Crammed Soul -- A short story by Shanooha Mansoor -- Hilath's Home Page

By Shanooha Mansoor
(Jan 2005)

I sit staring at the computer screen, bathed in its white glow, different thoughts fleeting though my mind, not having really latched on to any one in particular. My half-hearted attention on the conversation I am having
online, I’m pressed by the need to impress the articulate faceless nick on the other side, as well as pulled by the need to be indifferent, to
protect myself against any of the ‘things’ that I might feel. I know it sounds kind of absurd for me to even contemplate that I might start feeling ‘things’ for these faceless nicknames, but when one is desperate, he or she tends to
be haunted by a myriad of possibilities, opportunities, or whatever you want to call them.

It's funny what life makes us go through. How it taunts and troubles us, and in the same breath makes our eyes sparkle and lips part, and then carry us off into the darkest depths of the nights, make promises of days filled with
sunshine and daisies but then drags us to places where no one ventures -- the crevices of the stones, the cracks in the walls, the dampness of a grey day, the smell of rotting leaves. It makes me want to crawl back and never venture out of the warm security of ignorance, of hope, of indifference. Of
carrying on as though nothing matters, as though I am happy. I dare not hope for more, not even at the stillest of the hours when I am all alone. I dare not voice my thoughts nor let hope surface in fear that it might make me do more, make me face it, make me go through yet another failure, another lost cause, another chance to live and not merely exist.

I log off from the Net wishing I could log off from life, well perhaps not life, maybe just that particular moment, just as easily, and shut out all the worries that seem to have found permanent residence in my mind, tainting
even those happy moments that I cherish so much. Put an end to all the cacophony or perhaps change it just as radically with a simple click or maybe even a double click, after all it's the same, nothing changes, it's
the same day in and day out, a ghost of an existence, stuck between two worlds, two bodies and two souls. The one you want to be (that you would never dare to be) and the one you are. I raise the volume of my speaker and
stare at the psychedelic images flicking merrily on my Winamp screen, hoping that
it might quieten the racket in my head, maybe at least for a while, and it does! My mind slowly shifts to the song and I start to sing along, mustering up all the emotions stemmed within me, trying to pour it all out onto the
song, and I smile, for another day has just passed, and I am still in the game, a game called life.