The Cash Counter

On some days, life seems to take up the shape of a grocery store. A grocery store in which I am standing at a cash counter, without any cash. I feel like a scared child whose mother went to get something from the nearby isle and left her stranded. Time seems to be running faster than usual.

Only that there is no mother and time has stretched to an abyss. I am attempting to make sense of why I am standing here and why is it not possible to undo the events that led me here.

The man at the cash counter demands that I pay up. Pay up for the space that I take and the air that I breath and the things that I like. Pay up for the person I am.

I run my eyes around and everyone else seems to be doing fine. Everyone else doesn't suck at the life counter, only I do.

I feel pressed under the weight of being alive,

Of existing

but most of all, I feel pressed under the realisation that I take up space.

How do I compensate for this? How do I make up for myself?

I try to politely smile at the cashier. I hope he realises that I'm trying. I hope he realises that I'm sorry. What for? I don't know, perhaps everything?

The fact that I can't pay up, no matter what I seem to do, I can't pay up. The cashier does not seem to care that my head is pounding or that my muscles are aching or that the whole world is spinning.

The look he has on his face is screaming at me. I can understand that the tone is harsh but it isn't coherent. Everything that he says boils down to you're not really trying, are you?

I am trying my best. I don't know how I got here and I'm all by myself. I'm so scared and I'm trying my best...