Simply Titled: Sad Mirrorverse Angst
Wrote this the other day in the middle of a rather painful something or other.
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Sometimes, it hurts. Not bad, not like she’s broken something like a bone or anything, but just a dull ache. Like in the grocery store, or listening to her favorite song, and something deep inside feels off, and it aches in her.
Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing, not a damn thing. It doesn’t matter, except it does.
It’s floating on wisps of smoke, almost reaching but not enough to help. Something is wrong.
Breathe, in and out, watch the clock tick by, and she reads. She reads and reads until her eyes start to droop, and she dreams and feels good.
No other word for it, yeah? Just… good. It’s good, and it’s warm, and she’s where she needs to be. She’s where she’s meant to be.
Nothing hurts so much as to wake up those days, looking around in wonder as she sees that, oh, she’s just nodded off again. Something wakes her - a cat, a dog, her mother or herself. And it hurts again. Just a little, just when she remembers it.
She keeps busy, because it’s what life is, activity to experience all we can while we can, and even in sleep, she goes, and it’s such a sweet thing to feel.
Moments when she is calm, and not busy, she can remember what it is that pains her so deep inside, and oh, here’s something to take care of - schoolwork, business, errands to run, letters to write, bills to pay, scuttle about and do things because it’s so much easier to feel busy and useful instead of calm and oh dear it’s like there’s a crack in her heart, like the one in her windshield, must get that fixed time to call mum or dad or friend or cousin and see who to take it to so it can get fixed, because what if it gets worse? What if it gets worse?
Worse, worse, no this isn’t fair.
She pauses and strengthens her resolve, can’t cry in front of the repairman, he’ll think I’m nuts, and that’s not good. Be calm, be straightforward, get it fixed and go home. Cook dinner, watch a little telly, read and then bed, and she won’t have to think about it until the next time she gets a spare chance, and she doesn’t want that right now, so she’ll keep busy so she won’t have to think about it.
It’s a dull ache, and until she can find someone or something to fix it, it’ll stay that way, in the back of her head, on the backburner of the stove, because there’s nothing she can do about it right now.
~~~
It’s a small crack, except it gets larger, and what can she do? It’s not something you can easily fix. Go to the doctor, ask about it, get medication (Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Cymbalta) and try to leave it to do its job.
Go about your business, don’t worry about it, but the cracks get bigger, and this isn’t right. Go to the doctor, ask about it, get it adjusted (break up the pill with a tiny chisel, only take so much) and it’s a little easier, but what about the mountain of pain that comes, or the valley below where she can see every glittering light and it feels so good she just wants to laugh all the time, what is that all about?
Go to the doctor, more adjustments, and it’s just flat. No color, no change, just flat, and that’s not good, it’s nothing. “Stable” but unhappy, she guesses.
Doctor knows best, right?
Except she’s so flat and colorless that she forgets to refill her medication, and soon it’s a new dull ache, but it feels so much better than nothing at all.
So she stops taking it, no more doctors, no more asking about this feeling, no more adjustments and tiny chisels and this is so much better, right?
But it hurts so much. The crack gets bigger, spider-webs out into her life, and soon the glass breaks and her heart shatters and all she knows is the pain of picking up her glass heart piece by piece so she can find some way to put it back together, but she doesn’t know how it should go.
This is the cruelest puzzle of all.
~~~
Oh, the crack - the break - and nothing is enough. Everything of her life is broken, and there’s no way she can put it back together again, not like this, not how she is and how her life, and oh my gosh, it hurts.
Onto the train, like a Journey-song cliché, but where do all the lost, sad people go? She goes and sits and waits and ends up in New York, and that’s what it is. That’s where she goes. So many other lost souls roaming about her, and if she’s alone and they are, too, then at least that’s common between them all.
She sold all her things, except some clothes and things that meant something, like family things, so maybe they’ll mean something again, and she uses her money to find a cheap place to stay where no one will question the sobbing they hear. It’s normal, and it’s only if it stops should they fear.
~~~
One day, she’s out, walking, because everyone needs to eat sometimes, and she’s not done looking for a way to make this labyrinth feel better, or at least more like home so she doesn’t look for a way out. That is not her end, she knows, and she’s not about to look for the gleaming EXIT sign that she’s looked past dozens of times before. That’s not what she wants.
So she’s walking to a great Chinese place she’s found by accident, one gray day much like the one she’s in now, when a voice sounds behind her.
“Hello. Where are you going?”
She turns and sees… the most delightfully colored woman she’s ever laid eyes on. She’s so much color that’s been missing from this existence; it’s like an explosion of a rainbow.
She’s lost for words. “Pardon me?”
“Where are you going?”
“To… get lunch…”
“But we’re taking back the city, you know. Why not come with me and help?”
And the rest, they say, is history.
Or, it will be. And she’ll be the one watching as it twists and turns and frays and repairs and becomes what will eventually be seen as a fairy tale written and read by scholars who saw it from afar, after the people it’s about are long gone, no more aches because it’s a happy ending, so I’ll say goodbye.
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No idea where this came from, just that it hurt and felt good to get it out.