No matter how much I try to stay away, only coming back in fits and starts, things aren't actually that much easier to deal with. Things are very much one step forward, two steps back. Some days I think that I'm better. More often, perhaps, I tell myself that I am because I want, so desperately, to be. I don't even know, really, what happened that was so bad, how things got so bad, that I'm here now. (This is a lie; I know. I wish the encounter had been less hostile, but I shouldn't have been surprised. It always was my fault, anyway.)
I spend a lot of time swinging between feeling angry, and apathetic, and incredibly sad, and pretending that things are going to be all right. So. Yeah. I'm spending a lot of time kind of flailing around in the dark, trying to figure out what the fuck is actually going on.
I wish I had been strong enough back then to really tell somebody in my direct, personal life about what happened during those long months. Speaking to L helped a lot, but what good was that when I could never have more than the words on the page, could never feel her arms around me in an embrace of solidarity, reassurance that I could move on one day. (And I have, mostly.) But then again, even if I had the chance to change something, I would still make the choice not to tell. Nobody else deserves to have to shoulder this alongside me; I would rather keep them safe in their belief that these sorts of things don't happen to their friends. In the end, it was only ever on me to make my decisions. And I made all the wrong ones.
K and M, I know, suspect; G, I think, knows and blames herself. I have never heard her mention C again, and a part of me regrets that - they were close before. I want to tell her that it's not her fault, that she could no more predict what happened than I could, but how can I now? When so much time has passed and we have never spoken of it. The more time passes, the less often we speak, and the easier it is to just keep silent.
There are days when I want to cling to someone and cry. There are more days when I keep it all together in front of everyone and not let on that life can still hurt you, even after you go through so much shit. It's interesting how people rarely pick up on the false cheer, or the way it feels like my mouth is going to melt off my face, or the way that I've apparently perfected not letting on that I am constantly braced for--something. It's easy to see only what we want to see; easier still when you have no notion of how closely the darkness can hang over others. For all the empathy and sympathy we have, most of the time words are still only words until they hit someone close to you.
Even though I cry over sad things, it's the things that give me hope that make me cry the hardest. I'm making time these days to go back and sit down with A again. I need it. Apart from L, she is the only one who knows the truth about the secrets of that time. She told me recently that one day, no matter what, I would be happy again, that we would, we all would, and every day would have smiles and laughter. It's hard to remember that, most of all, but I try to believe it.
No comments:
Post a Comment