Ever since I was a little kid, running around and playing in forget-me-not fields, I was told that life is beautiful. I was taught to learn to love everything around me, from the tiny bugs working day and night, crawling on the ground in a small world of their own to the big, bright blue sky spreading above us like a solitary sign of hope, an everlasting mark that proves the realness of the world, adorned with clouds and flocks of birds. See, it's funny to think about it, how this youthful innocence that you can still see on the faces of small children holding their favourite stuffed doll, managed to become this gruesome space within you, just like Pandora's box, through the mystery of an assassin from the shadows and the dexterity of a ninja in the night.
A cold and empty bottomless pit, which takes the things that someone said to you and turns them against you. It’s like a beast with iron claws and a serpent tongue that manages to turn a simple „your hair looks good today” to „they don’t actually like your hair, it looks awful, and that comment was made out of sheer politeness."
This beast is something that you can’t control. It’s hateful and unforgiving, hateful and unforgiving, hateful and unforgiving, hateful and unforgiving, hateful and unforgiving, so hateful and unforgiving!
It doesn’t even let you sleep at night. It’s like a voice in your head, constantly reminding you that you are worthless, disgusting, horrible, neither loved, nor wanted. It ends up feeding on your happy thoughts and memories leaving them as crystal kettles that shatter one by one within the empty and cold vessel that you have become.
You want to fight it. You want to break free from this dreadful curse. But it never works. The beast manages to bring you to your knees and destroy your one man army, leaving you curled up on your bed crying yourself to sleep. You gradually lose your ability to enjoy things that used to make you the happiest person on earth. You forget how to express yourself, how to show that you care, how to love and be loved. Thus, you become what you swore to destroy. You become hateful and unforgiving, hateful and unforgiving, hateful and unforgiving, hateful and unforgiving, hateful and unforgiving, so hateful and unforgiving!
People around you start noticing that you’ve changed. You’re now walking with your head held low, earphones blocking out any sound from outside your little bubble. And then you decide to get help. You go to your family in hopes of finding said help that you need. But what you get is the echo of your own parents blaming you for family dysfunctionality.
You end up in a vicious circle of the beast’s doctrine and your own thoughts. But you don’t care anymore. It doesn’t matter, just like you don’t matter. The others can’t know about it though, so you put up this always happy facade. Ironically, you forcefully smile to yourself, remembering that „deep” quote you and your friends used to laugh about. The most cheerful people are the most broken ones beneath their masks after all.
Sofia Paiu - XF
ilustrație de Georgiana Călin - 'Overthinking'