SOMA

A new restaurant opened recently and it attracted my immediate attention. 

Its name was printed modestly on the sign: Soma. 

The word held me in place for a moment, like a hand gently placed on the chest.

SOMA

Brave New World. 

In that novel, Soma was the drug that silenced unrest. 

A gentle fog. 

A soft switch that turned off doubt, grief, curiosity. 

Even free will.

The characters took it not to feel better, but to feel less. 

It was the chemical answer to the emotional questions no one was allowed to ask.

When I saw the name on the restaurant, I eagerly suggested it to my friends. 

They agreed without asking why. 

No one noticed the word. 

No one paused at it. 

It was just a name to them, short, smooth, easy on the tongue.

Later, inside the restaurant, I was so eager to meet the owner so I asked for her. 

When I spoke with the owner. I asked her about the name, my tone carrying more weight and anticipation than I realized. 

She smiled and said it just sounded nice. That was all.

I expected her to answer “Yes i chose the name after the famous novel by Huxley, I don’t know if you know it”

And I wanted to respond: “Of course I know it, Brave New World, are you kidding?”

And then I would fall in love with her and she would become my soulmate.

But of course none of that happened.

The table was loud with casual talk, forks clinking against plates, background music carefully chosen to feel familiar but forgettable. 

I found myself drifting. 

My mind returned to Huxley’s world, to the quiet that Soma delivered like a curtain drawn across thought.

Sitting there, I became aware of a small disconnection.

I had arrived at this place by a different path than everyone else in the room. 

They walked in from the street. 

I arrived from a memory.

A heritage.

There’s a certain kind of solitude that doesn’t announce itself. 

It happens in the spaces between references, in the pauses after a word that means nothing to others. 

You speak it, expecting it to be heard, but it falls into oblivion instead of recognition. 

And in that moment, you feel the full shape of your inner life and how distinctly lonely it is.