The Hobbit, Don't Panic

I take a deep breath and look up at the ceiling fan. I recap the bottle of mineral water, stop midway, go back on the recapping idea, put the bottle to my lips, and gulp down its contents. I close my eyes and open them again, hoping that the world would have somehow managed to alter itself. The ceiling fan is still the same gloomy brown, and I don't put up a fight when my eyelids decide to fall down. Because I agree with them, there's nothing left to see here, nothing left to feel.

I have often wondered how the same color means different things to me at different points in time. I was the one who had picked out the ceiling fan , that as of now, my head would dub as 'nauseating'. Back when I was twelve, I had managed to convince my mother that the brown in question was both vibrant and classic, the perfect combination. Sometimes, I find the color yellow pleasing and warm and amazingly happy. On other occasions, I find the same shade to be annoying, chirpy to a fault, and basically something Calvin Klein would never dye his underwear in. It's funny how the world on its own, commands no adjectives to its name. All the adjectives that you would ever use for a flower, a ceiling fan, or a rock, are all words that describe your emotions. They're all projections.

"World as we see it, is nothing but a projection."

My train of thought gets derailed, and I find myself forced to search for the voice and the person behind those words.

"What the hell? Why the freakin' hell do you always look so doped out? And how many freakin' times have I told you not to sleep in clubs? And if you do want to sleep in a club, then you freakin' sleep with somebody and not alone! You don't get to be a junkie passed out on the corner couch, alright?" continued the voice. "Hey! Hey! Are you listening?"

My jaw drops open in utter disbelief. There's a girl, not much older than I am, sitting next to me on what I gather to be the 'corner couch', dressed up in a gold bodysuit, sporting a head band with a CD on it.

I sit up straight and look around, trying to make sense of my surroundings. But I guess, sometimes, things and places aren't supposed to make any sense, and it's in everyone's best interest to leave them at that. So I shove my disbelief under the rug, mostly because not believing is excruciatingly time consuming, and also because the golden bodysuit girl snaps at me and orders me to get a hold of my jaw.

I decide to call her Emma Roberts, because she is, in fact, her spitting image. I tell her that I've been wondering about life, the universe and the allied when she asks me the reason behind my 'Baby Looney Toons on weed- like' behaviour.

She exhales. Re-arranges the CD on her head-band, looks me straight in the eye, and tells me to listen, and listen close because she isn't so fond of repeating herself.

"Look," she begins. "Life isn't all that different from a jar of chocolate chip cookies. Some cookies are much better shaped than the others, some have more choco-chips and look a hell more appetizing, some are burnt, some are a disgrace in the name of cookies, some crumble apart when you take them out, and some are just average, you know. But the thing is that you can't just keep thinking about them. I mean, if you keep thinking about it, you might just die of starvation or something, you know. Just eat the damn cookie already, don't think. No matter what the reason is. The freakin' cookie does not care whether you're molesting it because you're hungry, or depressed, or just some animated movie character. Just polish off the freakin jar, that's it. And that's life. Don't think so much about its contents, just live the damn thing."

I stare at Emma Roberts in what can only be described as 'pure awe'.

"I'm sorry," I hear someone say. I turn back around to see who's brave enough to challenge Emma Roberts. There's a guy sitting on the adjacent couch. He leans in, resting his elbows firmly on the arm of the couch. "I couldn't help but eavesdrop," he continues, "Nasty habit, my Ma would always say." he nods his head and looks at us expectantly as if we know, and in turn agree, with everything his Ma has ever said.

"Uh. Excuse me?" Emma Roberts say.

"You see," the guy continues. "I found your little theory..." he narrows his eyes, and clicks his fingers, acting as if he's trying extremely hard to look for an appropriate word in his head. "Cute." he finishes.

"Cute?" Emma Roberts repeat, raising one eyebrow.

"Yeah." the guy confirms.

"You know what?" Emma begins, "I don't need this BS. I'm going to go dance now. Ciao." She gets up rearranges her head band, flips her perfectly blow dried hair, and marches towards the dance floor.

"You should not have done that." I tell the guy.

"Whaaaa?!", he exclaims. "Was my tone too condescending?" he puts a hand on his chest, and continues in a high pitched voice that I've often seen people use when they're talking to kids, "Was I mean to her?"

I can't help but laugh at the theatrics.

"In all seriousness, maybe you were." I tell him.

"I'm Hobbit, by the way." he says.

"Hobbit?" I ask.

"Yeeeeah. I'm the youngest of five brothers, when I was born they were going through their Lord of The Rings phase, and they started calling me Hobbit. And well, the name just stuck." he explains.

"So much so that now you introduce yourself as Hobbit? I'm sure your parents must have come up with a less...Tolkien-ian name?" I smile.

"Well, yeah. But like I said, Hobbit stuck. And in life, more often than not, we forget who we are and become what other people think we are." he offers. "Does that even make sense?" he laughs.

"Kind of." I say biting my lower lip.

"So what is it?," Hobbit asks, "That's making you question the universe, the life, and the allied?"

