Pillow Book "what do you fear?"

Ever since I woke after my operation and realised I wasn't dead, I have felt a peculiar alienation to the world I inhabit. As if I have turned from reluctant participant to volatile spectator.

Everything people say and do seem so meaningless to me. As if they are missing something vital. I find myself often getting upset or mad at them for their obvious waste of time and lack of effort. They spend so much time on things that does not matter, things that mean nothing, and not nearly enough on what makes a difference.

Life is simple. Be honest to yourself, always put 100% into what you do and always mean what you say. Tell the people you love, that you love them. Tell the people you have problems with, why you have a problem with them. Stop wasting time on quarrels, gossip and material things. They mean nothing. They give you nothing.

But most of all, stop complaining. If you have something to complain about - do something about it instead. Do something about yourself.

It makes me so frustrated. Yet, there is nothing I can say that will make anyone listen, or you could even say that it is arrogant of me to think I have the right to say something.

The only thing I can do is live my life as I teach and hope someone will be touched by it. I will try my very best, but it is hard and ungrateful. I would so much like to help someone but they won't allow me.

Sometimes I am afraid. Feeling that all my efforts going in vain are slowly smothering me. As if the wish to help, brutally refused, turns to something else by the very repeated refusal.

I am very afraid, no, I am haunted by the idea that one day I will go from volatile spectator to indifferent spectator. For there is a place inside of me that I do not like to look at, a dark suppressive place.

It is a place that has always been there and that I have always tried to ignore of fear that it might spread, like a virus. It has stayed contained because of my conscious effort over the years. However, now due to circumstances, I feel as if it has slowly bled out and tinted the surrounding tissue indefinitely. I feel more and more like a visiting stranger in this world. I feel like I am awake in a world of sleepers. Will the darkness inside me spread? Will I one day be completely engulfed? Will the curiosity I have in humans disappear?

That is my greatest fear.

That the flat indifference in me will creep out through its cage and colour me blind. That one day I will wake up and think that one life or another means nothing to me.

But most of all, I fear that I will welcome it.