Mystic River

Solitude changes us.

We never get a pick in the type of solitude we endure, only how we respond to it. I could be fighting like hell to hold onto that person I was before entering solitude. Three years… Three fucking years and I was going in circles; repeating the same viscous cycle over and over without recognizing the ever-familiar faces. Wake up, breathe in the sunlight bathing my small room, and suddenly remember the dark pit of pain that lives within me. I remember it being this extremely heavy weight that took the air from my lungs, took the clarity from my vision. I only had those few milliseconds in the morning before it hit me in the same place it always did. The sunlight fades and the heavy footsteps ring in my ears, beginning the frenzy of fear and unwanted electricity racing through my body. Food is tasteless, standing is too much work, and those fucking footsteps. Footsteps that reminded me pain can truly manifest into physical reality. I’d wait until those heavy footsteps retreat and the front door slammed shut leaving a fragile silence. Only, and I mean only, after waiting a full 2 minutes does the stirring, frantic fear settle. And again, returns the dreadful pit. I only weighed 120 pounds and yet I felt like my bones were made of lead.

Solitude makes people temporarily insane.

I knew what I was doing. Maybe not outright, I mean I would have never admitted it to myself at the time but deep down, I knew better. I knew I shouldn’t have taken that extra shot; shouldn’t have gone home with that guy that I’ll never see again. I knew yet I wouldn’t let myself know better. I chose drugs, alcohol, boys, crappy food, and the same ten goddamn comfort movies over and over and over. Wake up, feel the pain and the fear, and work to cover it up. Never heal it. Wake up, feel the loss of him and the presence of her, and try to escape it as much as I could. Please, I silently begged to anyone listening, please let me slip away, I don’t want to feel it. I don’t want to feel anything...

The whole thing still feels like a dark fog. Like an ancient and forgotten place that no one wants to visit due to its thick misty fog and horrible, dark legends.

Two years of pain and fear. One year of healing. Three years of solitude.

I don’t know exactly when it happened, when I came out of it, but I know that I am in fact out of it. It didn’t suddenly feel like the fog had lifted or even that my two feet were finally on the ground. No, I gained weight and no longer looked like a shell of a person. The dreadful weight never really disappeared it just.. became a part of me. It still lives inside of me. Just another book added to my dusty shelves in the vast library of me. Something I now glance at in passing or delicately trace my fingers over the ornate leather-bound covering when I need a moment of melancholy on a dark, rainy, day.

There was who I was before and who I am now. And frankly the thought of returning to any type of solitude scares the living hell out of me. And there’s nothing in the world I can do about it. I used to crave the solitude. It was all I had so I wrapped myself in it like our precious comfort blankets and refused to let go. I fought to keep myself in solitude and now I find myself doing the opposite. Things happened to me, and I let them to stay in my comfortable yet painful solitude. And now things are happening to me and I’m letting them to stay out of it.

I know what I can take because I’ve taken a lot. I know what I’m capable of taking in order to remain where I want. Whether its solitude or not, I am helpless to what I want. I can only accept or run away. I’ve run away before; I know the difference between the two. And I can say with confidence I am not running away now. I know what I’m doing and why. Because solitude changes us. And it changed me.

Change is the only consistent thing in our lives. We change as we go through childhood, teenage years, college and then the real world. We change based on our failed first dates or our favorite tv shows that we take a little too seriously. Change is everywhere, always and unbeatable. We cannot stop the change the same way we cannot stop the wind in our hair or the sun warming our skin. I can’t go back to who I was. And it’s never about want or need, it’s about facts. This happened or is happening, fact. I endured and responded this way, fact. And these are the consequences, fact. Whether we face that fact or run away is up to us. The rest is fate, or destiny, or whatever we want to call it. Unfortunately, this is the reality of living in the present.

Some things don’t change though. For whatever reason I still can’t communicate my pain unless in the lines of these articles and the safety of my laptop.

Holy shit. Somehow I just realized the first three years of my twenties are this… Twenty to Twenty three, holy shit.