Heart of Chambers

How Are You?

In all the years of my schooling, I have never once been taught the amount of suffering you truly endure, by the mere state of your existence.

They don't teach you what to do when you wake up just to wish for the day to end. Praying to once again be blanketed by the darkness of your dreams. Disguised nightmares.

They don't teach you what to do when the ones you love the most preach how this too shall pass. When they repeat you'll be fine, it's all in your head, this is just a phase.

Tell me, how can it be a phase when it injects itself in everything you do, when it spreads violently like a fatal disease, when it infects every thought you ever have, when you can feel yourself fading away? But unfortunately you're still here. No matter how much you wish you weren't.

Maybe you still put on that smile when you walk out your door. Maybe you still laugh at the jokes made by those around you. Maybe you even make your own jokes, watching familiar faces light up in a way that yours haven't in years.

But do you ever ask yourself why you expend that wasted energy? That smile you plaster hides years of torment. That hollow laugh you barely manage conceals the tears that soak your pillow every night. Every morning. Every waking moment.

There must be a cause, right? I mean, one thing they did teach you was the law of cause and effect. There must be a reason for your struggle? Tell me, why do you need to explain that everything just aches? Everything cuts so deep, everything wounds but you have no lasting scars to show. How do you tell them that pushing the duvet off yourself as you wake up feels like lifting a boulder? One you wish was real so at least it could crush you from existence.

Telling them doesn't change how you feel. Instead, it's yet another burden you've imparted onto another.

Their advice: seek help. A seemingly simple suggestion, shouldn't it be easy to follow? How do you tell them that taking that one step feels like jumping off a cliff? It feels like hurtling yourself into a ravine filled with your fears come alive. Taking that step feels decidedly worse than simmering in the misery you have become accustomed to.

Because at this point, it isn't an outlier. It stands like a permanent fixture in your life, unavoidable and plain as day. It feels like the boss you greet at work every day, familiar yet feared but you endure them still. You shake hands with the pain, the grief, and all your failures. You are agonisingly aware of its parasitism. And you let it slowly suck the life out of you.

Perhaps, just like parasites, you can eventually rid of them. But at what cost? It has had years to develop. It has merged with you, it has changed you, it is you. So how much time will it take, how much more pain do you have to endure on the pathway to a supposed healing?

A healing that cannot actually take away any of the pain.