Clara Part 1

She looked down the streets, and she wondered. She saw the cookie-cutter houses, the cars parked straight and uniform out front of each one, and she imagined the shiny happy people inside the houses, living their little lives and smiling at their little families, consumed by the intricacies of daily life. And she wondered.

Why was she different?

Why couldn’t she just be happy and content like these curious little suburban creatures, scurrying about from work, to shopping, to dance class and little league? She constantly felt like she was hovering over everything seeing the bigger picture, the neighbourhood in fine relief, a microcosm of daily life that made her want to scream inside. She felt smothered, pressed down upon, trapped. Something inside of her screamed out for release, a wildness that had been there since she was a kid, running free in the grass, the sun on her skin and hearing her mother’s voice,

“Clara, slow down! You’ll hurt yourself!”

In adulthood, she fed and stoked the flame of this wildness through a rapidly cycling range of interests and hobbies, even belief systems. Her personality, her identity was always in a state of flux, and each time she formed a cohesive person within herself she truly believed this was the “real” her. The person she had always been, would always be. But within a few months, that familiar restlessness would start to creep in, growing slowly and filling her with emptiness, a void which seemed to ache and burn inside of her. That familiar urge to run wild again would overwhelm her, and she would try to quash it, fulfill it, quench the thirst with some new habit, hobby or belief system. Or sex. Sex and flirting and dating and getting wrapped up in being desired by another person. And she would stop listening to the voice repeating in her head….

“Clara, slow down! You’ll hurt yourself!”

Sometimes, that was the point. At least then she felt….something.