I’m tired of feigning happiness, the ephemeral attempt to let everyone know its all ok. I need room to breathe and be me. Me, without prying eyes or judging hearts. My life has quite a dark and twisted path to my past. I’ve done my best to sequester all these wretched things onto an island that I never visit. Its how I dealt, how I deal. Every now and again my life collides with this island. Usually by form of something as innocent as a message in a bottle, a screaming reminder of the things I’ve forced behind me. These bottles so crudely wrapped in barbed wire they’d slice your soul with just a glance. Yet so ornately decorated you can’t help but indulge the desire to pick them up. Thinking you’ll be ever so gentle that you won’t get injured that you won’t disturb the darkness swirling within. It never fails though…that darkness refuses to remain stagnant. In the instant you touch that bottle, that devious little reminder, it engulfs you. Drowning you in those memories, those feelings, making you gasp for breath. You know you’ll be stuck treading, head barely above water, and that’s when you wish you shared this island with someone. Not in the sense that you feel you have to awaken the island…more in the fact that you had someone who understood the grasp of the island. It is a tumultuous reminder that you will never get to be, just happy. It’s something that’s absolutely impossible to explain. Unless you have an island you will never understand the power anyone’s island holds. You will be baffled by their angst and helplessness. You’ll do everything you can to “make it better” but it doesn’t work like that. I’ve tried…I’ve invited people to experience that darkness but their lack of comprehension never fails. I’ve had a thousand attempts at understanding that only leads to frustration on both parts.
It seems the easiest way to coexist with such a past is to remove it from memory altogether. But it’s those instances when you’re treading, barely breathing that you wish it was possible to share this with the ones you love most so you wouldn’t have to pretend. That you only had to be you around everyone instead of holding the pretense of happiness for those in your life that need you to be that person. You feel it, those closest to you see it, the falter behind the mask, but how do you get around it? How do you refuse this engulfing sadness, kill it, disarm it…
