Loving hybrids ✔️

1

Today has yet to end and the miserable silence that surrounds me makes me sigh for the hundredth time. I look around me, at the empty walls and wonder how I can live in such a bland place. There's nothing that could tell someone what kind of person I am. It's empty and cold.

I think back to my appointment this morning with my doctor, how she told me it would do me wonders to get a hybrid for my depression. That a companion could help me find a reason to live again.

She says I'm in a state of powerlessness, of hopelessness. Trapped in my own life, its control running out of my grasp every time I find the strength to attempt to get it back and eventually giving up after realizing that trying is too tiring for what it actually brings me.

Just how did I end up in this state? Was it the divorce? No, I was like that even before it happened.

People say this wedding was dangerous for me. I was abused, treated like garbage. Yet, I never had found the will to get out of it.

You grow used to it, thinking you're the one needing to change. If he got mad, it's because I didn't do enough. If he forces me into giving him affection, even if I mentally can't give any, then I need to try and give more, even if it hurts me in the depths of my soul. If he hit me, it's because I deserved it, I wasn't careful enough with my words, with my actions.

It's only when a stranger saw my bruises when I was bringing the trash outside, the black strangled line surrounding my neck that I forgot to hide correctly that things really started to change. When the police knocked at home, when my ex-husband saw them and thought it was me, that I wanted to run away from him. The way he beat me up in rage before the door snapped opened, men getting inside after hearing my cries of pain.

Since then, he's been in prison. It's been five months now and although I should feel free, liberated, instead I feel without purpose. What do I do now? Now that I don't have anyone to please anymore, no beatings to avoid, no screaming to endure, what do I do with myself? He had been my husband for years, so I don't even know who I am anymore.

My psychologist said that it's a result of erasing myself to better protect myself. I ended up bland, just like my walls. Nothing that shines like the real me, just empty, while walls.

My phone's alarm rings and I look down to see that it's time to walk outside. I sigh and turn it off, but even after ending, the noise continues to resonate in my ears. I'm so empty it results in an endless echo inside my head.

It rings again and I almost want to throw it against a wall, a burst of rage that dies down just as fast. I turn it off and rise from the couch, grab my cardigan and walk to the front door. Grabbing my keys, my bag and putting on my shoes feels like something I haven't done in ages, yet it's a repeated routine every day. To take a walk after wanting to destroy the noisy machine.

I open the door, step outside and lock it behind me. I then start walking on the sidewalk. I follow it, feet taking me forward in a straight line, eyes gazing at the lines separating every tiles of cement. If I walk on it, I lose one year of my life. Someone somewhere will die. I'll get into a terrible accident. So I avoid them. Make wider or smaller steps when I realize my normal step will make me end up right on the line.

I cross streets, walk past shops and eventually arrive in the busier part of town. I start looking up once the sidewalk ends to become a wide street for people on foot or on bicycles. No cars allowed, I don't need to care too much for my environment.

I look around me to notice hybrids walking along with their owners. Everyone seems so happy as they laugh together, human and hybrids alike. Looking at their smiles, it feels foreign. What could possibly make someone smile like that? What does it even feel like to truly smile nowadays? I forgot what it is to be happy.