Escape Artist
No one actually cares. About you, about your illness, suffering behind a curtain of a smile. People have needs and act upon them. They are not to blame just because blaming them would put another burden on your shoulders so you continue to imagine. A life less lonely…
Are you like that? I am, am I the only one?
I forgot how it feels to rest, to feel comfortable at doing nothing. I want to learn how to live without other people because I am naive enough still, and consequently get disappointed.
In other people.
I’m not special, but have special needs, like a wounded dove, like a lion with a thorn up his paw. I need a relief. But it never comes. The current is strong and it carries me downstream away from the source of my joy.
My diagnosis is depressive anxiety. The depression forces me to sit and do nothing, the anxiety forces me to get up and run away. And I am torn. It is like being tossed around by two devils constantly in a quarrel. And I am the plate they keep breaking throwing it at the floor. The floor is my destiny, an inevitable crash that hurts my entire body. And I haven’t even got out of the bed yet.
So I escape.
I escape their quarrels, their fights over my soul. I never start my days from zero. No, no. I start my days well below, from the freezing part of the scale. Where there is eternal winter and cold winds scar my naked body. I am in the dark.
I am living in danger. Life-threatening. All the time. I forgot how it feels to be calm. Does it exist? Calmness?
I work. With people. My colleagues, my students. They are not aware that I escaped a prison of the soul, and that the police is after me. I run and pretend. To be one of the normals. So I wear a smile number 7, number 10, number 144. I dodge, jump, hide, lie, steal some happiness from others, borrow some. Just to keep me going. Away from the posse.
My secret weapons.
I believe in angels.
I believe in tomorrow.
I love with all my heart. I love hard.
I give. I always give.
I forgive and accept people and their faults.
I cling to hope. My hope is the only thing I got.
I embrace my emotions as proof that I am still alive.
I support others in their dreams and give them thumbs up.
I listen to my heart because it leads me out of danger. My mind is clueless.
I escape. Fear, hate, misery, jealousy, complaining, self-pity just for one day.
When the day is over I have piled enough little joys to get me from sub-zero to a warmer place. And tomorrow is another day.
