The Darkest Place Imaginable
I’ve never cried so much, so hard, in my entire life. Nor have I ever been so utterly terrified in my life. I’ve never heard someone so at peace with the reality of their own death…so accepting of their fate. And I’ve never hated myself so much for agreeing with them.
Sunday was a very long night. Early in the night, I made what I thought was a simple off-hand remark about Shera buying a pair of jeans. My remark was not in support of the purchase. This devastated her because she always just knows I’m going to approve of anything she does. Simply, she needs my approval. My lack of approval, among other things said, led to a fight that was fought in short bursts of text messages and a brief, fiery phone call or two. Around about 1 AM, I got one last phone call from Shera that night. It would last until almost 7 AM. In that time, there was much in the way of raised voices, hurt feelings, and exchanged promises and apologies. But there was also an entire other part of it that led to where the beginning of this entry went…
Shera carries around a 9000 pound burden on her shoulders every single day. The kind you just can’t shake. The kind only a ten year history of abuse can cause. Every night for ten years, she was faced with abuse from a family member. Lately, she’s been having flashbacks to this that have been inceasing in intensity. Sunday night, she had the most vivid, intense flashback yet. It took me a minute or two to figure out what was going on because it seemed like it started just kind of out of nowhere. And it went on for what felt like was an eternity. When the flashback itself was over, my own terror began. Shera has come to believe that the only way she’ll ever be free of this 9000 pound weight, and to be happy, would be to kill herself. Therapy hasn’t worked. Medication hasn’t worked. Trying to block it out hasn’t worked. And I see the pain this causes her every single day, and I’ve always wished there was just some way to remove the burden from her. But I can’t. And neither can anyone else. And as she laid all this out to me that night, about how it’s the only way she could ever be happy, I started to agree with her. And I began to cry, because it felt like I was signing her life away by agreeing. And I hate myself for ever admitting that I agreed with her. The very last thing I would ever want is for her to die, especially by her own hands. As I cried so very hard that night, she laid out to me every single little thing she loves about me (which was a very long list, by the way). She told me that there would be someone else I could love the way I love her. And she told me not to miss her when she’s gone. All I could manage to get out between the sobs was, "But I don’t want you to go…" I told her that life wouldn’t be worth living without her….that a world without her in it was a place I didn’t ever want to be. I told her that she was the entire world to me. I told her that I would never be able to forgive myself if she did kill herself, because I would feel responsible, and that I could never shoulder that burden….it would just be too great for me to bear. At the end of it, she simply asked me, "Do you want me to stay?" To which I said, of course, "Yes…I want you to stay." And that was all it took to save her life. In what I think is the ultimate display of love and affection, she is willing to continue to live her own personal hell just because I asked her to stay, because the sound of my laughter and the sight of a smile on my face would give her enough small bits of happiness to make it worthwhile.
What the hell does someone say to that?
Personally, I felt (well, still kind of do feel) guilty. While I think it is entirely romantic and noble of her (not to mention typical of her), I think it’s entirely selfish of me. How else could I ask her to live with this constant weight on her shoulders other than because I’m just being selfish?
Last night, she was telling her mom and Clint about it, and even told them the main reason she wouldn’t be able to go through with it is because it would be like putting the gun to my head as well if she did go through with it. If that doesn’t convey the kind of place I hold in her life, I don’t think anything else ever could.
Now Playing in Dave’s Mental Jukebox: "Metro" by The Vincent Black Shadow (I fucking love this song), "Waking Up" by 10 Years, and "Rapture" by Hurt
I have my second interview with Comcast this coming Wednesday. I’m very hopeful I’ll get the job and be able to finally get the fuck out of Sears. I’ve been there too long, and it’s started to wear on me terribly. Nevermind the whole money issue.
It snowed here today. I’m glad that winter decided to announce itself in such a brash manner. I’m just glad none of the snow stuck. I fucking hate snow. How weird am I that I can hate snow so much, but still love the winter just as strongly. God damn I’m fucking weird. And speaking of God damn…
When we first met, Shera didn’t ever use "God damn." She didn’t like it, didn’t think it was ever appropriate. Well, thanks to Dave’s terribly casual use of the phrase, it has now become a large part of the Shera vocabulary. In fact, she’s even worse than me about it sometimes…and that’s saying something.
I wrote a short little play for Shera’s theater class earlier this week. I worked on it very slowly for a couple of months, actually, but I typed it all out and finished it off on Tuesday night. It’ll end up being posted in pieces at some point, because it’s very good. I think it’s great, she thinks it’s genius….so it’s probably somewhere in between. The two main characters display she and I completely, and it’s filled (FILLED, I say) with little references to things we’ve done, conversations we’ve had, or jokes we make. But, anyway… Yeah, it’ll find its way into the fictional writings diary at some point in the very near future.
As for now…well….I got some cleanin’ to do. Yeah, that’s right. I said cleaning. Who’d a thunk it?
Sayonara.