You know what I think is the worst thing? aside from not being able to find words anymore to get to the bottom of what might be the worst thing today, as opposed to yesterday's worst, or what might be tomorrow's...
I'm grateful for pinpricks of grief in mercifully small doses, as time passes and resolute denial softens little by little.
But I think the worst thing (today, and most days) is this:
We're wired for connection. While strolling through the grocery store amid a sea of unfamiliar faces, our most instant and natural reaction to a familiar face is to consider it familiar in the unpredictable, nondaily lights, sounds, paths - our instinct is to connect. We don't even realize we're doing it, really, or what it means to us, but we anchor ourselves to the process and the faces, and in some small way, the light shines from us, even if only long enough for a passing hello, perhaps moving our carts to the side and chatting about weather, or parents, or reports due, or clients, or car troubles. Each familiar face we see is, in some small way, a mirror in which we see ourselves constantly scanning for connectedness, and that drive - to join, to relate to, to belong with - is practically inherent, even (perhaps more) in the most introverted souls.
The worst thing is the way this drive dies.
It dies constantly. Daily.
I can't put into words for you what it does to you, while you're walking through the grocery store and you realize if you see this person's face, it is solely because this person has shown up to to kill you. No other reason.
No words for knowing that, if you see That Person's Face, you'll have to kill first (not strike, but kill; how does a normal person even wrap a mind around this?), because if you don't, that person will. And if they don't kill you then, they'll try again. They'll never stop. There are no words for the feeling of a nonviolent person forcing him/herself to imagine That Person's Face around every grocery-store corner, in every parking lot, lest they ever be caught off-guard; there are no words for the times when you make yourself roll over in bed and look at the dim corner of your bedroom, imagine them standing there, walk yourself through the quickfire motions of physical defense.
It may seem like fixation, but it's not: there's no other way for the nonviolent person to ever be ready for a violent person's attack, other than to force him/herself to operate in the mindset of a violent person. There's no way to deal with a stalker, other than to seemingly fixate, to try to stay one step ahead of a crazy person in a dance that makes no sense whatsoever.
No words for the way the human drive to extend oneself and belong becomes the human drive to connect in order to dominate and survive anything necessary. No words for the way our drive to connect morphs into something dark and snarling. No map back to the way things were before.
There are no words to express how this set of realities upends everything you know about the world, and everyone therein; no words for how this particular brand of evil makes you realize that, though you'd previously brushed against it, you've never before been in the thick of its menace, never once shriveled in agony, until now. I don't know what to do with this evil in which I was forced to participate. I can't shake it; can't get clean.
And I know I got "lucky," according to some standards; I'm lucky to be alive, and I know I'm lucky that, as far as I know, my stalker has moved on. And I know that, hey, it's not like you spent time in a war zone or something, or it's not like they ever tied you to a chair for days.
I know.
But I still feel ruined. Absolutely ruined. Dead to myself before all this. Helpless to explain it in any way that makes sense to anyone outside myself. Helpless before words, at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment