Horror of Ordinary

I know it has happened by now - that I am one of the ordinary and you wouldn't notice me if I was standing behind you at the bakery.  Or crossing the road you wouldn't see me through the trill of your fingers on the steering wheel.  Being ordinary has a quiet silence about it.  When someone does look at you; really looks at you with open eyes - you doubletake and look over your shoulder in case they aren't looking for someone else.  "Um, I'm just ordinary," you think to yourself - "you must have the wrong person?"
*
I've been here for two nights already and there is probably one night to go after tomorrow - so maybe two more nights at best.  If it sounds confusing don't worry - it is for me too - I don't know when I  will be going home.  I'm told that there is another interview this afternoon, so I will have to appear as ordinary as  possible for it.  I think I have learned my lesson and I can safely head home - staying any longer will be more about punishment and suffering than getting healthy.
*
This place has just had a re-design or something - not that I've ever been here before - and everything is white, clean and safe.  Once you get out of the main complex, there is still the sense that you are in a big institution, but things are quieter and more solid.  Doors close slowly and with a heavy permanent feel.  Locks are everywhere - the kind of locks that work one way and open with a magic geometric key.  Windows are dulled with reflective glazes and it's just hard to see anything other than light or blue through them.
*
I ate lunch in the cafeteria, and pointed to the soup, which was ladled into a thick plastic bowl, and I choose a single dimpled bread roll and some sachets of butter.  I sit down by the window - there are groups of two and three around the tables and everyone eats in silence.  Opposite me is a lady I have not seen before and she is not looking up from her bowl - she dips a piece of bread roll into the soup and stays hunched over. 

Next to her is a tall, older man who has grey stubble and a blue bruise over the bridge of his nose.  His eyes are bloodshot with red and I notice a bandage on his hand as he eats.  It's very quiet and the people are just eating - one nurse or student stands around like she is watching or on guard or something but she doesn't move or say anything.  Everyone seems to know what to do and they just go about eating or pulling in a chair or pushing the chair back under the table as they get up and leave the room. 
*
My room is big - it could fit three or four beds but they have only put two in the room.  You walk down the left wall and the two beds jut out at right angles with a chest high bookshelf/mirror divider in between for privacy.  I can lie on my bed and not see the next bed, but if I stand up I can see over the divider so there is no real privacy from the other bed.  But no one is in  the other bed - not last night or so far today so it is a small blessing.  On the first night I shared the room with a younger youth around 20 - he snored and slept and swore at me to turn the reading light off.
*
When I arrived I was a raw state - I had been living on the street for a few days, hiding out on the run  - and all I had left was a grey shirt and some grey shorts.  I had been running for so long and so far that my toenails were red and I had little scratches and cuts over my shins and forearms.  I had launched through the bushes at the side of the road in darkness and crawled under things and jumped fences and as I lay on the bed I would feel new aches and bruises on my torso.  It was like I had been wrestling or in a fight - which I probably had or might have been - I just couldn't remember.
*
It started like it did every other time - with nothing in particular except that vague feeling of tiredness and ill ease that I felt.  I always connected this feeling with the idea that I was not ordinary - that I was special and that this feeling was what set me apart from all the other ordinary people.

Being ordinary isn't about being defeated or broken.    Being ordinary can be such a release and so powerful at the same time that I am almost hesitant to share the details of what has led me to my ordinary life.  But I have to share it - it is a story waiting to be told and for me, like thousands of other ordinary people, our stories are too often lost amid the swirl of color and drama that are not ordinary people's lives.

Earlier in my life I devoted years and whole career paths to prove to myself that I wasn't ordinary - that there was something different about me.  I felt different so I must somehow be different.  But I wasn't - I was just me a 'just me' like thousands and millions of others are just ordinary and like me. 
*
It comes slowly, over the years, meeting more people through more experiences - the tide of ordinary sweeps in and over me and I just occasionally struggle to push my nose above the waterline and be different, just for a moment or a morning or a mealtime - and then I slip back into the tepid warmth of ordinary. 

And my whole being moves like I am conducting the orchestra of my life under water - heavy arms, flailing through the jelly as the music yaws and distorts.  It's not beautiful or classical - but it's life and it's me and it's what we are used to.  The horror of ordinary I've grown used to and like a humming refrigerator, it's just there and part of my day.  I feel I can lean into it and almost curl into the warmth.
*
Becoming ordinary.

"We were all just a pile of awkward lives, embarrassed by ourselves.  We hadn't the slightest reason to be there, none of us.  Every living being, confused, vaguely anxious, felt redundant..."
Sartre, Nausea.

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