So, I'm sitting here on my birthday, sunlight switched off with the curtains snugly drawn and storm clouds gleefully gloomily grey, in an Alanis Morissette mood, typing in the dark. Thinking about Laters. Later, I'll go to the window and smell the rain I like. Later, I'd go to Macs, buy some fries and get online. Later, maybe I'll finally get down to baking that Oreo cheesecake. Later, I'll try to burst my bubble and learn how to start living in the real world out there. And I'm suddenly reminded of: Lay Ter.

Lay Ter. Blasting the usual songs, accompanied by thunder in the background, I've got one hand in my pocket and the other one is giving a high-five. The junk-cluttered room, a bouquet of dead decaying roses hanging behind me, my wooden table, books and boxes of all sorts and sizes, rubbish I proclaimed pretty treasure when I was a kid and pictures everywhere. It all boils down to,

This void, which I cannot pinpoint. Neither can it be filled, not by any love or the riches of the world. Not even chocolate does the trick for it merely coats and melts, that's all it's good for. Existing in a world inserted with many people, where I'm just floating around, waiting for something I don't know what and trying to live. We all have a reason to be there. The speakers drone on and on, the pile of junk demand for attention while the odds and ends of a jaded memory tap lightly against my fingertips.

It was someone's birthday. Just to spend more time together, we hung out at the playground with a bottle of alcohol between us. Her, at the bar, him, at the bench, them, at the slides, and me, hanging somewhere staring at your shoelaces like they would talk. Doing nothing, just busy being together. For days after that, whenever I passed by that playground in broad daylight, I slowed down and watched our ghostly images chased each other around, perched on the highest bar, hid one another's shoes and shrieked down the slides. And this cloak, the darkest of greys, flung itself over my shoulders and over the entire playground.

And there was someone else's birthday. Sitting in the middle of an unused road, the nearest lamp post meters away, our vision illuminated by the nine glowing candles on a birthday cake and our lighted hand phone screens. Prata in our stomachs, how you danced in the dark, do you remember, and said the word that I'll never forget. When we twirled round and round, hand in hand, that's when I stopped seeing for fear of forgetting. And when you walked away, I tried to forget. A year later, I'm sitting here and still trying to forget.

The darkness of these nights seeps into my fingers, and I remember hoping fervently that the ink of that memory will never run dry. Now, what's left are stains, variously-shaped, and marks I half-wish I'm blind to.

Birthdays be damned, year after year, just that one wish which will crash into nothing. Not even fish bones, or a dried up tea bag. It's time to kick off the covers and wake up. Here, meet my dark side, Little Miss Sunshine.

Maybe now I will fling the curtains wide, let in the blue skies, and we will all live happily ever after.