The Edge

{ The Edge }
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"A thousand times we die in one life, we crumble, break and tear apart until the layers of illusion are burned away and all this is left, is the truth of who and what we really are." -Teal Scott
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Typically I like to feel the tears run down my face. I live to let my emotions go from their cage when I'm alone and the time is right. When I'm ready to burst with sadness and anger and anguish.

But now, it's different. This time, for the first time, the tears that run down my face disgust me and anger me. How can I be so selfish? How can I cry when the reason, the person, that brings my tears is in even greater pain? I'm just a child. I'm but thirteen. Why must I carry the burdens of a drunkard mother and an angry father? Why must I watch as my mother deteriorates from mental illness, as she destroys herself from the inside out? Why?

Although at the same time, I know that others in foreign countries have it worse. I know that this isn't anything compared to what it could be yet it still scares me. She scares me. The woman whom is supposed to show me unconditional love. When she wakes up in the middle of the night, causing things to fall in her drunk, sleepy haze I'm the only one there to pick up the pieces. To guide her to the couch and provide her with what she needs. Need it be water or something to eat.

Watching her as she eats or drinks and mutter out unrecognizable words, all I can think is; Jesus Christ this is so fucked up. It's terrifying to watch her as she only gets worse, but she continues to work, she continues to drink away her life, mixing it with her medication, and she continues to drive under the influence. I speak to her softly, as if she might break if I talk any louder, typically in the night after I've calmed her. Maybe I do it for myself, the soft speaking. Maybe it's a calming mechanism my own minds put into place.

Maybe even my own mind knows I'm just as fucked up and on the verge of breaking.

I actually think I'm past my breaking point to be honest. I don't stress as much any more because I'm on a plane so beyond it. It's worse than stress and anxiety, or depression. I fear the reason I am this way is because I've accepted it. I don't want to. It would mean I've subjected myself to this torture forever and I'll never achieve happiness in this constant circle of agonizing waiting and keeping in words and emotions. I mustn't tell her these things, she's already teetering on the cliff of nothingness. Soon I know, she will fall in. It's unavoidable on this path she's taken. I just don't want to be the one to whisper in her ear to do it.

Never have I recognized a more crushing truth; we are all just waiting for it to happen.

Not soon, I hope. The phone will ring and my father will pick up. A car accident. My father will shout. Asking what happened and where he can go to find her. I will be predicting it already. I won't even have to ask, because I'll know.

I'll know she's free-falling over the edge.

And me?

I've leaped over the edge as well. Only I'm skydiving over a grand clear ocean. Gliding down next to my friends and family.

Free.
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We all have to go over the edge at some point, but a different edge appears for different people. The way you chose to live your life, the path you've chosen until death, is what differs your edge from everybody else's. Now choose wisely and live life to the fullest.

-Jordan