RMC

Most people would look at my life and see that I’ve had a life of privilege. Believe me when I tell you nothing could be further from the truth.

I have known a pain none could imagine. I have suffered an anguish none could fathom. Everytime I seem to rise above, the demons of a chasm deep in my past rip my soul to shreds.

I shouldn’t be here. How I’ve managed to stay alive and in some semblance of a normal state of mind is a mystery to some. My body aches at times from the ghosts of my past. And sometimes it just aches.

I can sometimes be the Scrooge like in Dickens’s novel. Because as in his masterpiece I try to channel my ghosts, my memories, as whispers rather than ghosts.

Whispers in the white noise of a ceiling fan I conjour every night in the voices of those who in there hands I have suffered many hurtful torments. Yet I find hope in those I know I can trust but as time moves forward I ask myself, who can you really trust?

In the white noise I bend the voices saying words of caution. I imagine them saying, “don’t go there” or “don’t do that.” Do not go down another path where the destruction of my heart may lead to my demise by even my own hands.

It’s a vicious life I’ve lived at times. Many of the things that I suffer from have been by my own hands. But many many more have not. The only thing I can do is imagine the voices in repeating background noise say, “No. You can’t do that anymore.”

“No, do not go with that person there.” Or, “No, do not believe in the words of this person.” They are often twisted and even more devilish further when my mind is exhausted.

Sometimes I conjour machinations in the noise of the fan above my head and at my bedside. In the noise I imagine words of those I’ve experienced saying negative things to remind me that decisions I’ve made in the past should haunt me.

For that is the key. I tend to try and forgive and forget in the face I present to people. So that I may move forward to build a rapport. Yet in my personal life I want to be reminded of the hurt of broken trust.

Because the world is full of liars, thieves and monsters who prowl on the weak and simple-minded. I use my imagination to help keep me sharp and looking over my shoulder every day; questioning people’s motives and reminding myself even the Devil wears a smile.

This is not to say I don’t have needs or feelings that are true and honest or that I don’t think there are any good people. I just have found I have learned from experience more than by being forwarned or told by parents, authority figures, employers and friends about basic life principles.

I can imagine you thinking, “Oh what a pitiful soul he is,” even now. Yet I am. Yet I am not. I am a culmination and sum of broken and tender parts that hold sway over me. Yet in the noise I try and be the master of them.