Ice and Snow
Ice and snow. Snow and ice. She wanders through them both. Away from me. Away from the cabin that has kept her safe. The fire that has kept her warm. Away from the saftey of my protection. Everything, gone. Lost in the ice and the snow. The snow and the ice. She doesn't understand why I need her. She doesn't understand how lucky she is, the honor it is, the beauty of it all. I pull on my boots, my coat, my hat, my gloves and follow her out into the ice and snow. Snow and ice.
The snow is deep. The wind is blowing, blowing me numb on this dark, starless night. Clouds blanket the sky, dropping the snow mercilessly down. What if she is lost. She need me, though she does not know it. I need her, though I've done nothing until now to show it.
The ice is cold, the snow unforgiving. I sink down under a tree. I will never find her like this. I am truly all alone. She was the bright spot, the glimmer through the despair, gone now. Gone like the stars hidden away from me behind the clouds. We are doomed without her. All is lost.
The ice and snow seep down through my clothes all the way to my bones. That feeling of nothingness, blank and empty, spreads throughout my body. All feeling, all emotions have been washed away by the ice and snow. Snow and ice. What is the point of feelings? Of emotions? All is lost anyways. What does it matter? What does any of it matter? The joy, pain, love, loss, are all gone. Why feel anything at all when your reason to live, the thing that you needed to survive, has run away?
#nothingness #iceandsnow #alone #empty
Learning to Read
The tears stream down my face as I sit here. Five years old. At the table. My mother by my side gently coaxing me to just try, just *try* to sound out the next word. "You know it," she says. "You can do it. Just sound it out for me. What's that word? What's the first letter? What sound does it make?" And I know that letter. I know what sound that it makes. I know it. But what if I don't? What is I'm wrong? What if I'm wrong? And it's better to not try at all than to try and to fail, to be a failure. What if I fail? I can't do this. I can't do this. I can not do this.
What if she hates me? The thought is completely delusional. I see that now. I know that now. It is just the anxiety brain talking. The anxiety brain that I didn't know that I had until years later. How was I to know? I was just shy, wasn't I? Just shy. That's all. But it was so much more, so much more complex than that. There is no world where I could believe that my gentle and kind mother could be capable of hating me and thinking me studpid for getting a word wrong when reading. But, that's what I did think, isn't it?
I'm crying now, five-year-old me, crying at the kitchen table. "I can't do this!" I wail at her. "I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't read. It's too hard. I don't want to!"
"You can do this, Maia. What's that word. Sound it out with me. What's the fir letter say?'
"Muh muh muh," I cry.
"Yes, that's an M. And what's the next letter say?"
"Aah aah aah," I say through my tears.
"Yes, that's an A. Very good," she says calmly. "And what's the last letter."
"I don't know!" I wail. She waits. "I don't know." She waits some more. "Tuh tuh tuh," I say.
"Yes, good job. That's a T. Now put the sounds together. What does it say?
She coaches me through the whole process. The word is "mat". I know that it is. But what is I'm wrong? I'm too stupid. Too stupid. Too stupid. I'll get it wrong and she'll hate me. She'll hate me. She'll hate me. I can't do this. Can't do this. Can't do this.
Every night is the same. Every night she calmly forces me to read. Every night I get more confident, more willing, more able. And then it becomes easy. Just like that. Nothing to fear except for my brain telling me that I'm incapable, worthless, unable all over again when another something new arrives in my life.
@QuietSilence #firstbadmemory #anxiety #learningtoread
Not Hungry
I am not hungry. Why do I eat? Why not? Food is the answer. I eat when I am happy, sad, alone, discouraged. When I am down, at least there is the pleasure of food, my drug of choice. And is it not a drug? It sustains me, lifts me up momentarily, until I come crashing down in desperate need of it again. I want it even when I do not need it. The weight of it adds up. I am fat. Alone. Unloved...except by food. My drug of choice. Food comforts me until it can't anymore. Until I am so low that nothing matters anymore. Then, nothing matters. There is nothing. I am nothing. Not even food seems necessary. No drug can fix the hole in my heart.
#nothungry #drugofchoice #foodisadrug #depression
Sex is Love.
