When I was a kid, I'd stand in front of my mother, asking everything that popped out of my head.

"What's that made of? What are we breathing? Where is God? Do you love me? Am I doing something wrong?"

Until eventually she's had enough and telling me to shut up. I did shut up, but my head didn't. The roar of the engine of the train, the screeching sound of the metal tires when the train is taking an eternal turn, they were still there. They are still there.

Growing up, I learned to ignore the train. Learned that not every questions need to be asked, let alone to be answered. Sometimes, I can put a pair of earbuds on my internal ears so the train isn't loud enough to bother me. But sometimes, the train moves faster than it normally does. The engine isn't roaring anymore, it screams; the kind of primal screams we let out when we're in danger, when we're in the brink of fight and flight, the last little effort of showing the world that "I'm here, you bastard" into the face of death, or pain, or agony, or misery, or grief. Sometimes, I scream along with the train. The pain and the agony of thousands of questions that never been asked, never been satisfied by answers.

Unanswered questions are haunting enough, unasked questions are something else. They are the unborn child that you're longing for, they are the legion of almost that you briefly have had in your palm, they are the lifting whisper of words you wanted to hear but the world isn't silent enough to let you hear it, they are the heart that pumping your blood but you can't quite feel the beat.

Unasked questions can mutate, it takes another form of what you call it "terror". Worries, anxieties, insecurities, unsatisfied, being constantly in the baseline of joy and the top of depression. In other words, I'm fucked. Insecurity isn't jealousy, bunch of people sometimes get it wrong. Insecurity is a little devil that keep knocking on your mind, every times the train did a full circle, the devil knocks; the train moves fast enough, the knocking also goes faster. 

Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock knock knock knoc knoc kno kn knocknocknocknocknocknock.

Insecurity is the constant feeling of that you think you don't belong in anywhere, the corner of the dark street but it's everywhere, the realisation that you're on the hit list, the hammer that keeps nailing you down to the boiling hell of your spine, the suspended release of a failing sneeze. Insecurity is the only thing that makes me asleep with one eye open, failing to get the tetha and bring me up wide awake after two hours of darkness. Most of you lot don't even know what insecurity is, but keep bitching about it.

To this day, the train never stops. Looping about in the outskirts of my mind. Questions, questions, never answers. Some questions never seen the light of the day, still waiting to be asked, to be answered. Still on the train with hopes that I finally decide to pick them up and find them the answers.

"Who am I?

What am I doing here?

Am I worth following?

When am I going to die?

Where are you?

How are you?

Do you love me?

Did I do something wrong?"

The train still roaring, often screams. 

14 August 2022, Doubt.

Pasha Fatahillah.

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