Outside

When did it happen? The change, the moving on, when did it stop mattering? All the trivial day to day normalities, the throw away conversations, the gossip about the lives of people you have little to no interest in, when did the pretence become not worth the effort?  
 
I go back out into the ‘real’ world, dip my toe in the life I once inhabited, it’s strange, like the reintroduction of a chimpanzee separated from the group for an extended period of time, but there’s an awkwardness to the reunion, the social dynamic has evolved in my absence, i no longer have a place. Now in chimp society, the reintroduced chimpanzee would stay on the outskirts, slowly working its way back in, learning the new social cues in order to regain its place. I just don’t have the inclination to do that, I have no desire to rejoin, to fight my way up the pecking order, no I’ve found something they may never know, certainly never appreciate, solitude, peace, freedom of mind.  
 
And with my self imposed exile, I lose my fears and anxieties, the need to be accepted, I lose my peers, my contemporaries and become me, not a member of a group, a club, a community, a country even, not a position, not a number or a name, but me, just me, that’s all I am and all I want to be