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It happened in a blur, and I seemed to have come into this world as quickly as I now seem to be burning out. Elementary school, middle school, switching schools, then high school, my mother's cancer eating away at her soft figure, and then my own illness that consumed me emotionally and physically, but only because I refused everything else. I almost swallowed myself whole. Gutted like a fish, I laid wasted and empty on the floor, so exhausted by the disorder that gripped me; I screamed defeat. I wanted to give up. I was ready to give in. I saw their faces, flashing through my mind like a projector; but then I saw her face, hanging from guilt and gravity, with a magnitude of purples and blues cradling her round, deep-set eyes. How could I? I felt selfish and self-consumed.
So I carried on, somehow, coping, suffering relapses every now and then. Slowly and blindly, I became beset by the vicious cycle I would always deny. I would avert their eyes when they asked, it was easier that way to lie because I knew that they would be like the mirrors I dared not to look in, afraid of my own reflection. When it came time to look for schools, I was so excited and yet confused; I was ready for a new life, but I was so unsure of myself that I did not trust my own judgment. Application after application, my eyes were strained from the computer screen, my fingers split and cut from handling documents; but it was the anticipation that clenched my heart and fastened my feet to the ground as I would reach for the mailbox, fingering for an oversized envelope. The suspense captivated me like a charm and distracted my eyes, though my mind still clung to my deepest suffering; my own fire and brimstone that sometimes even I would pretend not to notice.
It frightened me, the power that it held over my self-control. What am I saying? I had no self-control. It's funny how things turn out, where we end up, and how things seem to work out. Finally in a new setting, I convinced myself I was cured, and I felt so free; but it had been so long, I was easily deceived by my false emancipation. It was not three months till I discovered the illness, that I had buried deep in my past, was only waiting for me at home. It seethed through the wooden floorboards and leaked from the ceiling, trickling down the walls of the kitchen around me; the poison burned to touch but it?s smell was intoxicating and hard to resist.
Going back to school was a relief because upon entering my 8' x 8'" room I felt comforted by the brimming schedule and social events that kept me preoccupied, but I knew my problems would eventually find me here and infect my new life too; it was only a matter of time. No! I would not let it! It had taken everything from me once before, while ripping the rug from under my feet, and now it was prepared to rob me a second time. Tears soaked my small square of carpet, as I rocked back and forth, back and forth, in the center of the white, cement-wall room.
That's when I realized that I had hit a wall, and I had been warned yet I could never figure out from which direction it would come. So, this was it; this was the wall over which I had to climb. O how I will climb, and hurl, and cling for my dignity, for my life, until it's over and my feet have touched the ground and my shoulders are free and unburdened. Then, I can allow the the good things, and the new things, back into my life. Though this time, there they shall stay. So this is my epiphany. There may be a method to my madness after all. This is my epiphany.
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