Isaac had never seen so many homeless people in one place, but I guess that’s what happens when a rich old man hangs signs out over half the city claiming to start handing out free food once a week at this very park at this very time. Not that Isaac was the rich old man. Now that would have been a dream come true. No, he was one of the hundreds of people crowded in the park waiting, hoping for the food to come.
Isaac had known wealth once until Irene had destroyed him. Love does crazy things to people. Love isn’t the sweet, fluffy feeling that is portrayed in children’s movies. Love is like a hurricane: terrible and intense and crazy and horrifying and beautiful all at the same time. Isaac loved Irene, but he also hated her. Because Irene had ruined his life.
And for what? Because he had slept with a couple of dozen girls behind her back? So what? She had her hobbies. He had his. She ran a multi-million-dollar company and he pleased her when she got back home late at night. He had thought that they both new that had only gotten married so that she could get the sex that she so longingly desired without the scandal. It wouldn’t look very good if a very successful business woman was just sleeping with random men.
But, Isaac had no such worries for himself. For the first few weeks of their marriage he had just aimlessly wandered around their gigantic house while Irene was at work or sat in his room and gorged on food and watched mindless football games. But that wasn’t what Isaac wanted for his life. He had married Irene for her, not for himself. He had always viewed marriage as an optional affair, an artificial sign of love. But he married Irene anyways because it was a way to stay close to her. She had offered him two options: #1. Marry her and continue to have the best sex of both of their lives. Or… #2. Have Irene walk out of his life forever.
And so, Isaac married Irene and, for those first few weeks, everything was great. Irene was enough again for a little while. Until it wasn’t. Until it wasn’t enough anymore just like it was never enough before he had met Irene.
Then the other girls started coming. Rich girls with overprotective parents, girls who wanted a man, but no commitment, girls who were craved attention and what felt like love so much that they were willing to pay almost anything to get it. First one, then two, then five, and then finally eight a day. Sex all day, every day. He paid the servants with the money he received from the girls. Not like he needed it. He was married to Irene: the millionaire girl, woman, who’s sex had made him happy enough to believe that this was what he wanted, that she was enough, that he loved her. Until he realized that she wasn’t enough and that maybe love wasn’t the right word for their relationship.
But now, shivering here in the cold, he was again wondering if maybe what they had had been love, at least on his end anyways. But she has thrown him out. He had lost her because she was selfish and refused to share his body with others. He wasn’t a “one girl only” type of man. He needed, he craved, more.
He remembered it like it was yesterday, the day that she had thrown him out. She had come home early that day so that they could go out to dinner together with some rich couple who she wanted to partner with. She had called home to inform him, but Isaac had threatened decreases in salary to anyone who ever interrupted him while he was with one of his “lady friends”. To make a long story short, Irene barged into the bedroom where a pretty naked red-head with pale white skin and freckles lay draped over Isaac’s shirtless form.
He didn’t even get the chance to explain himself. She threw the girl out and demanded the story from the butler who told her the whole story. Isaac was thrown out like the red-head girl like he was nothing in under an hour.
Isaac knew what love does to a person. It makes them evil. Makes them turn against you. Love is weakness. Love is darkness. Love is agony. Love is nothing.
If Irene had only been able to accept that this is just who Isaac was, something that he is not able to help being, they could have kept having a healthy relationship. But she was too closed-minded and shut him out. So, Isaac went back to getting his fix with girls who mean nothing, with girls who are nothing.
Love is nothing.
The crowd starts to move forward again. The promise of food seems more and more real every second. Isaac inches forward, rubbing shoulders with hundreds of people who look just as ragged and hungry as he does. He is about 50 yards from the assembly line of food when he feels a firm hand on his shoulder and is roughly turned around. In front of him is a very large man with a ski mask pulled over his face. He glares at Isaac for a moment, and then pulls out a knife. In terror, Isaac tries to back up, to get away, but there is nowhere to go. The people are pressing in all around him, pushing and shoving him in their frantic attempt to make it to the food.
The masked man raises the knife and pauses, staring right into Isaac’s eyes.
“This is for Irene,” he says.
Then the knife plunges into Isaac’s stomach and there is nothing more.