the hands of Neglect

Even as an adolescent, when every little thing gets blown out of proportion and every little thing is herald to the end of the world, i would never have gone through with it, and the reasons are two fold.

for one thing, i perceived my suffering to be the greatest, most ardent suffering in the history of suffering, and if i had to suffer then i wanted everyone around me to suffer, too. today i know i just wanted them to acknowledge my pain, this pain they had caused through lack of interest and lack of basic emotional care. i wanted acknowledgment and they wouldn’t give it. so i pushed harder. i wanted them to hear the shrillness of my voice as i slogged through day after miserable day trying to make sense of the crushing disappointment that i felt whenever i looked at “normal” people. they never saw the damage they were doing. they didn’t want to see it. for them it was better to be self absorbed, they could remain immune to the effects their addiction was having on the rest of us.

the second reason i would never have done it is because i was just too numb to feel the kind of despair necessary to commit the ultimate act of despair. oh i felt despair all right, just not the right kind of despair. apparently i had found a way to channel it down avenues less permanent, less fatal. apparently i had mastered the art of self deception to the point that i had convinced myself that somehow someone wonderful was going to come along and give me a way out. apparently i had an overdeveloped sense of survival. apparently i knew on some level i was put on this Earth to do better things than they had, to do more than just die early.

so here i was, miserable, desperate and numb, but i was numb only to certain things. to other things i felt the fury in the most hurtful of ways, i hurt myself and i hurt others but i did it with words, i did it with flying objects, i did it with opportune silences, some days i think i even did it with glee, and for that i punished myself mercilessly in a prison of my own making, unable to see that i was just an adolescent with no guideposts, i was just muddling through, shallow and selfish and self absorbed, but now i know it was normal adolescent behavior ratcheted up about forty notches because of their dysfunction. they were adults behaving as adolescents while expecting me, the adolescent, to behave as an adult.

looking back after all this time, i know the real reason i didn’t do it. i didn’t do it because i didn’t have the courage to do it and deep down inside, in those places we don’t always acknowledge but where we still can’t ignore the howling, i knew i didn’t have the courage to do it. i see it clearly now, how my cowardice saved me, how i was developing a new kind of courage, a courage that allowed me to go on living each day, in spite of all of the emptiness, the loneliness, the pain. it was a dysfunctional courage, but it saved my life and i depend on it, albeit in a healthier form, to this very day.

looking back, i’m fortunate i didn’t have the complete and total lack of faith in the Universe that suicide requires. i knew on some level there was beauty to be had if i just waited long enough for it to find me. i could tolerate the numbness because i kept waiting for the sunrise, i kept waiting for the thaw, i kept waiting for the loveliness inherent in each new day. i kept believing that each new dawn brought the promise of someone who might love me, someone who might deliver me from the hands of Neglect, that dark and lonely place where, up to then, i had languished my entire life.

no, i could never put my head in the oven.
there had to be something better.
i just had to hold on and wait for it to show up.
how would i ever see it with my head in the oven?

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