It's been a stressful week, so I felt compelled to write something. Between booking flights and accommodation for a stay in Singapore later this year, the super storm which has partially destroyed my house, the stress of kittens, rabbits, cats and then taking care of myself, and the clincher of lady-issues, you could say I've have my plate full.
The funny thing is, if someone were to ask me how I was doing, and not just this week, but in general, I'd almost always reply "good", sometimes "fine". Some friends would get more of the story, but for the most part, I will shrug off any opening to peek out from behind this facade which has formed to actually share the truth.
I'm not alright. Far from it. And yet I still can't bring myself to tell the truth. The truth that the perfect white lie that I pass off to people as we swap pleasantries is a macabre fabrication to disguise the hurtful reality. When the moment comes, I swallow that pain, that inner turmoil, and after a while, it almost becomes a feeling of accomplishment. That I've somehow gained a place in the leaderboards of silent suffering and its macho companions. Even as the weigh pushes down on my heart - and really, that's exactly how it feels; a heavy weigh that lingers in my chest, slowing my every move to a crippling halt - I somehow feel a strange joy in that I was able to fake my happiness, as if it brings me closer to the real thing.
It doesn't. If anything, it draws me ever away from being happy, and isolates me in my own private hell. I'm tired of regurgitating the same tired lines of what work I'm doing, how my plans for the year are, if I'm excited for some upcoming event. Sometimes I just want to scream the reality in peoples' faces. Scream that no, I'm not finding work easy because employers don't even reply back. That I'm not excited about the coming week, because the last several have frankly been shit. That sometimes I question my existence and role in this world, and the direction I'm headed. If I'll find that happiness I so easily conjure. Behind my nodding eyes is this pain, and each time I swallow it back down and act completely unaffected. The shame I feel. If I told. If I shared my reality. The ignorance I know that wouldn't understand. Or would try to and make things worse.
The storm has at least brought some comfort, even if it's morbid in a sense; the tree out front has crashed into the garden, wiping out half of it. Two stories of hardened bark and tangled branches. It's like a once great monolith, now left to linger in the sands. Its wrinkles and grooves withstood decades of life. And then just like that it all was too much. The wind was too strong. It's root support not deep enough. Just a little tip and there it lies in the soil, a metaphorical reminder of the lives we live. I've been hacking away at it for several days now, with just a $1 saw, a hatchet and a sledge hammer. I can relate to the tree. I wonder if it is lying there weeping for itself. As it watches silently as it is taken apart where it once stood so proud. I feel bad cutting its branches. Some of the twigs still believe they're alive and reach out to the sun, not knowing they're already doomed. In a way, it also makes me feel a bit better knowing at least someone out there is having just as bad a day. And then it's just a pile of splinters, bark chips and sap, and I've got not a friend in the world who can share the pain.
