Today.
Today I woke up feeling broken. You feel that way too, sometimes. Perhaps the term 'broken' is inadequate, though. Allow me to rephrase...
...Today I woke up with the weight of my entire past crashing down on me. Every victory and every mistake. Each mistake felt as though it was living on through my continued existence and each past victory felt as though it had died and would never return.
I felt lost and totally alone in the world, no longer having any sort of home. I woke to find myself halfway around the world surrounded in heat and mosquito-netting. I woke to find myself unable to get in touch with anyone I would consider a true friend. I woke without a place to which I belonged, without a family, a love, or a friend. I woke expecting to drown silently in myself and my past with no one to hear the echoes of the things I have done with my life.
Lost in the distance and totally alone, I found I did not have the will to even imagine beginning to rebuild my life. I found myself frightened to try for fear of hurting others as I have hurt others in the past. Kalee, Bianca, Fawn, all sat with the objective abstraction of myself in judgment of every mistake, every error.
It's funny, I know that everyone else in the world has felt the way that I felt this morning. Even if they wake up in their own beds, next to a person who loves them. More often when they don't. And I wonder, is this the burden of mortality? Is this what it means to be a perishable creature in a world that seems infinite? When the authors write of a person confronted with their own insignificance, is this the feeling they are describing? Or does it not have to do with being fragile and mortal and insignificant, but with something else entirely? Perhaps it's merely a product of our culture? This disconnected 'individualism' that we claim makes us unique and worthwhile? Perhaps it's just me, but I doubt it.
You have made mistakes, the same as I have. And, looking back on your life, don't you feel that regret for the mistakes you've made? Haven't you looked back at your actions and wished things could have been different? Everyone misses the people in life who they've lost. And when you ask them, they tell you 'Sure, of course I still miss him/her. I loved him/her and I guess a part of me always will. It's better now, though. I've moved on. That's what you have to do."
But they don't tell you about the nights they still spend alone in their beds, staring at the walls and ceiling in the dark, aware that they're crying only by virtue that they can no longer see clearly. That they feel crushed under the weight of past mistakes and the total helplessness of needing more than anything to make things better or say goodbye but being completely incapable of doing so. They never tell you that they lie there, clawing at the skin of their skull, unable to make a sound as the vastness of night consumes everything but their own tragic failure and they're left alone with their memories and the faint images of what the world might have been if they'd just done things differently, if they'd known better, if they had been less fragile, less flawed, less broken... ...less human.
I woke up today feeling this way, and I wonder, surely there's something else? Surely there's a way past waking up this way? People don't feel this way their whole lives, do they?
...Today I woke up with the weight of my entire past crashing down on me. Every victory and every mistake. Each mistake felt as though it was living on through my continued existence and each past victory felt as though it had died and would never return.
I felt lost and totally alone in the world, no longer having any sort of home. I woke to find myself halfway around the world surrounded in heat and mosquito-netting. I woke to find myself unable to get in touch with anyone I would consider a true friend. I woke without a place to which I belonged, without a family, a love, or a friend. I woke expecting to drown silently in myself and my past with no one to hear the echoes of the things I have done with my life.
Lost in the distance and totally alone, I found I did not have the will to even imagine beginning to rebuild my life. I found myself frightened to try for fear of hurting others as I have hurt others in the past. Kalee, Bianca, Fawn, all sat with the objective abstraction of myself in judgment of every mistake, every error.
It's funny, I know that everyone else in the world has felt the way that I felt this morning. Even if they wake up in their own beds, next to a person who loves them. More often when they don't. And I wonder, is this the burden of mortality? Is this what it means to be a perishable creature in a world that seems infinite? When the authors write of a person confronted with their own insignificance, is this the feeling they are describing? Or does it not have to do with being fragile and mortal and insignificant, but with something else entirely? Perhaps it's merely a product of our culture? This disconnected 'individualism' that we claim makes us unique and worthwhile? Perhaps it's just me, but I doubt it.
You have made mistakes, the same as I have. And, looking back on your life, don't you feel that regret for the mistakes you've made? Haven't you looked back at your actions and wished things could have been different? Everyone misses the people in life who they've lost. And when you ask them, they tell you 'Sure, of course I still miss him/her. I loved him/her and I guess a part of me always will. It's better now, though. I've moved on. That's what you have to do."
But they don't tell you about the nights they still spend alone in their beds, staring at the walls and ceiling in the dark, aware that they're crying only by virtue that they can no longer see clearly. That they feel crushed under the weight of past mistakes and the total helplessness of needing more than anything to make things better or say goodbye but being completely incapable of doing so. They never tell you that they lie there, clawing at the skin of their skull, unable to make a sound as the vastness of night consumes everything but their own tragic failure and they're left alone with their memories and the faint images of what the world might have been if they'd just done things differently, if they'd known better, if they had been less fragile, less flawed, less broken... ...less human.
I woke up today feeling this way, and I wonder, surely there's something else? Surely there's a way past waking up this way? People don't feel this way their whole lives, do they?