Where do I put it … in a clean vase or a mason jar? This need to belong or make sense....
HEART TO HEART
Where do I put it … in a clean vase or a mason jar? This need to belong or make sense. To give this loss a name, this grief a face, this numbing sensation a meaning. Where do I put years of integrity, my fading youth, my futile twenties that I placed in their hands? Where do I put the carcass that remains? My skin still bruises in their hue, my mind still aches with the abuse; I can sense the physicality of the pain.
Do I tell them the emotional toll it takes to still go on like it’s nothing new? Like I’m inured to it … as if I don’t feel it anymore. Those screams have become redundant. The rebuttals have lost their relevance, and the scars have become part of the fingerprints. As though fated abuse falls into the creases of human skin as immaculately as human existence.
When I breathe, I sigh. I softly whimper the pain that drowns me down, with no hope of solace. The loneliness grips me whole, and I lie paralysed. I go days without speaking; sometimes my own voice feels like that of a stranger. The ones on the other side think I am too proud. But only the dishevelled know what it takes to still show up and feel whole.
I may not have wanted this for myself. I may have had a choice, or the illusion thereof. But once I tread these precarious waters, I know there is no amount of truth that can withhold this pain. I wake up each morning exhausted, like I’m trying to do a task I loathe. The bane of existence wears me down, until there’s nothing left. I’m watching myself disappear into thin air.
There are layers and layers of cherishable and perishable memories - some core ones that help me stay afloat in times when I think the pain will drown me. But I am surrounded by mounds of ache and pain. A coldness that pierces through me. An abandonment that leaves me numb. A forsaken attitude that makes me feel like a mistake. Was I always meant to live on scraps of love and affection?
There’s a grief of loss that opens its floodgates, and I lose my centre. I spend days, even years, under water, but no one notices. I put no demands ahead and am placed at the bottom. When the storm is over and everyone is trying to salvage their wreckage, I am recovered as a lost record - something to claim as loss, but not something that is worth any gain.
I am used to being a shadow or an afterthought. They ask why I am disappearing in front of their very eyes, and I ask what they did to make me stay.
Now they claim they always cared. That they meant no harm. That they kept me somewhere. But a well-ordained grave is still a womb to nurture the dead. They can’t fail to find the corpses in their backyard and act surprised when it is they who buried me. First my words. Then my hands. My talents. My wittiness, my whimsy - and now they’ve come for my thoughts.
But this voice, which has known me for 30 years, knows me from the start. It carries the silent aches, gestures, indifference and mannerisms. It knows what they mean when they give the side-eye, turn quiet or don’t take my feelings into account. They use my story, take what suits them, and make a well-tailored dress of their liking without any guilt or remorse. They hurt you with their hands, soak their nails in your blood, and then blame you for the mess it makes.
This chapter of life is called the reawakening of chronic pain.