I move my tongue over my teeth while trying to suppress an embarrassed smile.

"Did I get the order alright? Is it 'the life, the universe, and the allied'?" Hobbit smiles.

I look at him, and he doesn't look anything like a Hobbit. He's tall, and slightly muscular, and has hair that matches the color of a chocolate mousse. I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. I shift in my seat to get a better view of the dance floor, and find Emma Roberts waving someone's underwear in the air with incredible passion. I purse my lips and try to think.

"I'm scared, I guess." I finally manage to say.

"Scared of what?" Hobbit asks.

"Life. Future. Everything in the middle." I take a deep breath. "Falling in love." I add.

"Have you ever? Fallen in love, I mean." he asks softly.

"Well, to be completely honest, the last time I thought I fell in love, I hadn't fallen in love at all. I was just in the wrong sized bra." I tell him. "So the entire breathlessness and shit, that wasn't love. No, sir."

He clears his throat, "Wrong sized what again?"

"Bra." I confirm. That reminds me of a few 'underwear' jokes, which I then share with him, and he laughs.

"So why are you scared?" he asks.

"Because there's this inexplicable, constant need to be loved in return. And maybe to get more than you give. Which isn't fair. Besides, I feel that I turn into this monster, every time I fall for someone. And I don't just mean it in the romantic sense, you know. I get so attached to people that I can't go a day without talking to them. And I want them to want to want me." I pause. "Too many 'wants'?" I ask.

He shakes his head and requests me to continue.

"I..." I bite my lower lip, "I don't appreciate the person I turn into. Someone stricken with vulnerability, someone who would keep checking her phone, hoping for a text message, a call, a sign, for Christ's sake. A bloody sign!" I wave my hands around like a mad woman.

"My well being becomes so intertwined with what the other person is doing that it can only be described as sheer craziness. And I am not a big fan of it."

"I guess," I continue, "I guess, I'm just not someone who's cut out for this relationship thing, or whatever. I get so insecure. And I keep waiting for people to wake up one day, and realize that they've made a mistake, and that they deserve better. It hurts. It hurts so bad, the entire waiting." I feel a tear forming, and I quickly blink it away.

"I don't know." I shake my head in frustration. "But I wouldn't want to turn into a maniac and hurt this one person, this one person who means so much to me. Besides, I have such a sucky relationship with my own self, you know. I think, it's important that I clean it up first. So I won't be dependent on someone else to think of myself as worthy of any love. I don't want to fall in love with someone simply because I'm a lonely person in dire need of an ego boost. I would never want to do that to someone. And I'm scared that I might. I'm scared that...I'm scared that it's exactly what I'm doing right now."

I chew the inside of my cheek, still lost in thought.

A minute later it hits me that I've wasted a stranger's precious time. I end up apologizing profusely. Hobbit laughs it off. He says it's fine, and he then inquires if I'm talking about someone in particular.

"I don't know." I answer.

"Sheesh."

"I don't want to do this."

"Then don't." he suggests.

"How?" I ask.

"I guess, your friend's theory wasn't half that bad in this regard. Don't think. Just live." He smiles.

"How the hell do you do that?"

"I guess, you could close your eyes and drift away. Then it'll be like it never happened."

"Why can't you be real, Hobbit?" I ask. "Why are you only in my head?"

"I think some things are just better in your head." Hobbit replies. "For all you know," he continues, "maybe you're someone's imagination too."

"Some pretty messed up imagination." I say, rolling my eyes.

"Maybe they're into it. The messiness."

Emma Roberts comes running back, and crashes on the couch next to Hobbit. She starts singing Christina Aguilera's 'Genie In a Bottle' very loudly, and asks me to make a wish.

"Make any wish," she insists, "but make it goood!"

"I wish that my words would one day mean something to someone. I've always wanted to say something meaningful."

"Ughh," she screams in exasperation, "enough with the romantic mumbo jumbo! I told you, didn't I? Don't. Think!"

She drags Hobbit to the dance floor. I don't join her because I've started feeling really tired, and everything seems blurry somehow. So I lie down on the couch, and they start playing a Coldplay track. Which, to be fair, doesn't make any sense, because although my vision has become a little foggy, I can see Emma Roberts twerking passionately next to Hobbit. But it's okay, sometimes things don't have to make sense.

Bones, sinking like stones,
All that we fought for.

I lay back, take a deep breath, and turn my head to take one last look at Hobbit. But I can't see him anymore. Largely because I'm not in the club anymore. I find myself surrounded by water, slowly drowning.

And we live in a beautiful world,
Yeah we do, yeah we do.

Strangely, as my body starts to feel extremely heavy, my head is overcome with extreme lightness. I tell myself that it's not impossible, nothing is. As I sink further, I close my eyes, and it's just as if nothing ever happened.

(Note: Tarika Jain challenged me to write an entire blog post without using the words 'really', 'cool' and 'shall'. I'd be lying if I say that it wasn't hard. Also Teej, your challenge is to write a Blog Entry titled 'Platypus'. I shall see you on Wednesday, make it really cool.)