Cuffing Season Syndrome

'I can't believe it,' my mind thought as I saw the last person walk out of the office on 30th December.

I'm sitting alone facing my screens, with an uncompleted deck staring right back at me, beckoning me to finish it for my own sake. The Christmas decorations all still in full bloom, and the festive jewels that adorn the sterile fluorescent lights hand completely dead - windless, no signs of life. For the better parts of being in an agency, the last 2 weeks of the year tend to be reserved for self-care, or just a measly make-up of all the times everyone had to work overtime - that's what I think anyway.

The truth is it's been so easy to throw myself into work these days when home has finally lost what little it had left of being an emotional anchor, so it's quite a literal shell at this time of reporting. No, it began to embellish itself with some dread these days - now that's an ornament money can't buy, Kim Kardashian and her Calcutta Gold Marble who?

Could I have waited till work began again before I stress myself out all the same? Yeah, i could've.

Could I have worked from home? Yeah I could've.

Did I escape every chance, reason, or just to get out when I could? More times than I could count, even if the place is sleep.

This year would be remarkably different from the past 22, much of it being a salaried man - with it came a deluge of change. Mostly have proven to offer retrospective outlook the way a looking glass do, if not, transient pleasures that had more than suffice its monetary value in hindsight.

I wonder if it occurs to other people too, that as you slowly come into your own, you start to feel more and more detached from the ones you're supposed to call loved ones? Don't get me wrong, I haven't gone completely psycho and started hating every blood relative. Although, I surmise it's just a matter of time with this bunch. I digress, but lately there are simply just times that I vividly recall, having this overwhelming feeling of complete doneness- in the way Gordon Ramsay did in Kitchen Nightmares, the episode at Amy's Baking Company where he for once just shown his hand and walked off- a disappointing feeling that you just simply don't belong to this tribe no matter how desperate I tried.

And god, I really did.

More or less, it has solidified the kind of kinship I had as a child hoped to have is now a pipedream at most. But such 'harsh' realities I can by and large stomach. And I had been very lucky to have been cared for despite my growing insouciance. Though, I would've wished it wasn't that way so leaving it all behind would be a campaign that required no plan B. Here I am, stuck in a personal hell that loops over and over.

I know as much that in the grander schemes of things, there're people and communities that have bigger monsters to battle, but I always assumed that pain is relative, that even if your pain that was a 10 but is just a 2 to others, it hurts as much as a 10 even to Atlas who biblically carried the world on his shoulders.

It's 2 minutes to 8pm, I'm quite tired and don't want to stay here a minute longer. But heading home just feels like lifting myself out of an Iron Maiden and jumping into a Witches' Brew.