I Thought You Cared

Sometimes, I feel foolish, my folly reflected in the astonishment on the face of someone who I thought might understand, but who turns out to only be capable of telling me exactly what they would have done if they had been me.

Other times, I am angry at the years taken from me, a significant portion of my now so precious and finite stock of life staked on a losing bet, the whole eroded by adherence to the code that dominated and controlled my existence since the dawn of consciousness.

Often, I am unsure, an uncertainty that hits like vertigo, making the whole world swim like a heat haze on the horizon, and made worse when set against the imposing, impregnable certainty of a firmly stated and often repeated lie. I remember the seductive caress of the knowledge that I didn’t have to worry about anything, that all I had to do was trust in those who provided the answers. Shhhh…everything is alright…don’t think…go to sleep…

So now, I am unsure of the world and everything in it, but principally: myself. Is that really me thinking that, or is it simply another piece of programming flapping loose and crashing my mind, a human 404 error?

Mostly, though, I feel betrayed. By my parents, my friends, everyone I knew for all those years. How could they participate in such a grand and overarching deception? How could they train me to set aside my humanity, my personality and any evidence that ran contrary to the only truth that they could accept? And when I made my decision, how could they turn their backs on me as one, leaving me alone in a world for which I was so ill-equipped? My so-called friends? Did they ever really love me at all? Was I ever even really “me” to them?

Above all, I feel betrayed by you. Can I even be betrayed by someone that was never there in the first place? Sometimes, the paradox will so divert me from the path of self recrimination that I lose myself in philosophical daydreams, but even after everything, a part of me still believes and addresses my lament to you even though I’m blaming you for not existing. If I’m unlucky, though, all I feel is a void, an aching hollow where you should be, where you were, but never were.

And on top of it all sits a monster, created and nurtured by people I still believe meant no harm, but one that is with me always, watching over, influencing everything I think and do. A squalid, dark behemoth, silent, judgmental, ever present and ever ready to pounce, waiting to fall on me and rend me with razor sharp, toxin lined claws. Guilt. I feel guilty. The constant reinforcement of my lack of worth, my insignificance, the suggestion that no matter what I did, I should be doing more, and the encouragement to outsource my discretion to another body that would always find me wanting has left me struggling to assess myself fairly, able to be floored by something others would consider a mere bagatelle. The radiation of this guilt is cancerous and malignant, clouding the sun, souring the sweetness of the fruit of the world, a crashing, discordant, note destroying a delicate melody.

What choice do I have but to carry on? There is, after all, no going back, the bridge I crossed crumbled behind me leaving me separated from everything that went before by a yawning chasm. I can’t unthink what I have thought, and have lost the ability to pretend that everything could be satisfactorily balanced in the ledger of my mind.

I must find my own strength. I must be my own judge. I must listen to my own conscience and accept that I have neither left or been left, because we have always been alone.