alone anymore. I am not completely free, but out here at least I am not alone. These people are like me: all they have ever known for a friend is the silence in the cell. I am alone no more.
17 Oct 2008, 4:38 am
