Track 3 - “Cul-De-Sac”

The old neighborhood’s library is where I’ve bought many used books for cheap. Most of the time, the catalog consists of books that I would have otherwise not purchased, but other times, it also includes books that I have wanted to read for a long time. It’s just a matter of luck.

So far, many of the books I purchased with lesser enthusiasm have often been left unread. But it’s not that I don’t want to read them: it’s just that I don’t consider myself to have the time to read them all. Even so, I buy books as if I have all the time in the world, as if I will never die and that in my infinite life, I will one day read them all. Perhaps it’s a bad habit, perhaps it’s a sign that I have many hopes for my future. Maybe both?

Even if it seems wasteful, I’m donating funds directly to the library. I think it’s for a good cause, though I am curious where my occasional donations actually go towards. More books? Improved sanitation of the restrooms? The librarians’ paychecks?

... Do my donations actually make anyone feel appreciated?

“Hey, Noel!”

And suddenly, the rest of the world returns to me. I am standing in front of the bookshelf of library books that have long served its purpose. I realize how loud the library really is. I turn around and see teenagers gossiping amongst themselves instead of doing homework, overlooked elementary schoolers playing video games on the library computers, and a foreign family chatting amongst themselves in their own language.

That is all fine. I easily tune them out in my day-to-day life. They are only as real as the scenery. But someone has called my name. No one should know my name, but someone does; now the world has become personal and asks for my input. I scan the library for a familiar figure, and I eventually find one.

The world seems to freeze around me when I see the face with an eerie smile. It is the face of a Person who I secretly blame many things for. My past, my entire character. I could have been happier if this Person hadn’t existed.

The Person walks up to me and says, “You’re Noel, right? You must be!”

I’ve imagined hurting this Person many, many times in the past, but I now stand there unresponsive. I just want to be left alone. I want this Person to believe I am not Noel and that there has been a misunderstanding. But reality continues.

So it begins… the “how are you”s, the “how you’ve been”s. I follow along with increasing discomfort. Inevitably, the conversation leads back to our past, my past, that I do not want to remember.

Eventually, the Person mentions how I was easy to mess with. After a long pause, I say what I have never told the Person: I thought I was being bullied. By that Person. It wasn’t funny and I never found it funny.

To my surprise, he looks at me with a strange expression and says “I’m sorry.” In an instant, my hostility is replaced with confusion.

We converse some more about more mundane things, and the Person apologizes a few more times. The conversation eventually ends like a regular conversation would and the Person moves on with their day, leaving me in front of the bookshelf with the rest of the library spread across me. Leaving me alone with my thoughts again.

I always thought that hearing someone apologize to me would give me catharsis, that it would be evidence that I have made some great point against the world through my existence, but no. There is no catharsis, for I have done little to deserve such an apology.

The tragedies that weighed upon me have been somewhat lifted, and yet I realize that nothing about my life has changed. The only difference is that there is now one less thing to think about. One less subject to point at and say, “You are the reason I am the way I still am.”

I’ve accepted life to be absurd for a long time, but occasionally there are moments where the world seems to defy even those absurd expectations. This brief interaction has massively altered the definitions I’ve written for the world, and the world I’ve painted has come loose off the walls.