Before the sun rises the loneliness eats me, in a nostalgic, delicious kind of way. I assume it was the jet lag in Sri Lanka that will forever resonate with me, that pre-dawn quiet of knowing absolutely nothing about where you are, what you will do, who you even are.
I remember waking up that first morning in Colombo and being so displaced I genuinely didn’t know what I was anymore. I didn’t feel human, I didn’t feel any connection to anything I could see; I didn’t know the room, I recognized nothing, not even my luggage. I never let go of that feeling, remembering always that there is an alien loneliness in me that makes the rest of the smiling and busy world feel closer to my skin; there is a commonality in everyone feeling just as sad, just as happy.
It’s early and that’s always when I want to tell you my secrets. It takes me so long to remember that there are no secrets left, and that my secrets aren’t for you to hear anymore. The rest of the day is logical, with emotion being dictated by things seemingly more rational than daylight or memory or some psychological attachment to the quiet before dawn.
I wake up early and wonder sometimes if others would suffer less and think better if they could find a happy place in the dark before the sun. Not that lonely dark dawn where you know everyone is asleep, but that dawn that whispers to you that everyone’s awake and you’ll never be alone and that it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay, it’s okay to feel this way.
Garbanzo Bae 