Every Day

One day you wake up in the same room as you have for years. You're surrounded by the same people you always saw, you follow the same routine you always did, but something is different. Months have shifted, seasons have turned, and nothing is really quite the same. You smile at your friend and say "hi" again, just like you have for the past year and a half. You ask how she slept, if she had any dreams. And life continues on as before.

But the wonderful contentment of the everyday simplicity of such interaction is lost. Because she doesn't know that you cried yourself to sleep the night before. She doesn't know that your first thought when you woke up was a tortured fear of what lies ahead. And she will never know. You tell yourself time and time again that you will keep trying, that you will change something, make it better, not let her down. Every time, you take a wrong step, fall flat on your face, and find yourself having to face her again, choking back the tears.

Then she looks at you and asks why you do this to yourself, why you can't just change something and move forward. You look up at her, and tear your gaze away, not because you don't like her or because you don't trust her, but because she is too right, too true, too honest. She makes life seem to make sense, and you know you can't face up to that. So you look away. And she asks again what's wrong, what happened, why you're so concerned.

Then you tell her, but of course you leave out what troubles you the most. Even as you tell the story, you wonder why you're so upset, why it all makes so little sense, why you had to complicate it to that extent. And by the time you've got it all out, by the time she's talked you through the bitter memories and the unhealed hurts, night has long fallen and you feel fatigued. You undress and curl up in bed, thinking about what she said, thinking about the world you just let her into, trying to figure out just what had happened in the space of the past day.

And you lie there and you cry, like you hadn't for what feels like years. You feel the tears running down your cheeks, the moisture soaking into your cold pillow, and you shiver from the cold crawling under your blanket. Even as sobs thrash through your body, you shut your eyes and hold on tighter and try to forget about them. And before you know it, you wake up again, to start another day, walking blindly and fighting not to cry.