Inside/Outside

There's a part in her novel, Invisible Sign of My Own, where Aimee Bender describes the character of Mona Gray's neighbor who wears on a string around his neck numbers that correspond to his daily mood. Sometimes he's 3, usually a 5 or 7, and on really extraordinarily good days sometimes he's close to 10. It's out there, for everyone to see, to know. Open, clear.

I found out today that yet another one of my very good friends is going through something, something I wish wasn't so familiar. It reminds me of this book. It reminds me of how much easier it might be if we had our own silly numbers to wear, when all the words to explain what was going on inside have been pressed out of us under the weight of our world. Where the rest would know how you were doing outside of who, what, when, where, why.

Asking for help has such an ugly stigma, such an ugly, weak, helpless, shameful stigma. The saddest part with this is that no one can help until you're ready to ask for it, and sometimes that just never happens. Sometimes it's to stop something perceptively worse, sometimes it's to stop something that can't perceptively be worse. I cannot say what is going through my friends' minds, or what was going through the mind of the one they lost, though I have a feeling. I've tasted some of the fruits, and whatever side you stand on they remain bitter and biting.

Though what remains is a memory, it's not likely to be forgotten. As much as I wish it wasn't then and isn't now, it is a inextricable part of who I have become. The beauty of remembering though, is it's always transient and changing. Every time you recall something, you're pulling out this imaginary file, rifling through it, but before you store it again you integrate the current climate of your brain's chemistry thereby distorting the original context. So what I have left to offer them of my experiences is really just the haunting, skeletal remnants of phantom recollection. Even still, something like that stains and leaves a mark.

Inside...

... is somewhere deep, dark. Where feelings fade into a vacancy. Things become disproportionate and exaggerated to a point where there was no before. There are no things like full and warm. Friends and family grow distant. Words are forgotten because none of them fit anyway. Close your eyes for a minute and that light goes out, that little guiding, end-of-the-tunnel one, that serves as an often overlooked reminder of impermanence. It's not necessarily that everything must be over, but it's unclear where one thing ends and the rest begin. It's all tangled up together, with reason, with the promise of chance, of change, of tomorrow. It's all grey and flavorless. Then comes the speculation... of the end... but when inside, you forget about those who are not, the ones who inevitably will bear the weight of that world you wish so much to shed.

Outside...

... time stops, abruptly and charged. It knocks you off your feet. Your insides hold still, hold tight. It's like if you're still and quiet long enough, maybe it wont be real, maybe you wont fall, maybe you'll wake up. Were you sleeping, you wonder... but it's come. It's been. It's there. And it's an end of one pain and a beginning of another, and the latter is in pieces, unscripted and innumerable. And you're left to reconcile what was never in your hands to change.

And I have these very good friends, who are going through something. And I wish it will be different.