Life's Manuscript

The journals hung loosely in her apathetic gaze, devoid of the meaning and emotion they once held.  Five years had come and gone, and those smallish white pages and black scribbles and childish drawings were all that had gotten her through the tough bits.  All that had given her hope for the future.
Now they were but a memory, invisible to her heart as the light began to fade.
     She clasped and unclasped the pencil in her hand, willing herself to write, restraining herself from the release.  What good would it be, to record these thoughts and ideas if they would have no meaning, no purpose, in the times to come?
     Better yet, what thoughts and ideas were there to record?  The character was dead to her, the meaning lost on the rocky shores of betrayal.  There was nothing here for her, nowhere to turn.  She was lost at sea on the most defying of gentle waves, heeding her numbness and pulling her forward.  She was stuck in a rut, a dead end that she had visited many years over, many times through her life.  She was lost on what to do next.
     The pencil fell through her hand, through the table, the empty pages of the journal before her, through the floor and disappeared into her mind's eye.  She watched as she fell, farther into the chronicled measurements of her life, the precise descriptions that outlined her presence.  Five-foot-three, size two, her life in numbers, like a child's painting.  Her life in letters, like a book.  Full of characters, both a tool of the trade and the destruction thereof.  The destruction of her.
     Her outstretched arm caught the pencil from its path, sending it deviating from its suicide course.  It spun, skittering across the blank page, now marred by the black line that so accurately depicted the devious character in question.  The crude drawing portrayed her very understanding of the situation - black and white, ruined by his presence.  Either his presence is to be erased, or her memory of the boy shall cause her life, the spent page, to be forgotten, looked back on in shame.  The decision was hers, but it lay on his shoulders, his actions, his words.  The words of a character.  A faulty place for one's trust.
     The graphite swelled and surged and grew beneath the spread of her fingers, consuming the milky white of what had been her life, the blank page, the unused, un-tampered reduction of a world's sturdiest living being.  Descendant of strength, yet easily broken; the page as itself, alone, tore from its binding.  Ruined, but free.
     Who knew such a figment of one's imagination could wreak such havoc?  Who knew such a person as he was could change so many lives?  Who knew that metamorphosis culminated in the darkest and dreariest and most frightening of times?  Even the diamonds shine only under immense pressure.
     But she, herself, was no such diamond.

Suicié

I stopped believing in miracles when I became an expert on pain.  But I didn't know pain.


Pain wasn't the metaphorical shattering into pieces when I misjudged and mistrusted and misstepped.  It wasn't belting out the words to a song that meant nothing to me days before, but now summed up my entire existence, screaming the lyrics till my throat was raw and my nails cut half-moon indents into the palms of my hands and my eyes were puffy beyond repair and there weren't words left to tell myself that things will be okay.  Pain wasn't the delusions of depression or the emptiness that ebbed in and out of my consciousness as I waited for the days to pass without event or distraction, hoping in my stupor that there would be an end eventually.


Pain wasn't the way my mind shrank back at his harsh words, the way his eyes narrowed when I stepped one foot out of line.  It wasn't my eyes desperately looking toward the liquor cabinet behind the bar, wondering, wondering, what would happen if... Pain wasn't throwing myself into bed each evening, waiting for morning when he would have left already, hoping that I hadn't miscounted the days, desperate to be free from the stranglehold he had on every. single. action.  No, that wasn't pain at all.


Pain was watching you, walled in by white and chemical and the stench of sick and sterile and the windows forever closed, your eyes constantly laced with stupor, your limbs stiff with atrophy and your jaw clenched in agony.  Pain was singing to you and never knowing whether you could hear me or not, never really sure you remembered who I was.  Pain was watching the life slowly fade from your face, your hands gently releasing their grasp.


Pain was hearing the news on Christmas Day and having nobody to turn to, no one to cry on the shoulder of, no one to protect me from life as it inexplicably continued on around me.


And pain is watching a face you knew by heart and could only ever imagine smiling turn to wide eyes and anxiety and fear and agony as another life slowly drifts away before your eyes.  Pain is looking into once-smiling eyes and seeing a blankness that only death can bestow, and knowing that there's nothing you can do to fight back these demons and there's no hope to save her and the only thing you can do is watch and wait as the warm arms that once held you so close fall away, limp and cold.


Pain is having questions that nobody can answer and all the rage of the sea and nowhere to turn with it, because nothing you do can make a difference.


Pain is loving a heart that can no longer beat.