The Words I Never Said // A Collection of Essays

Letter #15 // A six-year-old, satan, and me; a cry for help

[Slight trigger warning of death and suicide]

Dear Friend.

I'm tired. I'm thinking about meaning. I'm hoping in the long term these moments will obtain indispensable weight, but for now, this hope barely resembles a faraway mirage, blending with the horizon. After all, if the best things enter our lives unexpectedly, does that mean I must completely murder and bury all of my hopes? Is that the purpose of the present moment? To poke my imagination with a sharp dagger, let the blood gush out, and reach such numbness I become one with the grey asphalt; would anything change then? Sounds like an oxymoron. I can't do it this way. Yet lately I've thought this might be exactly where I've been led.

I don't even know where to start. The stormy blizzard rampaging outside, behind the window, is much like the one in my head. Although mine is probably snowless, more humid, with lightning and thunder, for it emerged not from the depths of winter but from the relentless tropical heat. I've chewed off all my nails. I can never just passively reside in stagnancy. I can't stand this swampy slough I was bogged down in; thus I'm feverishly digging, digging, and digging, searching for the reasons for my fall. Because, apparently, once you know the reason you can discover the solution. I begin to question this idea. No reason for a collapse could help rebuild the thing it destroyed.

I'm digging into my past, though not the one I can't recall. Like a sponge, I soak up every single new psychological theory I come across, and I dig, dig, and dig, praying to find something that could bring about a cardinal change. Perhaps I took away some knowledge from all this, some insights about myself, or perhaps I just learned to blame imperfect people for being imperfect. Yet I feel no bitterness towards my nurturers, really. I'd say that rummaging in my previous being helped me grow up, however counterintuitive that may sound. When you understand what your childhood lacked, what your parents couldn't provide you with, you could try giving those things to yourself in adulthood, since at this age you are forced to become a parent to yourself. And from the day it happened, with all of my heart, I strived to protect the six-year-old me, the girl whose nose never lifts up from the book pages, whose imagination painted her world in such colors that couldn't, unfortunately, exist in the real world for they were opposed by the laws of physics themselves. I'm learning to embrace her, to hug her. Every time I look straight into her eyes, my vision blurs with tears. I weep for the child that I didn't love for so many years, for the child who deserved so much more good than I ever gave her and so much less maltreatment, criticism, disgusting brutalities I stacked on her shoulders.

I'm trying, really. But in my head, someone's screaming. Yelling, screeching. At me. I want to cover the little me's ears: she doesn't need to hear all that. I order the voice to shut up. For some time, I supposedly control that creature, the one that, I believe, could be well represented by the Devil card. It pretends to stay silent and puts up with being ignored. Unfortunately, I'm still not sturdy enough, and catching the tiniest glimpse of a short moment, it attacks through the narrowest slit with a power it never had before, with a force I've never seen before, and with a strength one can never prepare themselves for. And even if the most evil entity fights and rampages the most as it senses its upcoming defeat, I'm scared these last convulsions of my Devil could end up being enough for me to perish as well. Which is likely. After all, that creature is me, I am the Devil. If I want to end it, I must end myself. I'm terrified of writing out the thoughts, sparks of which it ignited in me today. It's been a long time since I've pondered THIS level of destruction. Rejecting that thought process as a useless suggestion my mind has made appeared to be a lot more difficult than I expected.