Caught in candy

„Something has been lost“, I say to my witch. „Something that has been just as essential as food and rest, and I‘m still expected to function.
„Just stop functioning“, Layla says and eats her violet cloud.

I am certain that I already have.

I have been through months of screaming at night on a field, and even longer nights of cigarettes and wine. Through days of avoiding E-Mails and letters, until suddenly dealing with them really drunk at 3 AM.

And while my witch and I enjoy our cotton candy, I begin to wonder what exactly had been lost.

Was I just mad about missing all the fun? About not having been on enough parties, or dates?
Was I just being dramatic?

„No, you‘re not“, Layla reminds me. „You‘re just caught in candy.“

Something had been lost that had always been invisible.
It was this thing that sometimes happened when early in the morning I saw the same faces as the day before. It also happened when any kind of problem had occurred and I had known where to go to solve it. Or, when my friends had known my answer to something before I had even opened up my mouth. When I had known that my best friend was always five minutes late for class on Mondays and also that we would have coffee afterwards.

Talking to other people and seeing the world through their eyes for a moment while following an argument can put things in perspective. It sometimes makes things seem a lot easier and problems smaller that had appeared so huge.
The memory of solving a problem while just having coffee with a casual contact touched my heart.
„I‘m worried about this.“
„I‘ve had the same and I just wrote an e-mail.“
„Cool.“

„It was so good to know to always be back the next day“, I tell my witch. „This way, it was okay to come home to an empty apartment, or to sometimes even feel a bit lost.“ Now I am really caught in candy. „I think that usually it should be this way. We should have the right to build up a life with friends, a structure, and a purpose just as we chose to.“
Layla nods. „Because otherwise, we have to relay on things that we are born into.“
„And families don‘t always work“, I say. „And not everyone is made for having one partner at home. This year made it so hard to escape all these things that have not worked out in the past.“

I scream caught in candy.

„Once you have stopped functioning, you leave those paths on which you were a son or a daughter, or even a wife or husband to someone, but you still exist, and you need a world with places to go to”, my witch whispers