The Duke Spirit

I can hear their enthusiastic laughter from two rooms down the hall. They’re watching a blast from the past; an eighties teen movie about time travel. Mum’s laugh is high pitched and loud with a sinister twist as though she’s trying too hard. Hers can be heard above all else and it makes me flinch each time. I’m tired of hearing them. There is so little room here it’s hard for me to breath. I can escape the claustrophobia, ironically, in our little room with the large dog and psychotic cat as I wait for Love to come home. With my headphones on and the music as loud as I can take it, with a towel stuffed under the door, with my fingers tapping the keys as I type, I can still hear them laughing. I can still hear them.

I wonder sometimes if how I feel is the correct, or “right,” way to feel. Is something wrong with me because I don’t want to live here rent free with the parents? Because I don’t want to hang out and socialize with them when I get off work? Because I get claustrophobic whenever I’m near just one of them let alone both? Why can’t I be okay with everything? Why can’t I just let shit go? Is it because everyone else does and I feel like it’s important that someone finds it critical? Or is it because of the small chance that I resent them for the empty promises, the idea to move here, the fact that they blame everyone else for the pub closing but not themselves? Is it because I resent them for automatically taking Anne’s side the night she blew a gasket because some lights were on in the house? Then automatically take her side again three weeks after that when it happened again?
….Yeah. That could be it. I wish I wasn’t so angry. All the time.

Her gentle voice echoes from my ears to the core of me. She sounds like a ghost chanting in remembrance of her beautiful life. Her voice isn’t deep. It isn’t high. It’s indescribable in how beautiful it is. “No one wastes time quite like I do…I can waste time like nobody else…You can go running back to your friends. Well that how it feels. That’s how it feels. I would understand your heart…If I could feel it.” It reverberates over and over again in my mind as I remember how that felt. I think of the difference in me since then. “All I have is all that I’m feeling…All I feel, well, it’s all that I know… and then I use it every day… and abuse it in everyway… and that’s how it feels. Yeah that’s how it feels.” I remember what I was like. I know what I’m like now. “The sky is more certain than you will ever be... The rain clouds are angry at you, and at me... Forgive me, Baby... You’re not all that you seem…I would understand your heart if I could feel it.” I remember everything. I realize as I listen that I hadn’t thought about all of it in quite awhile. I don’t feel angry. I don’t feel ashamed. I don’t feel… anything. Just curious as to why? Why was I that way? But I know I will never know. And that doesn’t upset me either. No questions would be answered correctly. No questions would be asked correctly. And there’s no real point in bringing it all up again. Nothing comes of it.

At least now I can just shrug and smile.