It really didn’t start out like it ended. Sometimes these things come as a shock, like a breaking. Quick, sudden, loud; you just can’t miss them. That’s the safest way. The way that reminds one of shock therapy: when you really have one of those moments where you look around yourself and know that you should be in a state of alarm. There are other means of getting to some kind of awareness, but the worst is a slow and steady progression. It’s deliberate, but in such small increments that you barely notice the changes in yourself and the sinking environment around you. There’s no realization, no snapping, no climax. It’s a thin crescendo of events that get worse and worse as you go about your business, ignorant to the teetering reality. After that it doesn’t take long for denial to set in. You don’t see anything wrong on the outside; the bruises are nothing. Sleepless nights are common, and the thought that “every family must live like this” is so very comforting. But deep down, you have that ache of knowing, the knowledge that you wish you’d never come to know; the memories that you’d like to forget.
Everything is more sensitive in the dark. You find yourself night after sleepless night, staring at the ceiling, feeling so worn. There’s not even any room for emotion, it’s a passive feeling. It’s too great to face, to look at, and to ponder. So you leave it in the dark, the way it’s left you. As you stare at the ceiling, you try to pull everything else happening in your life in to block out the light of that one fear. You think of what you did that day, the good things. But after a while, those good things start to shrink. They turn into tiny things that no one else even considers happy anymore. You look at those as small victories with such affection: having a conversation or even laughing, trying to press the small dose of peace out of them. “Make me feel better” you plead with them. The depression follows when you realize that ultimately they won’t. You finally and miserably understand that it’s not going to be okay. The worst thing though – the worst thing – is when there’s no one around to tell you the opposite of your instincts – even when you know it’s not true. As if the intangible words were a magic spell: if spoken they come alive. Being lonely is like suicide of the mind. You have nothing to base your reactions or your emotions on. It’s foggy, and you don’t know what to think, you have no scale drawn to size for you. You try to fill yourself with the empty happiness, and it fails you. Are there no other solutions?
That’s when some people loose themselves. They loose the person that they used to be before the water slowly started to boil. Whether it was a good person, or a bad person, it’s gone. They start to hurt the people they love, just as the person who hurt them had done. They don’t want sympathy, and they don’t want the elephant in the room to be ignored. They aren’t – and never will be – satisfied. Those people spend their nights, whether cool or warm, staring at their ceilings, wondering if God is listening to them.
I guess I was just lucky.
Thanks for reading!
