thank you is never enough

For a few months, down in the dumps was I.  Beneath the rotten banana peel, beneath the forgotten toy soldier, beneath the sticky spilled Pepsi, beneath the shredded paper I hid decaying.  I was indifference and sadness.  Desensitization scared the living colors out of me.  Callousness scared the living matter out of me. Everything scared the living shit out of me.  It was the first year since I learned to draw that I didn't make my grandparents a Christmas card.  I didn't care about turning assignments in or applying for college.  I didn't want to be friends with my friends who could laugh with each other so easily.  I didn't want to talk to my parents because sometimes my words would literally go unheard and I would walk away like it didn't hurt.  I felt invisible even at home.  I stopped trying. Trying was too much effort that I didn't have in me.  I didn't want to tell anyone how depressed and heavy with shame I was because I had no reason to feel that way.  How I was feeling was so insignificant to the terrible things that I saw everyone else going through. My mind told me "get over yourself" and my heart was silent.  No matter how long or hard I knocked, the door never opened.  The worst part was how inhuman I felt.  I wanted with every fiber of my being to feel more.  But forcing it felt crushingly uncomfortable.  I wanted someone to yell madly,"snap out of it". I wanted to drown in tears I never cried, scream at the top of my lungs with sound that didn't come out as a whisper, and be so happy that I'd forget that happiness is momentary when you're draining like me.

Dr. Seuss wrote, "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.  It's not."  I was my problem so I had to be my solution.  I wasn't thinking straight. I forgot that people get by with a little (understatement) help from those around them.

Then my Lit teacher stopped me smack dab in the hallways between class bells, telling me she saw me. Then my friends gave me perspective on fifty shades of pain. Then I went to SFYS and heard, saw, truly felt: passion, courage, heartbreak, strength, and vulnerability.  Then I became a stalker on writers paris where I could open a thousand doors.  Then Nelson took the time to listen. And I found you; anon brave bloggers letting it out.  It is everything and anything your thoughts create.  It is your scarred insides showing.  It is being real as pain.  It is the raw connection between strangers.  It is being different while agreeing and disagreeing with ideas.  It is liberation and truth in writing.  And Madonna sang through me from the skies above that were blue at last, blue at last - "like a virgin, touched for the very first time".

I'm afraid I may have used that out of context.  Sorry... and thank you.  For touching me.