People always say, “I had no idea.” “He seemed OK yesterday.” “We were talking,
he seemed like he was happy, you know, joking around.”
A lot goes unnoticed. The little clues. The cries for help.
It’s hard to see when someone is actually putting on their best face but they
are hanging by a thread. We want to believe that they will be just fine. Then
we can be OK with going about our own day, doing whatever it is that gives us
our pleasures.
No one else hears the voices that taunt and torment a soul.
The insidious commentary that goes on in someone’s head is only theirs. “It’s
pointless.” “Who cares, really?” “You’re worthless.” “Everything is
futile.”
I find I have nothing to say anymore. I’ve raged. I’ve
complained. I’ve cried. I’ve affirmed. I’ve deflected and dismissed, distracted
and pretended. Acted up and acted out. Behaved like I was told I should and
rebelled with all my heart. I’ve gone blind with emotion, and I’ve gone numb
past all feeling.
If there was joy or love, I can’t find it now. It is in the
past. In pictures. In stories I tell myself. Those stories all have sad,
unfulfilling endings. They have dragging, tedious storylines of watching
something slowly decay from the inside. Still smiling and fooling the public.
Still making chit-chat.
Find little things to stick around for. Little, short-term
goals with higher reward to work ratios. I don’t know. Nothing seems to
pay off, really. Half-ass this, half-ass that. Projects too daunting or to
draining to start. Little chores pile up into mountains. The everyday
necessities that one begins to question, “Why bother?” Why bother putting
together complete sentences and such? Who will really care?
