When you are really hurt, the world becomes different for you. Everything changes, slowly, with each breath. You become what you thought you could never be. Sadness changes us in more ways than we think. It’s like someone taking away a piece of your heart, day after day.
Before you know it, you have lost too much of yourself. It doesn’t happen accompanied by tears and cries for help. It happens on those quiet nights. It happens when you are just staring at the screen, feeling nothing. You see nothing. You hear voices but don’t understand what they’re saying.
Everything goes numb. And that numbness eats you up from the inside. You no longer want people around. You just want to be left alone. You don’t even want anyone to ask, “Are you fine?” You are tired of explaining. Because you yourself don’t even understand what’s wrong. There is no explanation, and you simply want people to understand that you’re hurt. You are sick of people not getting it.
You just want to absorb the pain in peace, all alone. And when you become aloof, you end up pissing a lot of people off. But you don’t even care. What can I give you? I feel so empty myself. How can I give you any care, love, or attention? I have nothing to give, not even to myself.
But other people don’t live your life. Other people don’t suffer your pain. Other people don’t cry your tears. To them, you appear normal. You smile. You laugh. You reply “lol” to their forwarded memes. So when you act a little weird with them, a little off, they take it as a personal insult. They expect you to keep being sweet to them.
They say you have an attitude problem. They start calling you selfish just because you needed a little time to yourself and didn’t reply to their text immediately. They start taunting you. Telling you that the world doesn’t revolve around you, that you’re going to need them one day. Is it too much to ask to be alone for a while? And you get into fights. You get mad because you’re already hurting. So you explode. You take it all out on them, all that frustration. Things get worse, with one person after another.
Before you know it, you’ve pushed everyone away. Because you feel that they have failed you, failed to give you the space you wanted. They blame you. And you blame them for not understanding you. After a while, you start blaming yourself too, for ruining everything. Then you start blaming God for all your trouble. You get sick in your soul.
You are tired of this sadness. You feel the tiredness in your bones. So you just give up on making things right. You choose to suffer it all silently until one day your soul screams out in revolt. And then you create a new you from the ashes. But you miss the people you lost. You miss the old you.
27 March, 2023
