Echoes in the Dark Abyss

*****TW*****

I have no idea what I want to write… I have big, deep, sad, confusing emotions. It might just be a brain dump full of unrelated, confused, fragmented, disjointed thoughts… I hope you can all sort the wheat from the chaff.

The loneliness. Let’s start with that. It’s not just “I wish I were around people”, the normal kind of lonely. Have you ever been in a deep pit, where you can see absolutely nothing, the walls are closing in on you, you feel alone and scared and panicked and afraid? You don’t see a way out, not even a speck of light. You know there are small comforts around you in the pit, water and food and a flashlight even, but you’re too paralyzed to see or use them. Strange noises surround you, haunting and confusing you, which make you cover your ears and scream from the loudness and shrillness and confusion. Bats fly at your face and their flapping wings beat you over the head. The noise, the static, the voices that tell you you’re stuck there and will never, EVER, get out. The never-ending torrent of sound and music and every form of noise and words and thoughts and panic you can think of. Not just minutes of this torture. Not hours. YEARS. Decades. The darkness, the audio torture, the loneliness, the panic and terror and sheer frustration. The absolute NOTHINGNESS, that turns to numbness in order to survive. Panic attacks. Paranoia. Anxiety. Restlessness. Fear. Terror. Bare survival.

And this is NOTHING compared to what I endure every single day.

Remembering him hurting me. Not being able to find love while actively seeking it out. Being ghosted by the people I called friend. Dealing with trauma and crisis and being on alert and being “on” at all times.

The strong desire to crawl into a man’s arms and curl up into a scared ball and just… rest there. Safe, able to let down my guard, cuddled and warm and able to let go.

The craving to have a place in my closet where I can curl up and hide and not exist, if only for a few minutes.

The days where my PTSD gets so bad, I inwardly flinch when a man walks near me. Waiting to be beaten.

Watching my friends fall in love, making me wistful of what could be, but I’m not allowed to have…

Being terrified of becoming diabetic (currently prediabetic)… I stopped caring, stopped trying. Wishing I’d get diabetes so my life can be cut shorter, and I don’t have to endure this cruel torture anymore.

Restlessly longing for more, reaching for dopamine. Happiness doesn’t even register in my brain anymore. Barely a blip in my synapses. My brain doesn’t light up when amazing things happen. My brain doesn’t function anymore.

The normal things people say just make me laugh inside. “It’ll get better. This will pass. Try breathing. See a therapist. Watch a movie. Try exercise.”

None of it works.

None of it.

The trauma. The pain. The fear.

If you’ve never endured it, you don’t understand.

Those dumb little fixes and “sending good thoughts” isn’t going to make my brain better. Isn’t going to make me forget when he tried to break my finger and threw me out of his car.

It’s not gonna bring my dad back.

It’s not going to reverse decades of mistreatment and abuse that make me flinch and want to hide.

Food is my drug.

The internet is my escape.

Book shopping is one of the only things that barely lights up the dopamine part of my brain.

I seek out love, but it eludes me. It runs faster than a gazelle, swift as an eagle.

Have you ever seen It’s a Wonderful Life, where he was shown what life would be like if he never existed? He pounds on doors, yells, screams… and no one can see him. No one can hear him. He’s invisible. He doesn’t exist.

And yet people ask me why I’m not smiling.

Because this world requires that your emotions be plastic. The real ones shoved in a hole and locked with a key and smashed into pieces, into oblivion.

Real emotions are forbidden.

Especially at church.

Shiny plastic people.

A theater mask at the masquerade.

No one sees your scars. Your pain is stopped at the door and refused entry.

It doesn’t matter where you are, where you go, your emotions are not welcome there.

And yet you’re expected to survive in a world that doesn’t want you. That can’t, won’t, accept your pain and your fear and your scars. The noise. The brokenness. Nothing less than perfection. Godhood, even. Our world that worships the perfect, the toned, the beauty, the flawless. It’s as if we must become God in order to be accepted.

No pressure.

And this is where I stand…

Curled into a ball. Sobbing. Invisible. Tortured. Broken. Traumatized. Terrorized. Flashbacks. Pain.

All while leading a normal life. Laughing, working, helping, loving. Pretending. Faking. Crying. Screaming. Silently…

And no one sees me. No one hears me. No one.

No one sees me…