The Badness Within Me

The badness within me won’t let me rest. The badness. The rotten old badness.

 

The badness within me keeps me on the hop. The badness within me always keeps me on the hop. No matter how weary my legs are it always gets me on my feet again. However reluctantly. Full of complaints as I am. It jabs me sharply and I raise myself painfully to my feet again, swaying and stumbling down the road. It won’t ever let me rest.

 

Off I go again, full of incoherent and embittered mutterings, wandering off down the street. Full of sourness. You can’t ignore that old jab when it comes. You have to get up again, even though your limbs might be as weary as lead. You have to get up again, abandoning any thoughts of rest – no matter how sweet they might be. Rest is an oasis – you can dream of it but you can never have it. You can never reach it.

 

Other people want things. I don’t know what they want. I don’t care either. I want only rest. I can’t imagine what other people want, what other people find interesting, what gets other people up on their feet. Nothing else means anything to me – only rest. I would give anything to rest. If I actually had anything to give, that is…

 

I hear people talking on the street as I pass them by but what they may be saying is of no interest to me. They could be talking in a foreign language for all I care. It means nothing to me. I care only about finding somewhere to rest. I see products for sale in shop windows but they are as nothing to me. Nothing could be as meaningless to me as the products I see for sale in shop windows. I don’t long after products as other people do – I long only after the chance to sit down and rest. I long only for the cessation of my torment.

 

Sometimes I wander into the shops and try to hide there for a while. I might look at the front pages of newspapers on the shelves, trying to distract myself. I might wander into a bookshop and pick up a book. I might read a paragraph or two, trying to briefly lose myself in it, trying to forget about the badness that is within me. Then the badness prods me and I have to leave. “You can’t stay here,” says the badness. “You have no place here…” Then I have to leave, full of reluctance as I am. I have to carry on with my endless wandering.

 

The badness within me never needs to rest. It doesn’t need to rest and so neither do I. Or rather I do need to rest but the badness won’t let me. I need so badly to rest but it won’t ever let me. That old badness within me will never let me rest…

 

 

 

 

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