O knew six languages fluently but, according to them, was never eloquent enough when it came to speaking their heart out.

O: I wish I could find a machine that translates my thoughts into language.

Me: What kind of language?

O (in a low voice): You know, the kind of language that helps me communicate clearly what I want to say. My thoughts; they are too chaotic.

Me (surprised): But you’re a professional translator and if I may add, a very good one.

O (laughing lightly): No, silly. When I’m translating, the words and thoughts are not my own. It’s someone else’s voice.

Me: And what does your voice sound like?

O: Like a loud orchestra but muffled cos it’s trapped inside a man-meat suit.

Me (slightly worried): Can you release that voice?

O: No, but you can.

Me (taken aback): Me? How?

O: By listening to me. To listen is to love.

Me: I dunno if I’m a good listener but go on. Tell me what you’re thinking right now.

O (breathing heavily): It’s not a single thought. I am having a blitzkrieg of thoughts ramming against my cranium. Not completely piercing through to the temporal lobe. If light is reason, my thoughts are like bine-stems forming a canopy, not letting the light pass through. I’ve tried to untangle these strands of thoughts, like separate threads and create a neat knitting project but I fail every time. Sometimes these thoughts pierce through and the crazy orchestra starts playing even more loudly. At the nucleus of these thoughts sits a light that tells me not to be an emotional slut but I never listen to that voice of reason. I feel like a drunken somnambulist swaying to the tune of this orchestra. My limbs are not my own, a form of inescapable possession. I wish I was this unthinking animal devoid of emotions, living life on auto-pilot-doing and learning to love what I see people around me doing. I am good at emulating normalcy but it is a slippery surface and I slip too many times. Some people slip on ice, some on water. I slip on sound. The scary sound of the battalion of thoughts that wants to pick up Kafka’s axe and behead me.

(Two gentle knocks on the door)

Me: Sorry,O. These two gentlemen here will escort you to the laboratory.

O: But why? Could I not communicate clearly enough?

Me: It’s not about your communication but about the world and its inability to comprehend you. You are too human. I shall make a cyborg out of you and end your one and only misery-thinking.