The Exurox

prelude;

xvx

verse

Yesterday seldom ends.

Today is yesterday in different attire.

On a far more distant yesterday I was a child, unaware of the callous realities of the world. Whenever we felt simple sorrows or simple anxieties my mother would gather my siblings and I about; make our little eyes bright and eager with strange seemingly personal narratives. Incomprehensibly to myself then; I secretly wanted to end myself. I could scarcely structure a sentence, yet alone my own complete thought. I had yet to remember the definition of sadness and had already begun to experience pain. My infant mind desired nothing more.

I didn't exactly understand the gravity of such a thought nor could I recall its birth.

All that I knew, with cast-iron certainty, was that one nondescript morning, as normal as snow in winter, heat in summer, and all too casually I sought-after the obscurity of death over the marginally more structured notion I had of life.

In time I would acquire three select remedies, which gradually became my default coping mechanism, the only way I could fathom viably surviving reality's harsh complexities.

Firstly; my fortress of watermelon pink flamingo themed bedspread. Secondly; fantasizing; my favorite was imagining myself to be a pirate in search of a lost kingdom. More principal of the three were my mother's stories.

To recover, pain sometimes demands of us to lose it and ourselves in others. And always I sought that comfort in mother. And always her adlibbed mythical anecdotes, somehow, made every aspect of my life seemingly withstand as easy as breathing, as if experienced without much conscious effort on my part, akin to a passive sigh on a cool summer's day. With that I held a double-edged sort of happiness. Every personal tragedy forgotten with the idealize tales of someone else's.

Until the very next day where I'd again stumble into stationary snags; menacing stares, offhand denouncements of my existence, wishing against hope, against fear, against myself, that it would all end - that I would end. And every afternoon, I would run home, hardly allowing myself to breathe until I arrived. For every breath I took outside felt like a disservice. And every night, tucked securely under my fortress, warm milk at hand, she'd read to me, until frantic sobbing was lulled into a pacified slumber.

As I grew, reality, in all its imposing complexity, was burning the world I thought I thoroughly knew, its air poisoning me causing my senses to kick into hyper-drive. Senses formerly dampened by my own personal brand of innocence and the veil that I had weaponized to coat catastrophes in sunnier, rosier perspectives.

My emotions were no longer simple, joy; a brief luxury, sorrow; a profound suffering. Despite my world unraveling and burning at its seams, I still ran towards fiction and the comfort it promised. I reckon I couldn't visualize myself surviving without the thin layer of protection it provided. The heat shouldn't stop me any. I was no firefighter; I solely needed to be ... breathe unburdened and unconsciously; and mom would see to that.

Running towards a burning structure was a lot better than facing the vultures. A threat indefinite in outline, ever-present and ever-growing; whispering as we walked by, creating snap judgments of our character. At the end of the days where I encountered them, I grew that day older. Though fleeting those days sometimes was I learnt a lot about the reality of the world. It wasn't necessary to worry about not grasping the lessons at first. Since at the end of the day there was always, always another one of those days dawning. Their hatred felt stronger than I recalled it to be. Their glares pierced deeper. Their words stung longer.