Sometimes...

Sometimes you look at the world and fold, thinking there is no hope for us as humans. Maybe and just maybe we were not created to survive past our evolution. Mother Nature is rejecting us and it is not just about us trashing the sea but the weariness in our souls too. Perhaps the end escaped us when we have been made to believe that we are escaping it.

You wonder when you won't feel the weight of living, or when you'll be able to smile again, like your friend Wendy, who lives a day at a time. You listen to her go on and on about her beautiful family and then one day you see it, that it has all been a lie and not only to you but to herself too. She smiles, not because she isn’t in pain but because it is all she has ever known. The agony has molded roses inside her no wonder she hugs it like a friend.

Walking around your little town you see that it isn’t just you and Wendy, it’s the whole world. Everyone seems to harbor grief, the only difference being how they show it, and how they hurt it out. You see it in your mother when he talks about her mother, and your neighbor when she yells at her son. There is Jimmy, the town clown who loves his whiskeys more than his people. And your long-lost childhood friend who fell in love with kissing strangers more than the strangers themselves. Deep down, all of you know the truth. That something is wrong but no one talks about it.

Sometimes you see her in the mirror and laugh. She reaches for you but you pull back. You don’t give away to strangers you say, as you fail to see that the brown in her eyes matches your own.

She begs, pleads for you to recognize her, to take away the mask that has been blinded by pain. But you can’t…

Someday, maybe one day, the scars won’t look the same. You would not see the world through the lens of your grief because it won’t be made of pain. Then maybe you would know that you are alive. For now, this is all you have ever known.

So, Wendy and Jimmy are getting married. You think you are happy for them, you should be. You asked your long-lost childhood friend to their wedding, and he says you have to ask your mother to make you a dress…