Here I sit, back against the wall, legs bent in a weird angle. My hands rest on the granite floor, by my sides. A doll dropped from a higher place, gazeless eyes lost in the empty space. I allowed myself to be cornered, and I don't like it. There's danger in the way I stay still, in the motionless pain that transpires from my posture. I might bite, as any wounded animal would. What am I, but just another being in a world of instincts, each and everyone pulling in a different direction, all the same in the end?
There's a roar in my chest, deafening, silent to everyone else who isn't me. It still puzzles me so much that they don't hear it. Or maybe they do, but it's more comfortable to play dumb. Been there, done that. The sound mutates as the pain does; a roar that's now a scream that's now a chainsaw. The loudest. Nonetheless, it is kind of funny, to try and get some music out of the noise, to bang these dum drums until their sound resembles the outcry at the bottom of my heart.
The noise. It tells me I should write, but I don't think I can. Actually, it's not that I can't, the words are there, I just don't know if they're mine anymore. I mean, of course, they are, I just don't know for whom anymore. So, instead of writing, my hands sit here, idle on the cold surface of the ground. Behind its apparent stillness, lies an urge. To scratch, to break, to tear, anything but to rest on an empty space. But they do rest. They don't move.
Hours go by and I find myself wandering around the house, a ghost, wearing this long-sleeved shirt and nothing more. Clothes are unbearable at times, and right now only the dark blue cotton fits, or rather matches, the pain it covers. Barefoot, from the bed to the bathroom and back, goes the ghost, over and over again. Restless. Like a caged animal that knows the secret for escaping but can't seem to make up its mind.
Oh, but I am okay. I repeat it endlessly until the words lose their meaning, and only then I can say, truthfully, that I'm okay. Whatever that is. Not that it matters. And I find myself standing here, left hand placed on my hip, very Latina-like. Right hand stirring up the contents of a pot, which I don't recognize. Blood? Guts? Pasta sauce? It's the latter, of course, but what would life be without a little horror. I'm not afraid of it (anymore). Are you?
I stir up a bit more, and I make a mess. Now my heart is not in the right place, and my brain's all messed up. I can't find anything in there. No images, no words, no sounds, no nothing. Everything has been misplaced. Erased. It might as well be all forgotten. Yet I stir and then stir some more until the burnt smell fills the house. Tough luck.
A thousand packages I sent through the mail have been returned, unopened at first sight, marked with pretty red letters that spell NOT CLAIMED. But when I remove the precincts, there is nothing in them. Their contents, gone. Lost to a void I was yet to discover. And I'm perplexed because something tells me that I should have known. The shock pulls me down, and my hands find that familiar surface, once again. Rock bottom.
I need to write, yells the empty space two inches above my sternum. I need to write or I'll lose myself to that void, too. So I sit, willing to get it all out, clueless of where to start, and how. No background seems dark enough to make these characters appear enlightening, so I choose to write at night, finally buried in a silence that can effectively balance out the noise inside my head.
As I type, the gelid, rough surface of the rock says hi. There's no light, yet I see clearly. I inhale, and water fills my lungs instead of air. And that's how I know I'm back. Back at the bottom of the sea.
I wrote these words some days ago. Hesitated for so many hours whether to post them or not because my stubborn nature refuses to give in to the darkness, every time. Over and over, I kept coming to the conclusion that these words do have meaning, some sort of value, if not for someone else then at least for me. I look back and I know I've made it, so far. And then, whatever comes next appears less daunting. If there's any chance that I can share a small fraction of the strength that provides me with you, the reader, then it's worth it to go through the shame of making public my worst moments, the rock bottom part of my life. Not in real-time, never in live-time, but transparently. With brutal honesty, but with distance enough to show you me that there's always a way forward.
For those who, after reading a few words, shivered and decided to skip this write-up and move on to happier instances, well, good for them. I encourage that. In a world too full of cruelty and hate, the less we can do is embrace the differences between us and the people we came across with. For you who are still here, well, thank you. It's nice to see that there are others who don't buy into the happiness lie we've been fed with. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who accepts shadows as something we can't run away from, but as yet another facet of the universes we all hold inside. Take what you need from this and please don't close the door on your way out.
Recently, after I'd been babbling incoherently for a few minutes about the complicated situations I felt stuck in, someone I hold very dearly asked me kindly to snap out of it. Complicated? It's you, your cute little mind, that's making them so. As the person explained, sometimes it's our need to come up with answers that make things so much more complicated than they are. So, rather than seeing those situations as thousands of tangled strings tightening around me, which would be complicated to get out of, I was compelled to look at them as a puzzle. A very complex one, yes, but with a less horrifying connotation now that I had taken some distance from it.
Twenty-five days I'd been away from HIVE. I can assure you each and every one of them was like a smack to the back of my head. What I had intended as an innocent, much-needed weekend break turned into a void threatening to swallow me whole. So I decided to stay away for a bit longer. The voices tried to take over, claiming the right to judge my choice. What are you doing? You're wasting your time! Get to it already, you idiot, time is money! And on the other side of the room... See? I knew it. You're never good enough. You're weak. Good thing you stopped before embarrassing yourself further. Two years ago, or a year ago, hell, even four months ago, these past days would have made me quit writing altogether again. Who knows for how long this time. But NO. I say fucking no. To myself and to everyone who dares play along with the voices. This time, I will not disappear. I'm back. To stay. Rock bottom or not, I'm back.
Right about now, I really have to go get dressed and make breakfast. I'm going on a hike and this ship runs on a tight clock. Still, I promise to myself to take some time when I get back home to connect with more people here on HIVE, my second favorite thing to do when I'm around. See you soon!
I'd like to thank you for reading this. I hope my words resonated with you in some way. If they did, or even if they didn't, I'd like to further connect with you, so I invite you to drop a comment and I'll answer it as soon as I can.
Source of the image:
📷 by Yannis Papanastasopoulos
