Before today I wouldn't have believed that flesh and bone could turn into solid rock. Rock so hard that not even the fiercest quake could break it. My life has been at the epicenter of a massive quake; the tremors pulsate through me over and over again until my stomach lurches and drops to the ground and all I feel is numb--as if my heart has been torn from my body, ripped out by the coldest eyes and hands and heart, and the pain is so deep that all I feel is a dull numb pulsating pain that echoes through and through my very being. Until my legs are nothing but water, until both my lips and my hands shake uncontrollably, until even my eyes dull and glaze over as if an actual blade plunged deep into my heart, and all I am left is a breathing corpse. All I have loved has been stripped away, and yet I'm forced to stand and watch it all be given to another--another who does not realize the worth of what they possess. I never thought this would happen; I never imagined that it would go this far. And I ask myself over and over--how could a man be so diabolically wicked as to wish to destroy the life he called his own for 32 years? How cold and hard is the heart of a man who cares not even a fig for his own flesh and blood, but rather wields all his resources, words, and power to destroy every semblance of joy they possess. How cruel is a father who does not care, and blatantly says he does not care, that his daughters live in a cardboard box.
I do not understand.
I do not understand at all.
People do not realize the depth of their own evilness; the capacity for evil that they carry inside themselves every waking moment. They don't care who they hurt; they don't care what impurity spews from their lips; they don't care that they destroy not only their own lives, but others also when they commit deeds that overflow their lives with a darkness that can never get enough. Oh how deep is that darkness--oh how oppressive. And yet they long and long and long for it like it will satisfy the craving inside their soul. They dirty their minds and bloody their hands, and yet the emptiness still screams inside them until one day their soul crumbles in on itself, like a liver shrivels in an alcoholic's body.
There are so many people--oh so many who are entrapped a darkness so deep that all it does is eats their soul. And while it eats their soul, it seeks to destroy all others. I've seen such darkness; such darkness I know is even in the depths of my own soul, but it does not have to rule my life and my heart. I'm not sure what is worse, to be controlled by the darkness, or to be the victim of it. There is pain in both; there are scars in both.
It's so painful to be a victim.
So painful to be a victim.
I know not how to wake up in the mornings anymore; I know not how to smile and laugh and feel my heart bubble with joy. All there is is a thick heaviness--a numbness that makes my head ache and throb and my stomach lurch and sway. My heart is so sick, so sick. I cannot write; I cannot read; I cannot play; I dare not eat; I cannot drink; and I cannot, oh I cannot, sing. I have never felt this deep an ache before...I want to sink into the floorboards and melt like heated sugar. I want to wake up in another place and another time--away from the pain, away from the heart-ache, away from the impurity, away from the darkness. I feel so utterly weak; I feel so entirely afraid. Afraid like every eye is watching me, like a vulture, crow and wolf--just waiting for my foot to catch on a rock--just waiting for me to stumble and fall. I feel so hunted; as if every other soul is clawing to eat up not only my flesh, but my heart as well. I look around myself in this big, wide world and all I see is a crowding darkness, and all I see are greedy hands and eyes. So unsafe, so afraid. Every soul has its own ambitions; even the ones that seem so pure and gentle, and yet all they want is to use and abuse; all they want is to gratify themselves, whether it be lust or control or pride. I hardly believe in love anymore. I hardly trust anymore. C.S. Lewis has said that if you wrap your heart up carefully and give it to no one, not even an animal, that it will become impenetrable and irredeemable...but if you give it to something it will be wrung and possibly broken. My heart has been wrung; my heart has been broken, and I know what it feels like to jealously cling to it and wrap it up so that the bleeding, pulsating, life-giving thing won't die again. But I grow weaker as I cling, and this trembling increases. I feel only like fleeing--but where can a heart go when the enemies are inside too?
All I long for is light and purity; all I long for is love.
And what fills my cup? Only pain, hate, and loss.
And now, all I can do is shake and cry and shrink--shrink from any other form of life.
