TumbleDweeeb

The Box
By: Emmitt Owens
(Index #04032026)

I am Elio, and I live in a box.
In my box there is me. Only me.

The walls are familiar… I have traced every corner, memorized every crack. This box was not built by strangers. It was built slowly, quietly, by every moment I was needed but never wanted. By every conversation that started with “I need your advice” and ended with a door closing behind someone who felt better, while I stayed exactly where I was.

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Sometimes people visit my box.

They knock, they enter, they sit down across from me and they talk. And I listen. I give them pieces of myself, pieces of my thinking, pieces of whatever it is inside me that helps people find their way. They leave lighter. They always leave lighter.

And I am still here.
Living inside my box. Only me.

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That part is exhausting… being the person everyone comes to, but nobody actually stays for. They visit, they take what they need, and they leave. And I am just… there.

In the box. Alone again.

It is not interest that brings them here. Not attraction. Not curiosity about who I am or what I dream about or what keeps me up at night. It is need. Pure, simple need. I am not a person to them… I am a function. A place to mend broken things.

I have been left in my box. Again. And again.
Friends leave me in my box. Over. And over.
Family leaves me in my box. Always. Always again.

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I want to be seen.

Not for what I carry, not for what I can fix, not for the wisdom they borrow and never return. I want someone to knock on my door and ask, “how are YOU? would you like to go do something TODAY?” and actually wait for the answer. I want someone to stay after they feel better.

I want someone to visit my box just because they want to be near me.

I tried once … opening up, being vulnerable, saying the thing beneath the thing. They said be vulnerable, talk about your feelings. So, I did. And then they said it was too much. That I was too much.

So, I learned. I closed the door from the inside and I kept helping anyway, because what else do I know how to do?

My box has four corners.
I’m stuck in my box.
I’m punching on the walls, but my box keeps me here.

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I am clearly someone with depth… I know this about myself. But self-awareness is its own kind of lonely when nobody around you can operate at that same level. When you can see the dynamic clearly, name it exactly, and still cannot escape it.

I am Elio.
I live in a box.

And some days, the heaviest thing in here is not the loneliness… It is knowing exactly why I am lonely, and watching it happen anyway.

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