More
times in life, the difficulty lies in the small tests of endurance. With big
calamities it is always a bit easier to be strong. You see we can be brought
together when we experience something grand and tragic. However empathy so
often fails us when it comes to the most mundane or ordinary of tragedies.
These
little struggles, the ones waged against the self, against doubt, pain, memory,
and so many other little cruel factors. These weigh one down faster than even
the most grandiose tragedy. When pain and mistakes become ordinary they seep
into world and imbue it with a toxicity that chokes out light.
And so I
can remember Mathieu, he was waiting in that café. From a hangover to a broken
heart. Marie and Jean had tried their best to soothe him, but his pain was
deeper than words could find. It was passivity, and inaction that asphyxiated
him the most.
Passivity,
in the sense he couldn’t do anything but wait. He could wait for Ana to return.
He could wait for the day to end. And he could wait for just one more moment to
crawl back up and into a bottle. It was a warm place. Yes, and it was the best
he had.
I can
remember the voices of Jean, Marie, and Antony. They had words and sounds, but
I can’t make sense of the phrases blended into a mixture of syllables. And they
spoke as if in a different language to Mathieu, a language I still can’t
comprehend.
It was
one based on hope, and an unlikely belief that things truly could get better. It
was a hope that we could really get use to our smallness. And from this new
comfort we were supposed to find strength.
The
difference was that when despair is new it is different. You move from pleasure
to pain, and pain becomes a state of unrest. The real problem starts when you
allow tragedy to become the norm. It becomes a daily reminder of our own
desperate pleas to a very specific type of emptiness.
And then
it sets in, something beyond despair. It
is deeper. And within this new depth a person finds a terrible darkness within
themselves. Every moment spent within it is one in which we float further away
from those around us.
And
trust me, as someone gains access to this fresh hell, they realize the likely
hood of being trapped within it.
And I’m
still trapped, in a hell deeper and colder than the one Mathieu knew on that
day. For the Hell within us is often reflective of Dante’s Inferno. Although
the middle of hell burns hot, its deepest depths are frozen wastelands.
And the
burn of those early days in our own despair and sadness fades to an
uncomfortable coldness. A Tragedy that engulfs us as it seethes. It’s the
difference between a cut that throbs and a wound that festers.
Your
best hope is to escape from sadness long before you plunge into its depths.
Because, the truth of the matter is, it’s a lot easier to dive into despair
than it is to climb out. And even if you make it out alive, you can’t remain
unchanged.
So the
man sitting here alone in this café, staring into his empty glass can think
back to the boy sitting there in this same seat reflecting on the immediate
pain. Separation, Mortality, and a very new wound. Yet after years of these thoughts
and their ever widening avenues of despair here I remain.
Not sure
if the sun will even rise today. Because if I was responsible for willing it to
be so, than I would never see light again. For the abyss that I’ve so long
traversed and explored has saturated me with its darkness, and in place of my
blood is only ink. Ink enough t pen down these lines, and stave off one more
night of despair.
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