Sadness Is Like A Drug

 

 

I hate to be touched.

     People come up behind me, I feel their shadow cast over me, and they place a pitying hand on my cold shoulder.  They feel sorry for me.

     They look at me as if I am a spectacle, waiting for me to explode and finally let go of all the secrets I hold dear. 

     But they don't understand that pity is not what I seek.  I don't want their sympathy, their soft words, or their forced smiles. 

     I want to be left alone.  I want them to realize I am beyond repair.  They have waited too long, and now the damage is done.

     There was a time when I wanted help, when I craved attention, but that time is long gone, and I hardly remember it. 

     Now they have lost their chance.  I have made up my mind now, and I have decided I want to be alone.  I will not let them make a mockery of my pain, I will not let them watch as I struggle.

     A long time ago, I needed them, and they were nowhere to be found.  They left me by myself for years, believing I was safe at home, but I went through hell whenever I was left alone. 

     And they did not notice. 

     I am an excellent liar.  

     But lies leave so many scars, so many traces of their destruction. 

     Everyone think I am a weak, pathetic girl.  They believe I am narcissistic and unfeeling.  They believe I do not have emotions outside of my own vanity.  But that's not true. 

     They think I am weak because I sold my soul to a disease and fell down a hole that is too steep to dream of escape. 

     Can't they realize my strength? How much it's taken to make so little of myself?

     They think my fixed eyes are hollow because I am too self-centered to live in the real world, to be present, to laugh at jokes and play in the rain. 

     But that's all lies.

     My thoughts, my real thoughts, couldn't be more different.  I don't deserve to live in the real world, and dreaming of belonging there is too painful. 

     I want, more than anything, to laugh in the rain, to finally take in the world I find so hard.  I want to be a child again.  Childhood would be a welcomed release.

     I could be innocent, delicate, and untouched.  I could be free, I could live in a world where food is not greed and razor blades are scary and direful.  I could finally be free.

    

     Stop that, Rosie.  That is not your life anymore, darling. 

 

     The truth is, I hardly remember that world.  I tried, for a very long time, to remember the euphoric feeling of joy and happiness and weightlessness, but that time has passed for me.  That's not my life anymore, because sadness is like a drug that steals your world and hands you back an unrecognizable reality that is cruel and sordid but is also like your old life in some manner. 

     The weather is the same, your family is the same, your home is the same.

     But somehow, you are different.  So very different.

     From there, it feeds you lies through a series of tricks and ploys that build and build until one day, the reality you knew implodes and collapses on itself, shattering to ruins right before your eyes, while you wait and cry and scream for help, thinking certainly this is all some kind of bad dream.

     It's not.  From now on, this is your world.  You will never wake up.