I don't remember always feeling this way about my life. I don't remember such periods of raw, desolate fury.
Today, we had another silent screaming match. Another rapidly pounding on the keyboard while tears well up because I can't raise my voice over a polite, public decibel. Because I am at work. Because I'm an adult. Because I should fucking know better.
How strange then, that after an hour of unspilled tears and barely checked rage, my voice has left me. It comes out scratched and uneasy as if scraped violently against a granite wall.
I need space - space to breathe; space to grow; space to sprawl; space to be adventurous; space to learn; space to fall. But I have no space because I don't know how to be productive anymore with so much space. In fact, I don't know how to be productive alone. I don't allow myself to be alone. I don't allow myself to have so much space. What was once placid solitude has become distorted as needless isolation. But I so need it. My sanity depends on it.
What little sanity is left, at least. Reality is constantly distorted, exaggerated, assumed, fabricated and then painted pitch black. Just so it matches everything else I see.
But things weren't always pitch black. I don't think things were always or even a little pitch black. Some dark moments here and there, but I thought I grew up. I thought that was just teenage angst clawing away at the rigid cage of self-doubt and pubescent shame. But it's back, with a vengeance.
And this time, furrows become deep, jagged creases. Stressful instants manifest in sunken cheeks and eyes like daggers. Work transforms into caved in shoulders and a crooked, lifeless, uncertain semblance of a smile. Sometimes I can't even recognize myself. Sometimes, I marvel. Most times, I turn away before I have to realize it's me.
And this exchange is all too common.
You say, "you are my light in this world."
I wish I had a better answer than "yes, and yet, all I see is pitch black."
