Cactus Heart

It has been so long since I last smiled. I think about smiling a lot. In fact I dream about it constantly. I know I must do my work, this paper must be written, but I can't help but to let my mind slip away…

Concentrate, concentrate! I must take the words hidden somewhere in my blank mind and unscramble their jumble onto the clean, white page. A canvas for my masterpiece, if only I could hold the paintbrush. Yet all I can do is to sit here and think about when I last smiled. Is that all that’s important to me now? Is that where happiness lies, rather than through the finished products of the blank page? Why do tears come so easily, yet my smile is trapped inside, buried too deep, lost too long to remember the way home.

I once killed a cactus. It kept on taking the water that I drowned it in each day. It never complained, it stood tall, it hid all that water inside so nobody ever knew. Then one day I came to my cactus and she had fallen over, her little spikes drooping down. I picked her up, wanting her to be what she once was. Yet as I forced her back into place, her green heart split open, and all the water came spilling out and I saw that she was empty inside. I wonder if I am like this too. If someone pushed too hard would my heart split open and would all my hopes and dreams float away with each exhaled breath? Would my heart be empty too?

Concentrate, concentrate!It's getting worse, now I cant even remember why I am sitting here. My page is still blank, holding no clues to my purpose. I still want to smile, I want to be happy from the inside out, how do you do that? It has been so long, I barely remember how to laugh. I know I must write, yet the stereo sound of my wandering mind is turned too high for me to think of anything else. The world moves on around me, yet strangely I feel as if I can't be seen, as if I am looking in from the outside, observing this less than perfect life with the curiosity of a scientist discovering a rare gene.

Actually, I am a scientist…did you know that? I sometimes forget because it's not really what I want to be. Its seems too proper for someone who has a mind that wanders like mine does. How can I be a scientist if I don’t even know how to smile? How can I be a scientist without the passion to even remember how to fill my blank page. I am a thinker, is that an occupation? Can I file that on my tax return? Perhaps I could set up a counter and sit behind it all day and simply think. Maybe if I thought hard enough I would remember what it felt like to smile. Maybe if I could do that, I would remember what it is that I am supposed to be doing.

I knew a girl once, who didn’t believe in love. She said there was no such thing, yet I knew that inside she secretly wished there was. She pretended to love people, she played her character well, carefully folding away the script when the drama got too intense. But one day she left her costume at home and she played the part unmasked. It was only then that she realised love was true. I once knew a boy, who thought that he was love itself. If he couldn’t love, then he couldn’t breathe. He expressed his love through poetry and song, he expressed it with his hands and lips, yet he forgot to look inside his heart. It was only then that he realised that love isn't always true.

Concentrate, concentrate! The starkness of this page is blinding my eyes, but they no longer see. Have I even tried to decorate my canvas? I don’t think I even know where my paintbrush has gone. It rolled off my desk and I didn’t even look to see where it fell. In fact I don’t even know whether I ever held that paintbrush in my hand at all. If only I did have a brush, I would paint big black slashes across the page to stop all the whiteness from hurting my eyes. But I don’t think that was what I was supposed to do. I am trying to remember but my mind is fuzzy from all this thinking. I remember wanting to smile, I cant forget that, it seems that is all I am living for now.

I fell in love with someone, I don’t think it was a good idea. Maybe I thought it would make me smile, and sometimes it does, but not for a long time now. My smile used to be sunshine, but now it's more like a 40-watt bulb. Actually that’s a lie, I have never smiled like the sun, I don’t think I ever knew how, even before I started to think too much. Maybe I should stop thinking, maybe I have thought so much that there is no room for anything more. Perhaps that's why I am looking in from the outside, because I can't get back until I have some vacant space in my mind. Maybe my mind should be empty like my cactus heart. I love, but I don’t know if I am loved. Shouldn’t I know that if my mind is full? Shouldn’t I have all the answers? I don’t. My mind is full and people think I know, but I don’t. I need them to tell me, I need them to show me how to smile like the sun. Why won't anyone show me?

Concentrate, concentrate! It's getting too late. My blank page has grown so large that it covers my entire field of vision, all I can see is an unfinished sentence that was never actually started. Now I can't see where the page even starts and ends, just miles of blank, mocking me as I don’t know what belongs there. I have stopped thinking, there is nothing left. All I want to know is how to smile, it's been so long…